Everything Dying and We Just Go On

While driving today and listening to National Public Radio I heard yet one more brief environmental report, this time from the BBC, about an ancient species of trees in Africa that is suddenly and rapidly dying.

The female reporter in her clipped, soft British accent gave statistics and details in her 2 minute and 30 second time slot. At the end of this alarming report, she gave her name and identified the BBC. The broadcast then flipped to the next story.

OMG, I thought to myself. I just heard a heart-stopping announcement. One more ancient life form on planet earth is dying off and most likely unrecoverable. How can I keep on driving? I should at least pull over. Why isn’t anyone screaming? How come there are no alarms …. And will this story be covered on national TV evening news?

How can we just keep going on with our days, our little lives? Climate change, caused primarily by clueless, greedy, anesthetized humans is killing our beautiful home. Nature is dying – dying daily, quickly, rapidly. It’s an epidemic of dying species.

Once again, on behalf of all of humanity: past, present and to come, I make a sincere, heartfelt apology to earth:

We are so sorry we fucked you up, messed with you, and polluted you. We will never be able to go back to the way things were when we were children, let alone how things were two hundred years ago, five hundred years ago, one thousand.

We didn’t know what we were doing. We know now, but we don’t seem to be able to stop. We are so sorry. We are killing you. We are killing ourselves. We’re fucking ourselves. Surely I speak for more than myself.

Does this genuine, deep, honest, earnest admission of guilt make up for anything? Can it count at all? Can it in any way repair any piece of the wrong? If we promise to plant native trees and maintain healthy forests can we earn a touch of forgiveness?

I’m just one but I speak for some, many, most - of the human residents who call you their home …

 In grade school many years ago, I remember pictures in my geography book about “industry” – factory smokestacks spewing smoke. This was good, this was progress, this was a maturing, successful country.

Scientists shocked by mysterious deaths of ancient trees
By Helen Briggs BBC News
6/11/18

A tree regarded as the icon of the African savannah is dying in mysterious circumstances.

International scientists have discovered that most of the oldest and largest African baobabs have died over the past 12 years.

They suspect the demise may be linked to climate change, although they have no direct evidence of this.

The tree can grow to an enormous size, and may live hundreds if not thousands of years.

The researchers, from universities in South Africa, Romania and the US, say the loss of the trees is "an event of an unprecedented magnitude".

Revealing the findings in the journal, Nature Plants, they say the deaths were not caused by an epidemic.

"We suspect that the demise of monumental baobabs may be associated at least in part with significant modifications of climate conditions that affect southern Africa in particular," said the team, led by Dr Adrian Patrut of Babes-Bolyai University in Romania. "However, further research is necessary to support or refute this supposition."

'Shocking and very sad'

The researchers have been visiting ancient trees across southern Africa since 2005, using radio carbon dating to investigate their structure and age.

Unexpectedly, they found that eight of the 13 oldest and five of the six largest baobabs had either completely died or had their oldest parts collapse.

Baobab trees have many stems and trunks, often of different ages. In some cases all the stems died suddenly.

"We suspect this is associated with increased temperature and drought," Dr Patrut told BBC News. "It's shocking and very sad to see them dying."

The trees that have died or are dying are found in Zimbabwe, Namibia, South Africa, Botswana and Zambia. They are all between 1,000 and more than 2,500 years old.

Baobabs are trees recognizable by their distinctive swollen stems

Also known as 'dead-rat' trees, after the shape of their fruit, baobab trees have stout, branchless trunks.

They store large quantities of water inside their trunks to endure the harsh conditions of the arid areas in which they live.

The trees also support wildlife, and are important nesting sites for birds.