Trees for Survival and Crime Against Terra

Two Short Essays on the Environment

By John Taylor; 2009 Sep 24, Izzat 17, 166 BE

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Trees for Survival.

Crime Against Terra

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Trees for Survival.

Trees are essential to our survival. Once world government is taken care of, planting new trees is one of the cheapest and simplest things that we can all do for the environment. Forests are dying off in massive tracts in remote regions of Western Canada, a sign of global warming and the tree-killing pests that it unleashes. Jared Diamond's books demonstrate how devastating it is to a civilization to cut down its trees.

"I have often asked myself, 'What did the Easter Islander who cut down the last palm tree say while he was doing it?' Like modern loggers, did he shout, 'Jobs, not trees!' Or: 'Technology will solve our problems, never fear, we'll find a substitute for wood.' Or: 'We don't have proof that there aren't palms somewhere else on Easter, we need more research, your proposed ban on logging is premature and driven by fear-mongering"? Similar questions arise for every society that has inadvertently damaged its environment." (Collapse, 114)

I remember one of my professors telling us that he was there when France and other colonizing nations left Algeria and other new nations in the Middle East. With great emotion he told how the first thing the new leadership did was chop down all the trees, in spite of the fact that Muhammad forbids cutting down trees as a war crime. Entire regions that were turning green suddenly returned to the desert.

Cutting down trees is, in a subtle way, a crime against humanity, a crime against the planet, and it is happening everywhere, especially in the Middle East. The only place that did not cut down its trees is Israel, and it is the sole green oasis in the area. The difference between the green inside its borders and brown outside is visible from airplanes and satellites, as is the border between the Dominican Republic and Haiti.

For this reason, I have become interested lately in the Baha'i environmentalist Richard St. Barbe Baker. On the 18th of September I wrote some brief entries in the Badi' Blog summarizing details of his life, at:

http://badiblog.blogspot.com/2009/09/richard-stbarbe-baker-bahai.html

http://badiblog.blogspot.com/2009/09/richard-stbarbe-baker-man-of-trees.html

In 1980 I met Richard St. Barbe Baker in Ottawa, not long before he died. In his talk to the ABS health conference at the University of Ottawa, he told us that if you plant trees, the entire climate around the tree will change for the better. In effect, he said "If you plant them, rain will come." I always thought that however inspiring this sounds, it must be a little far-fetched. Then last year the science press reported that this is true, with the proviso that you start at the coast and work inland. Trees on the coast change the airflow and allow for planting further inland. And of course, we all now know about carbon sequestration, and that trees protect against global warming just by holding onto the CO2 that otherwise would be warming the planet. Baker also showed that it is possible to plant crops between newly planted trees, giving a dietary boost to poor peoples who participate in forest reclamation.

But what interests me more than anything else about him is Baker's plan to reclaim the Sahara desert. This can be done, he said, by taking the standing armies of the world -- soldiers who essentially do nothing but stand around in peacetime -- and putting them to work planting trees across that vast wasteland. I would love to find the details of what he proposed, and I will be ordering some of his long-out-of-print books in order to find out. I have no doubt that as soon as a world government forms and we start seriously looking at how to reverse global warming, that Baker's proposal will suddenly start looking like the smartest thing to do, and not only for the Sahara but the Gobi and any number of other deserts around the world, all of which are spreading along with global warming.

Not Forming a World Government is a Crime Against Terra

A nationalist order can never have a single focus of authority beyond the borders of a single state. Nations may negotiate agreements among themselves, but what does that accomplish? So far they have only demonstrated how impotent they are to do the only thing that would prove they are competent to run the world: halt greenhouse emissions and ease the impact of human habitation on the environment. And little brother is no smarter than big brother. I cannot keep still when environmentalists go on about "them" doing this or that to ease the destruction of nature. I want to shout, "Who is `them'? Nobody!" A vague recognition that some kind of global institution will someday have to protect our natural environment is not nearly enough. We need a world government, and we need it now.

The freedom of large international corporations to pick up and move anywhere while individuals and regions remain tied to national borders gives them disproportionate power and influence. An individual has to get passports and meet the approval of immigration officials to move to another nation, but corporations do not even need a license to trade. With such huge profits at stake, they are the last to encourage discussion of the only conceivable solution to environmental problems: world government.

We should not be surprised when they act so irresponsibly that an individual doing the same thing would end up in jail. The result of anarchy is lawlessness. Oceans are dredged and over-fished, while local communities even in the richest places are routinely blackmailed by companies that can put factories wherever they please.

Imagine walking down the street in a slum where you have to negotiate whether you are mugged, raped or murdered. You may avoid it yourself, but someone weaker or less lucky will have to suffer sooner or later. That is what it is like dealing with the increasing expenses of environmental responsibility.

That is what is happening on the international level. World disorder leads directly to out-and-out environmental crime. As George Monbiot pointed out in his most recent column, poor, chaotic places like Somalia are becoming dumping grounds for toxic waste for any company that wants to avoid paying disposal fees for its effluent. The notorious Somali pirates, by a strange twist of the natural order of things, have become defenders of their coasts from toxic dumpers who slip unmolested among the warships sent there to protect the shipping lanes from their kidnappings. This unpublicized story was voted one of the top ten most censored news stories of the past year.

Meanwhile, organized crime has turned from old standbys, mostly crimes against individuals like theft, drugs and prostitution, to crimes against the environment. Recently, for example, a barge packed with nuclear waste was scuttled by Mafiosi off the shores of Italy. As Monbiot points out, this atrocity against the environment attracted the attention of the press only because it took place near a rich country; they are routine in poor areas.

Once we have world order, once there is a world government with affiliations on every level of society, then we can not only talk but actually do something about saving nature and the world. That is what I have devoted my writing career to over the past decade.

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