TREES, PLEASE MORE TREES

One look at this forest, and right away I see myself walking down the path that winds between the trees.

Wonderful trees -- they absorb and store tons of carbon dioxide, the gas that we need to survive.

Tons? Yes. Climate negotiators are in Peru, measuring with laser beams that spit out color-coded conclusions  that reveal how much carbon is embedded in trees, roots plants.

Peru  -- 3,500 miles from NYC where I live -- is dead center of the area of our world that generates carbon. It's a small country -- about 320 million acres -- but half of its acres are forests.

The laser beams reveal that out of the 7 billion tons of carbon that are in the Peruvian forests, one billion tons of carbon will be lost as greedy corporations proceed with their current plans for oil drilling, logging, mining, and clearing land for farms.

Numbers tell the SCARY-sad story.

Deforestation -- cutting down those forests -- removes about 15% of all greenhouse gases. It's harming our future more than cars, air and ship travel.

Stopping deforestation, buying back the forest land, and planting trees is what has to be done immediately.

Money is what's needed. The UN now has a Green Climate fund -- Norway has promised $300 million.  Obama has promised $3 billion.

Climate negotiators, utilizing maps of the world's forests areas, conclude it will take about $15 billion a year, for the next 10 years, to significantly reduce deforestation.

Hey, maps -- back in the days when the world was supposedly flat -- helped Columbus discover our home-sweet-home -- America the beautiful

You and I -- with some praying and strong talky-talk -- can help save the forests, and help the guys who are currently, passionately devoting themselves to saving the earth.

Sing guys -- along with all the other things we have to pray for, negotiate, and support with money -- pray, sing, and quote:

I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.
A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth's sweet flowing breast;
A tree that looks at God all day
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;
A tree that may in Summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;
Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.
Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.
~ Joyce Kilmer, "Trees," 1914 ~

I think that I shall never see
A billboard lovely as a tree.
Perhaps, unless the billboards fall,
I'll never see a tree at all.
~ Ogden Nash, "Song of the Open Road," 1933 ~

God is the experience of looking at a tree and saying, "Ah!"
~ Joseph Campbell ~