A Word From the Elephant (in the room) — -2.0 — Formerly Stone Hollow, Southeast of Spencer Butte, Eugene, Oregon, PNW, USA
“Don’t judge your neighbor unless you’re looking in the mirror
It doesn’t matter one bit if they didn’t come from here
Feed the hungry, you might be hungry one day too
Not every person on this planet
Is as fortunate as you…..”
I believe I have lost track of exactly how old I am. Mid-fifties, I suspect. Judging from the recent soreness in my lower back and the number of times I get up during the night to pee, I might be slightly older. There could be a margin of error here. You certainly couldn’t tell my age from the way I THINK.
Anyhow during this long-enough life time of mine, however many years it has been, at one point I planted a redwood tree. It started as a sapling. I don’t clearly remember but it might have been a birthday present from the-woman-who-was-my-wife-at-the time. This was, perhaps, 20-plus years ago. Like I said there’s plenty of room in my memory for a margin of error.
Bad soil up there where I planted it, but I dug a good hole, filled it with compost, deer poop, store-bought soil. Planted the little baby redwood and ran the drain from the outdoor shower right to its roots. Lo, these many years…..
Really it doesn’t seem that long ago. The redwood is now 60 feet tall. Its trunk has twinned. Its flattened green needles glisten in the fall rains. Such a beautiful tree. It grew behind a house, so I didn’t notice it when I would visit. It was a forgotten thing. A noble thing that I did, without ever noticing I was being noble.
Except now, it is, quite possibly, about to die.
The house next to the redwood tree caught fire. It went up pretty fast, and got real real hot and toxic and all the things that house fires tend to do.
Especially concerning was the off-gassing of stuff that is not meant to burn (rubber, plastic, fuel oil, lawn furniture). An amalgamation of the by-products of modern life. Instantly oxidized.
The tree didn’t move. It stood there courageously as the fire charred its outer bark and singed it’s needles. The heroic firefighters doused it with a firehose until they ran out of water. That saved it, at least for now. But who knows what the toxic fumes did to its lungs.
Humans came later and salvaged things from the house. They created a little alter near the base of the redwood tree. It’s a good place to sit now and contemplate the remains of the fire and the courage of the tree.
The courage of the tree. It stands there and grows and sequesters carbon dioxide. (You knew I was going to get back to this, didn’t you?) If the tree lives another 80 years (it is a big IF, at this point) it will have absorbed about 1,000 kilograms of CO2 (that’s 1 tonne). Ok, are you sitting down? That’s the equivalent (roughly) of absorbing the CO2 produced by the burning of 111 gallons of gasoline.
In review: Big healthy tree growing for one hundred years = CARBON OFFSET of me driving my truck (at only one gallon per day) for 111 days.
Ouch. My flight to Bangkok? You might want to sit on the floor for this one.
One flight (distance of 13,000 kilometers) one way per passenger roughly equals in CARBON OFFSET one tree growing for 100 years.
But let’s forget about science for awhile. In fact let’s even pretend that there is no science.
Up on the south-side of Spencer Butte (a rocky knob that marks the south border of Eugene, Oregon) it has been hot and dry. It reached over 110 degrees there this summer. It is a place that has been thickly forested for centuries. White oak, madrone, spruce, hemlock, cedars and old growth Douglass fir trees. The butte became a city park in 1938 and is now part of a 2100 acre Ridgeline Trail system. And on the south-side now many of the trees are dying.
Mostly it is the tall Douglas firs that are going first. The combination of heat and drought has left them vulnerable, pest infested, with weakened root systems, browning needles and dead branches in their crowns. You don’t need to be a scientist (or even to BELIEVE in science) to see it, you just have to go up there and look. The Doug firs are dying, It’s a clear sign. And I’m sure you can look out your window, where ever you live and see plenty of clear signs. The climate is changing. It’s warming up. It’s getting more extreme.
I know, I know nobody wants to talk about it, nobody wants to think about it. We all prefer to think about something else, something happy and filled with flowers, and kittens on the internet. I get that and I am just as bad as the next person.
So this is what I think about: The human race is pretty much hell bent on destroying itself. It seems like it is just part of human nature. We are addicted to plastic and pollution. Fast cars and comfort food. We care more about our pets than we do about each other. The list goes on and on.
The catastrophe of a 2 or even 3 degree (Celsius) increase in global temperature (4 to 6 degrees Fahrenheit) is GOING to happen. It’s pretty much in an accelerating feedback loop now and there is no way we are going to stop it. That’s the word from the Elephant that no one wants to talk to.
The best we can do now is to delay the temperature rise as long as possible. The longer we can delay it the more time we have to prepare, the more time our children and grandchildren and great grandchildren have to adjust and learn how to survive. It will be an amazing struggle for them (they will be swearing at us under every breath), it will bring out the best and the worst of human society and if our little species survives it will be a great story to tell 500 years from now.
And if we turn our atmosphere into a toxic inferno (see Venus) then nothing survives and no one gets to tell the story. No puppies, no kittens, not even a cockroach.
As for the present moment? Each and everyone one of us could do whatever we can to DELAY that temperature rise. Maybe planting ten trees delays it by 15 seconds. Maybe not driving two days a week delays it by 2 seconds. Maybe not flying in an airplane when you don’t absolutely HAVE to saves the world for a minute or two. Do it all as much as you can without compromising your values. Rage against plastic, buy everything in bulk, become a vegetarian, eat only local foods, walk to work, ride your bike to the grocery store, recycle your cardboard, drive an electric car….. WHATEVER turns you on! AND reduces your carbon footprint. DO IT!
Do it happily. In ways that make your own little life more enjoyable. More simple. More fun. More connected to the love and support of your neighbors. And family. You are in love with your grandchildren? Don’t get on an airplane to visit them. Sell the stuff you don’t need and go live next door. THEN you can really show them love.
And together as a human race, because we are so adaptable, MAYBE we can survive and take a good proportion of the rest of the species on our fragile little planet with us. Save the kittens! Save the puppies! Save the squirrels! (so the kittens and puppies have something to chase) Save the dolphins and whales, they’re cool.
And above all else save the Elephant. Who else would have the courage to talk to you like this…..