Dear Reader,
We’ve made it to 100 subscribers just in time for our 10th issue! Since we live in a base ten world, and our brains like round numbers, this is good timing. SPE to Jonah for being #100.
Now, to fulfill my promise and show appreciation to our readers:
The GWG is officially a supporter of One Tree Planted, a leading charity organization focused on global reforestation. There are a lot of groups out there doing similar things but I picked OTP because they had the most straightforward model ($1 = 1 tree), a broad range of projects with clear goals, and the best website. Also, Trevor Noah is an advocate.
I must admit, tree planting is probably one of the trendier climate charity causes. It reached a high in Jan 2020 when the World Economic Forum announced a plan to plant 1 trillion trees. That plan was criticized by many for missing the mark and potentially doing more harm than good. To put it most simply - it is almost always better to protect a forest than plant new trees.
With this in mind, our donation has been directed to the US Forest Service (USFS) through their Plant-A-Tree program. The USFS will decide on a location based on their current needs but a few examples of projects include -
Tree planting to help the Gunnison National Forest recover from a beetle infestation.
Reforestation in the Cherokee National Forest to repair critical watersheds and bring back lost biodiversity habitat.
Since the GWG grove will be planted within a National Forest it should be maintained by the USFS in perpetuity.
The Lorax
So why trees anyway? I think this an important question for both our charitable efforts and the carbon offsets we spoke about last week.
From an ecological perspective:
Trees clean the air we breathe. Through their leaves and bark, they absorb harmful pollutants and release clean oxygen for us to breathe.
Through their root systems they remove pollutants and slow down water absorption into the soil. This prevents harmful waterslide erosion and reduces the risk of over-saturation and flooding.
Trees create habitats for all kinds of creatures, insect, fungi, moss, mammals, and plants.
From a climate-change and emissions angle, trees help cool the planet by storing carbon dioxide in their trunks, branches, and leaves.
According to One Tree Planted:
A mature tree can absorb an average of 48lbs of carbon dioxide per year… In cities, trees can reduce ambient temperatures by up to 8° Celsius.
More philosophically (and maybe scientifically?) a lot of us have an innate connection with forests. I know I certainly do.
We spoke previously about the 2019 study that showed spending 2 hours in nature improved health and well-being and this is not a new idea.
In Japan there is a practice called shinrin yoku or tree-bathing. The government and many doctors have been recommending it since the 1980’s and it seems to work. From a Time article about how to practice tree-bathing:
It is simply being in nature, connecting with it through our senses of sight, hearing, taste, smell and touch. Shinrin-yoku is like a bridge. By opening our senses, it bridges the gap between us and the natural world.
Did you know Dr. Seuss wrote The Lorax in 1971? At the time he noted his goal was to create a story addressing industrial/economic and environmental issues without it being dull. He is quoted as saying - "The Lorax came out of me being angry. In The Lorax I was out to attack what I think are evil things and let the chips fall where they might.”
In 1971 he did not have the same scientific evidence and satellite imagery that we do today, yet he knew the industrial destruction of forests was not going to end well. Have we learned our lesson? According to treefoundation.org,
Half of the forests that originally covered Earth’s land surface are gone. Only one-fifth of the Earth’s original forests remain pristine and undisturbed.
So what’s left? One-third of the remaining pristine temperate rainforest is in the Tongass National Forest on the southeastern coast of Alaska. Seems obvious we should preserve this but in October 2020 the Trump Administration rolled back protections to allow logging to resume in the Tongass and there is now an ongoing legal battle.
And it isn’t just the Tongass. In prior issues we’ve seen how forests all over the world are under pressure from growth in the logging industry and demand for bio-fuels.
So what do we do with all this? My first suggestion is the money the World Economic Forum was going to spend planting 1 trillion trees should go to protecting existing forests, and then the logging industry can worry about planting new trees to be cut down.
Amplify
Sometimes all it takes is a good lawyer. In November 2020 Orange County, Florida passed the Right to Clean Water Initiative. The initiative secures the rights of Orange County’s waterways
to exist, to flow, to be protected against pollution and to maintain a healthy ecosystem.
It also recognizes the authority of citizens to file enforcement actions on their behalf. 89% of the county voted in favor.
How good is that!! The group behind it has now filed a lawsuit against the state to prevent a planned housing development from destroying a network of streams, lakes and marshes. Let’s hope they win. It would be powerful precedent that could open the door to exciting possibilities.
If we can’t get the economics of saving forests to work out, maybe we start suing to protect them en-masse? And then timber users can 3D print their wood.
UFO Hunters
As you may recall from GWG five and six, space exploration is a topic of interest, and I can’t help but be curious about aliens and UFO’s.
We are getting close to the June UFO report from the Pentagon and the news seems to be heating up. Earlier this week, former President Obama was on The Late Late Show.
While he said the US is not hiding a lab with alien species and technology, he admitted there is something serious going on with all of the UFO sightings. He said,
what is true — and I’m actually being serious here — is that there’s footage and records of objects in the skies that we don’t know exactly what they are.
We can’t explain how they moved, their trajectory … they did not have an easily explainable pattern.
This lines up with Sunday’s 60 Minutes where a retired Navy pilot said that he saw unidentifiable aircraft with no exhaust plume and no visible engine “Every day for at least a couple years” off the Atlantic Coast.
I think the Earth-based theory is that these are intelligence gathering technologies from foreign advisories. What a tease that would be. I am incredibly uneducated in the defense space, but what spying would they be doing off the coast? Can’t they just hack into our iPhones or something? If a country has the ability to fly incredibly fast without a combustion engine, why are they not making airplanes??!! Let’s get with the program people.
Something Pretty To Look At
Potpourri
In a somewhat ominous development, the tree that inspired The Lorax fell in 2019.
Climate change is making our space junk problem worse.
An artist installed 49 dead cedar trees in Midtown Manhattan's Madison Square Park to raise awareness of ecosystem death due to climate change.
That’s All Folks!
I appreciate your continued support! I hope to hear from you with feedback and please continue to share the GWG with friends.
When (if) we get to 1,000 readers I’ll organize a day where we can go and plant the trees ourselves.