Losing Nature’s Services

Corpses of trees.

Humanity's climate change safety net is being carried away in the back of a truck.

Destruction by December 8, 2006

December 8, 2006:
The destruction continues at the residential development site. The dead and dying continue to be carted off. The corpses of trees are piled so high in the truck that the branches are snagging electrical and cable lines as the trucks go down the street. To my knowledge, none have been snapped.

In 1911, John Muir, one of the founders of the Sierra Club stated in his book My First Summer in the Sierra, “Any fool can destroy trees. They cannot run away; and if they could, they would still be destroyed - chased and hunted down as long as fun or a dollar could be got out of their bark hides. Branching horns, or magnificent bole backbones. Few that fell trees plant them; nor would planting avail much towards getting back anything like the noble primeval forests. It took more than three thousand years to make some of the trees in these Western woods - trees that are still standing in perfect strength and beauty, waving and singing in the mighty forests of the Sierra. Through all the wonderful, eventful centuries God has cared for these trees, saved them from drought, disease, avalanches, and a thousand straining, leveling tempests and floods; but he cannot save them from fools - only Uncle Sam can do that.”

Not much has changed in about 100 years, except that there are many more humans consuming more of everything, and global climate change is a proven fact. Human greed will never change.