An Excerpt from Chapter 3: Trees: The Lunas of the Earth

A tree is a noble organism, unique in its beauty and
home and refuge for birds, insects. and small animals. The emi-
nent biologist Edward Wilson found on one tree in Peru forty-
three ant species. belonging to twenty-six genera, which is ap-
proximately equivalent to the diversity of ants in the United
Kingdom.

I live in a land—Australia—where gum or eucalyptus trees
predominate. There are more than six hundred varieties. and
even though many are similar in appearance. each tree has a
design different from that of any other. When I was growing up,
I thought that gum trees were boring and all the same. It was not
until I had lived in the Northern Hemisphere for fourteen years
that I began to really appreciate the unmatched flora and fauna of
Australia. Australians tend to take their natural heritage for
granted—familiarity breeds contempt.

When the English invaded Australia some two hundred years
ago. they destroyed large areas of native bush in order to plant
rosebushes and deciduous Northern Hemisphere trees and to
create rolling meadows reminiscent of England's. They clearly
felt uncomfortable with odd-shaped animals like kangaroos,
screaming colorful parrots, and strange prickly bushes and trees.
Originally, 14 percent of this vast desert continent was forested;
now only 7 percent is. We have induced the extinction of 100
species of plants, 18 mammals, 3 birds, and 1 reptile; and 4,000
other species are on the endangered list. We have cleared six
million hectares of rain forest, and Australia has three times the
area of degraded land per capita than do comparable countries?
The trees were felled and the land cleared for agriculture. But
over the last twenty years, the government has encouraged ag-
gressive deforestation and land degradation by inviting]apanese
corporations to cut down our last remaining forests. The wood
is fed into a mulcher, converted to wood chips, and shipped to
japan to be manufactured into computer paper. So alarming is
the rate of deforestation that, if present trends continue, the
koala may become extinct as its habitat contracts and disappears.
During my electoral campaign for the federal Parliament in
1990, I was told about a new development adjacent to a main
highway. The real estate agent decided to fell a stand of magnif-
icent gum trees next to the road, and the following day koalas'
and echidnas were staggering across the freeway and being hit by
speeding cars.

You see, in terms of the biology of the planet, development is a
euphemism for destruction. Even the frequendy used term sustain-
able development involves an exercise in confusion. In a world
where all resources are finite—forests, minerals, soil, air, and
water—continued use and abuse of them can have only one end:
the depletion and destruction of most life. Once a forest that has
taken thousands of years to evolve into a system of complex
biodiversity is destroyed, it takes hundreds of years to regener-
ate.

Trees are more than just havens for animals, birds, insects, and
humans; they are also the lungs of the earth. Just as we breathe
oxygen into our lungs and exhale carbon dioxide, so trees
breathe carbon dioxide into their leaves and exhale oxygen.
Trees are really upside-down lungs: their trunks are equivalent
to the trachea, their branches to the right and left main bronchi,
and all their branching twigs and leaves to small bronchi and
alveoli, or air sacs, where the exchange of oxygen and carbon
dioxide takes place. Tree trunks and branches may appear solid,
but they are really rigid channels that transmit water and nutri-
ents to the leaves, the way the trachea and air passages transmit
air to the alveoli.

Trees are therefore an organic necessity to the biological
health of the planet. As human beings fill the air with carbon
dioxide and destroy the ozone layer with man-made chemicals,
trees offer an excellent means of buffering these effects. It has
been calculated that if an area the size of Australia or the United
States were planted with trees, the air could be cleared of carbon
dioxide released from fossil fuels.

Just as the planting of trees replenishes the atmosphere, so
deforestation helps destroy it. Because a tree spends two hun-
dred years absorbing carbon dioxide and storing the carbon in its
wood, when we chop it down and bum it either as wood or as
paper, we release two hundred years of trapped carbon as carbon
dioxide, thus exacerbating the greenhouse effect. We thus need
to plant trees and to stop felling them, for every tree is precious,
in Australia, in the Amazon, or in Washington State. The ozone
layer and greenhouse gases do not recognize national bounda-
ries, so every tree felled has global ramifications.

Once upon a time, the countries of the Middle East were
covered with a humid tropical rain forest. Over time, the trees
were chopped down so that wooden boats could be constructed
and civilization developed, and now these countries are virtual
deserts. In fact, most countries in the Northern Hemisphere
were covered with forests that teemed with life; now the trees
and the wildlife are almost gone. When forests vanish, the cli-
mate tends to change, making natural reforestation almost im-
possible. In some arid climates like Israel's, intensive drip irriga-
tion has been used to initiate reforestation programs. But it will
be many years before these trees reach such a mass that they will
affect the climate.

In November 1989, I went to Puerto Ayacucho, in Venezu-
ela, hired a dugout canoe, and set off down the Orinoco River,
which is a tributary of the Great Amazon River. All my life I had
dreamed of the Amazon forest, and as I read of its impending
destruction, I knew I had to see and experience it while it still
stood in its magnificence. I took my twenty-four-year-old son.
Our boat, manned by a driver, a cook, and a guide, was at least
fifty feet long, made from a single tree. We slept in hammocks
located on the prow and spent ten days on the river. The climate
was hot and humid, almost unbearable when we pulled in at
huge sandstone rocks jutting out into the river to cook our
meals, but simply beautiful as we moved slowly along the river
and the soft perfumed breeze slid past our faces. I have never
smelled such clean, pure, scented air in all my life. We would
wake up early and embark on the day'sjoumey at sunrise. Wil-
liam and I lay rocking in our hammocks, gliding into the rosy
pink sky surrounded by the most magnificent forest, filled with
exotic trees I had never seen before. We encountered hundreds
of different palms, huge flowering trees covered with pink,
white, or yellow blossoms, and colorful birds screaming as they
flew from the edge of the river deep into thejungle. The under-
growth was so thick and matted as to be impenetrable. At night,
white freshwater dolphins snorted and spurted in the water,
while the jungle was alive with raucous screams of monkeys and
other animals. As we lay under our mosquito nets, the sky was
ablaze with the brightest stars I had ever seen.

When we stopped the boat, we were immediately covered
with biting insects of all sizes and shapes. The bees were ten
times larger than any I had ever observed before, and tiny
midges, though hardly visible, left a subcutaneous hemorrhage
and itch that lasted six weeks. The bites itched so much that it
took great willpower not to scratch, and despite the application
of the most carcinogenic insect repellent used in Vietnam, the
insects were not deterred. I decided that jungles are not for
people but for insects.

The jungle went on forever-an ocean of trees, covering an
area the size of the United States. It seemed to me that humans
could never have a significant impact on this vast creation of
nature. But then I remembered the Middle East and the Sahara
Desert and realized that, in those days, it took two men nearly a
week to fell a single tree.  Now the chainsaw, bulldozer, and match
are much more efficient....

Helen Caldicott, M.D., a physician by training, also gives us a prescription for cure--and a cause for hope.   An internationally acclaimed Australian physician and anti-nuclear activist, Helen Caldicott was co-founder of the Physicians for Social Responsibility, and founder of the Women's action for Nuclear Disarmament and the International Physicians to Save the Environment.  She is also the author of Missile Envy and Nuclear Madness.

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