Breathing Partners
Op-Ed, The Boston Globe
From my desk I can see a line of trees, along the stone wall, that marks the edge of a sloping hillside pasture. The trees along the wall were probably not planted, but sprang up as sturdy wild seedlings missed by mowers. There are some sugar maples and hickories, but most are white ash, Fraxinus americana. This is common in our region – southeastern New York and New England – but it’s a robust and adaptable species, flourishing from Canada to Florida, with cousins in Britain and Europe.
Living here for thirty years, I’ve come to know the white ash well – its fine, pointed, feathery leaves, its high, graceful, branching shape, its ridged and furrowed grey bark. In the fall, ash leaves turn subtle hues of bronze and mauve, in counterpoint to the yellow radiance of the sugar maples, the scarlet of the swamp maples. The shape of a young ash, like the ones along the wall, is high and narrow, but an older ash spreads out, grand and monumental, becoming finally wider than it is tall. And it can be very tall: early European arrivals reported ash trees 175 feet high, and 300 years old.
When we first moved to this farmhouse a huge, majestic white ash stood near the barn, spreading its long swooping branches above our lawn for forty or fifty feet. It was, we were told, the largest white ash in the county, about two hundred years old. Its vast presence took up most of the aerial space between the house and the barn – towering, capacious and immensely calming. To lie on the lawn beneath its shade, gazing up into its airy open center, watching the silvery flutter of its narrow leaves, was to feel encompassed by peace.
The ash tree – and the others - are more than just beautiful, however. Trees provide us with very practical benefits. Their strengths are quiet ones: calming, cooling, moisturising and nourishing. They lower the temperature, cause condensation and increase precipitation – more rain will fall on a forest than on open land. Their fallen leaves enrich the soil, and their root systems help rainwater descend toward the aquifer.
More than that: trees are our lungs.
We breathe in oxygen and breathe out carbon dioxide, and by some miraculous law of exchange, trees do exactly the opposite. When we inhale, they exhale: we’re breathing partners. Using the vast shifting surfaces of their leaves, trees absorb the carbon dioxide we produce from our lungs, our factories and our engines. By means of a marvelous alchemy they transform this waste – and not just carbon dioxide, but other noxious gases, dust and pollutants as well - into the sweet fresh air we need. A mature, leafy, healthy tree provides enough oxygen for a family of four. We need trees. And the more our population increases, and the more carbon dioxide we produce, the more trees we need.
* * *
The ashes on our hillside are dying. The upper branches are nearly bare, and the remaining leaves were already yellowish at midsummer. They’re suffering from ash die-back, a non-specific ailment which is more and more widespread. Die-back causes a gradual decline: the circulatory system becomes increasingly feeble. Insects and disease are more dangerous to a weakened tree, which can’t muster the resources to replace destroyed foliage, or fight off bacteria. Each year the tree has fewer leaves, and finally none at all, and the big skeleton stands grey and gaunt against the sky. Die-back is what killed our big ash, though we fed and coddled it for twenty years. It troubles me that it died under our watch.
The tree people don’t know exactly why die-back has become so prevalent; they shake their heads and suggest that you plant something else instead. Sugar maples, maybe – though those, too, aren’t as hardy as they used to be. It’s strange about ashes: they’ve been a vigorous part of the local landscape for at least two hundred years. And the ones along the stone walls are young, only fifty or sixty years old. They’re not dying of old age, but something else.
* * *
For decades we’ve been warned about global warming. Thirty years ago, scientists painted a picture of universal calamity, like a science fiction movie: floods, droughts, storms, fires. Since the scenarios were so dire, and since the remedy – mainly the reduction of oil and gas use – would so powerfully affect the American economy, the government urged caution. It was possible, we were told, that the risks were exaggerated. It was possible, we were told, that the buildup of greenhouse gases – mostly carbon dioxide and methane – was not caused by human activity. Scant encouragement was given to alternative energy sources: they were impractical, we were told. As the years have passed, the warnings have continued, and so has the burning of fossil fuels.
By now we know it’s happening. One effect of greenhouse gas buildup is the disruption of weather patterns. We’re aware that our weather has become uncertain, unreliable and often extreme. Sudden and unseasonal heat waves and cold snaps, torrential rains, floods, droughts, high winds and severe storms are all now common. To people this may be only an inconvenience, but in the natural world erratic weather wreaks havoc. Most living organisms have evolved, over millenia, in response to reliable weather patterns. When those are disrupted, the organism is at risk.
Take trees, for example, the white ash. Deciduous trees drop their leaves before the fierce storms of winter. This is part of an efficient natural engineering system: bare branches offer little resistance to high winds, and catch little snow. But if high winds occur in midsummer, or if there’s an early snowfall, when the leaves are still on the tree, the system fails. In high winds, the leaves act like sails, catching the wind, and they’re ripped from the tree. An early snowfall is worse: the leaves hold the snow, the limbs can’t support the weight, and they fall. Loss of limbs, and unseasonal loss of leaves, weaken the tree and put it at risk.
Temperature changes are important, too. Sap descends, in the fall, and spends the winter deep in the tree’s lower regions. An unseasonal warm spell in January signals the approach of spring, and the sap begins its long climb upward. A return of cold weather requires the system to reverse itself. Both mean the wasting of energy, which trees can’t afford. Good survival strategies save energy, not waste it. A tree under stress is susceptible to disease and death, and erratic weather places all trees under constant stress. The rise of die-back begins to make sense.
* * *
It seems that the debate is over about the causes of global warming. The recent government report on “Our Changing Planet” states with certainty that “Atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide and methane have been increasing for about two centuries as a result of human activities and are now higher than they have been for about 400,000 years.” Here “human activities” means, mostly, the combustion of fossil fuels, of which the United States is responsible for a disproportionately large amount.
The report contains ominous news about melanoma, (now officially an epidemic cancer), and certain plants, but perhaps the worst news is about trees. A study of fluctuating precipitation levels showed that old trees could withstand this, but young trees were not. Fluctuation interfered with the young trees’ ability to absorb nutrients, and increased their mortality rate. Erratic precipitation is already a result of our unreliable weather. If the weather of the future threatens the survival of young trees, how will the forest reproduce itself?
* * *
It’s good that the government is studying the climate crisis; it’s good that they’ve finally acknowledged the cause, but the response is baffling. The report suggests urgent action, but the Bush administration’s response is anything but urgent. Instead of reducing the use of fossil fuels, it’s encouraging an increase. The Bureau of Land Management plans to auction off parts of Yellowstone Park for oil and gas development; the US Forest Service is considering opening national forests to commercial logging; the Department of the Interior plans to accelerate oil and gas drilling, and the EPA is trying to protect Exxon and others from key provisions of the Clean Air Act.
Global warming affects everyone on the planet. All of us here are interconnected in subtle ways, but the most striking link may be that between our lungs and our forests. Our determined commitment to fossil fuels means the subjection of our generous silent partners to increasingly lethal conditions: pollution, erratic weather, clear-cut logging and acid rain. All these things are necessary for a healthy economy, we’re told.
But what about healthy lungs? What do we plan to breathe?
* * *
Four years ago the great ash died. I planted in its place a white oak,
Quercus alba. The white oak is a noble tree; no other has a broader reach, deeper roots, or more expansive possibilities. Its stout taproot runs so deep, and its innumerable rootlets spread so wide, that the underground tree is nearly a shadowy mirror image of the one above. A white oak can live for five centuries, towering peacefully over the landscape. Rugged, monumental, and unthinkably generous, it can provide cool shade to creatures below, shelter and food to birds in its midst, and pure, sweet air for generations - to my grandchildren’s children, wherever in the world they may live.
I want to see that young oak rising straight and tall against the red barn. I want to see a line of wild ashes along the stone wall, full and green against the sky. I want to see each high branch loaded and brimming with bright shimmery leaves. Then I’ll breathe easy.
From my desk I can see a line of trees, along the stone wall, that marks the edge of a sloping hillside pasture. The trees along the wall were probably not planted, but sprang up as sturdy wild seedlings missed by mowers. There are some sugar maples and hickories, but most are white ash, Fraxinus americana. This is common in our region – southeastern New York and New England – but it’s a robust and adaptable species, flourishing from Canada to Florida, with cousins in Britain and Europe.
Living here for thirty years, I’ve come to know the white ash well – its fine, pointed, feathery leaves, its high, graceful, branching shape, its ridged and furrowed grey bark. In the fall, ash leaves turn subtle hues of bronze and mauve, in counterpoint to the yellow radiance of the sugar maples, the scarlet of the swamp maples. The shape of a young ash, like the ones along the wall, is high and narrow, but an older ash spreads out, grand and monumental, becoming finally wider than it is tall. And it can be very tall: early European arrivals reported ash trees 175 feet high, and 300 years old.
When we first moved to this farmhouse a huge, majestic white ash stood near the barn, spreading its long swooping branches above our lawn for forty or fifty feet. It was, we were told, the largest white ash in the county, about two hundred years old. Its vast presence took up most of the aerial space between the house and the barn – towering, capacious and immensely calming. To lie on the lawn beneath its shade, gazing up into its airy open center, watching the silvery flutter of its narrow leaves, was to feel encompassed by peace.
The ash tree – and the others - are more than just beautiful, however. Trees provide us with very practical benefits. Their strengths are quiet ones: calming, cooling, moisturising and nourishing. They lower the temperature, cause condensation and increase precipitation – more rain will fall on a forest than on open land. Their fallen leaves enrich the soil, and their root systems help rainwater descend toward the aquifer.
More than that: trees are our lungs.
We breathe in oxygen and breathe out carbon dioxide, and by some miraculous law of exchange, trees do exactly the opposite. When we inhale, they exhale: we’re breathing partners. Using the vast shifting surfaces of their leaves, trees absorb the carbon dioxide we produce from our lungs, our factories and our engines. By means of a marvelous alchemy they transform this waste – and not just carbon dioxide, but other noxious gases, dust and pollutants as well - into the sweet fresh air we need. A mature, leafy, healthy tree provides enough oxygen for a family of four. We need trees. And the more our population increases, and the more carbon dioxide we produce, the more trees we need.
* * *
The ashes on our hillside are dying. The upper branches are nearly bare, and the remaining leaves were already yellowish at midsummer. They’re suffering from ash die-back, a non-specific ailment which is more and more widespread. Die-back causes a gradual decline: the circulatory system becomes increasingly feeble. Insects and disease are more dangerous to a weakened tree, which can’t muster the resources to replace destroyed foliage, or fight off bacteria. Each year the tree has fewer leaves, and finally none at all, and the big skeleton stands grey and gaunt against the sky. Die-back is what killed our big ash, though we fed and coddled it for twenty years. It troubles me that it died under our watch.
The tree people don’t know exactly why die-back has become so prevalent; they shake their heads and suggest that you plant something else instead. Sugar maples, maybe – though those, too, aren’t as hardy as they used to be. It’s strange about ashes: they’ve been a vigorous part of the local landscape for at least two hundred years. And the ones along the stone walls are young, only fifty or sixty years old. They’re not dying of old age, but something else.
* * *
For decades we’ve been warned about global warming. Thirty years ago, scientists painted a picture of universal calamity, like a science fiction movie: floods, droughts, storms, fires. Since the scenarios were so dire, and since the remedy – mainly the reduction of oil and gas use – would so powerfully affect the American economy, the government urged caution. It was possible, we were told, that the risks were exaggerated. It was possible, we were told, that the buildup of greenhouse gases – mostly carbon dioxide and methane – was not caused by human activity. Scant encouragement was given to alternative energy sources: they were impractical, we were told. As the years have passed, the warnings have continued, and so has the burning of fossil fuels.
By now we know it’s happening. One effect of greenhouse gas buildup is the disruption of weather patterns. We’re aware that our weather has become uncertain, unreliable and often extreme. Sudden and unseasonal heat waves and cold snaps, torrential rains, floods, droughts, high winds and severe storms are all now common. To people this may be only an inconvenience, but in the natural world erratic weather wreaks havoc. Most living organisms have evolved, over millenia, in response to reliable weather patterns. When those are disrupted, the organism is at risk.
Take trees, for example, the white ash. Deciduous trees drop their leaves before the fierce storms of winter. This is part of an efficient natural engineering system: bare branches offer little resistance to high winds, and catch little snow. But if high winds occur in midsummer, or if there’s an early snowfall, when the leaves are still on the tree, the system fails. In high winds, the leaves act like sails, catching the wind, and they’re ripped from the tree. An early snowfall is worse: the leaves hold the snow, the limbs can’t support the weight, and they fall. Loss of limbs, and unseasonal loss of leaves, weaken the tree and put it at risk.
Temperature changes are important, too. Sap descends, in the fall, and spends the winter deep in the tree’s lower regions. An unseasonal warm spell in January signals the approach of spring, and the sap begins its long climb upward. A return of cold weather requires the system to reverse itself. Both mean the wasting of energy, which trees can’t afford. Good survival strategies save energy, not waste it. A tree under stress is susceptible to disease and death, and erratic weather places all trees under constant stress. The rise of die-back begins to make sense.
* * *
It seems that the debate is over about the causes of global warming. The recent government report on “Our Changing Planet” states with certainty that “Atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide and methane have been increasing for about two centuries as a result of human activities and are now higher than they have been for about 400,000 years.” Here “human activities” means, mostly, the combustion of fossil fuels, of which the United States is responsible for a disproportionately large amount.
The report contains ominous news about melanoma, (now officially an epidemic cancer), and certain plants, but perhaps the worst news is about trees. A study of fluctuating precipitation levels showed that old trees could withstand this, but young trees were not. Fluctuation interfered with the young trees’ ability to absorb nutrients, and increased their mortality rate. Erratic precipitation is already a result of our unreliable weather. If the weather of the future threatens the survival of young trees, how will the forest reproduce itself?
* * *
It’s good that the government is studying the climate crisis; it’s good that they’ve finally acknowledged the cause, but the response is baffling. The report suggests urgent action, but the Bush administration’s response is anything but urgent. Instead of reducing the use of fossil fuels, it’s encouraging an increase. The Bureau of Land Management plans to auction off parts of Yellowstone Park for oil and gas development; the US Forest Service is considering opening national forests to commercial logging; the Department of the Interior plans to accelerate oil and gas drilling, and the EPA is trying to protect Exxon and others from key provisions of the Clean Air Act.
Global warming affects everyone on the planet. All of us here are interconnected in subtle ways, but the most striking link may be that between our lungs and our forests. Our determined commitment to fossil fuels means the subjection of our generous silent partners to increasingly lethal conditions: pollution, erratic weather, clear-cut logging and acid rain. All these things are necessary for a healthy economy, we’re told.
But what about healthy lungs? What do we plan to breathe?
* * *
Four years ago the great ash died. I planted in its place a white oak,
Quercus alba. The white oak is a noble tree; no other has a broader reach, deeper roots, or more expansive possibilities. Its stout taproot runs so deep, and its innumerable rootlets spread so wide, that the underground tree is nearly a shadowy mirror image of the one above. A white oak can live for five centuries, towering peacefully over the landscape. Rugged, monumental, and unthinkably generous, it can provide cool shade to creatures below, shelter and food to birds in its midst, and pure, sweet air for generations - to my grandchildren’s children, wherever in the world they may live.
I want to see that young oak rising straight and tall against the red barn. I want to see a line of wild ashes along the stone wall, full and green against the sky. I want to see each high branch loaded and brimming with bright shimmery leaves. Then I’ll breathe easy.
posted by Roxana Robinsonat
1:39 PM 0 Comments
