Clicking4Trees...

A few paces from us, a grey tree trunk as high as my shoulders lies upon its side, dead wood swirls within a hollow many a child would have hidden within for centuries. Sir Walter Raleigh would have walked under the green leaves of this majestic, fallen tree when visiting the handsome Manor at our feet and he’d have enjoyed the twisting old trees which now have canopies thirty, forty paces wide.

Few trees of this age exist around the world, but because Celts and Druids admired trees, England has more in one London park than the whole of France. Not far from here there’s a 4,000 year old yew; an entire grove exists south of London. I love leaning against an old oak and sensing history slip between us. How can you not help but love trees? They replenish our souls.

Trees, one of our best chances to avoid the worst of Climate Change, yet they sneak into our precious forests and denude them for hardwood doors, furniture, tea plantations and ugly palm oil plantations denude the environment so we can enjoy cheap biscuits.

You, like me, pine for all of this to stop. Blinkin’ heck, we have the power, and clever nature has a solution. Trees absorb the CO2 we are addicted to. A tree, the best present ever, is not just for Christmas but for life. Your life, the planet’s. Oddly, even Christmas trees form a little part of the solution, after all another one is planted to replace the one you’ve bought… but only if you buy from a local, sustainable producer who doesn’t spray them with chemicals. And get one with roots, leave outside it in a pot after Christmas.

The American Redwood apparently absorbs more Carbon than most and grows quicker too. In California a charity clips fronds, nurtures them, plants them. Find out who they are and perhaps donate, for trees are the best way we can spend our money to help the future, our future.

Abandon Google for the search engine ECOSIA (ecosia.org), who plant a tree for approximately every 45 clicks. They have a counting-clock, when we first discovered them they’d planted thousands, today it’s 73,316,000 and rising every minute! (a few days later it's 74,883,657 .... well done! everyone! that's more than one every second....wow!!)

Using ecosia.org look up which trees and shrubs suit your locale, which absorb the most CO2 quickest and then encourage everyone you know with a garden or land to plant those species. Grow your own such life-saving plants in pots, put them on your windowsill, in your yard, in your garden. When they are too big, give them to somebody who will plant them.

Hurry. Catch the momentum. Everywhere, be it Nairobi, New York or Nagasaki, people are suffering with climate-stress. The answer is to plant, not to mope.

The greatest danger in the Climate Change scenario is that we assume others, not ourselves, have the answer! All of us do and together we make up a vast, powerful force. Let’s get clicking for trees! Buying charity trees! Quick, Ecosia, click, click….

#redwoods #globalwarming #carbonsequesting #ecosia #climateaction #extinctionrebellion