That wasn’t my first close association with willows, either. When I was two, we moved into a real house, and one of the first things we did was plant a willow in the front yard. I named her Alice. She came down just a few years ago, having lived a good, long life for such a weedy type of tree.

I’ve always lived among trees and gone to the woods for quiet, but it took a change of scenery to discover just how much trees mean to me. I was in my early twenties when I went to Arizona with my mother to visit my grandparents. I chalked the tension up to too much family in too small a space and tried to ignore it as it built over a couple of days.

My mother and I took a side trip north to Flagstaff, to spend a few days seeing the sights in and around the Navajo Nation and, of course, the Grand Canyon. (It’s, um, big. Dangerously icy in February too. The ravens, however, are charming and like peanuts more than I do.) As we drove north out of Phoenix, I wasn’t really looking forward to more time in constant proximity to family.

Then we started to climb out of the desert and hit an elevation where there were trees. Stubby little piñon pines, but still the first trees I’d seen in days. And I relaxed. Turns out that trees are pretty important to me.

So it makes me sad, and nervous, and grumpy to watch the parade of threats against our local trees over the last several years. Cuts in city budgets have meant less consistent enthusiasm for removing elms infected with Dutch Elm Disease at the first sign of infection, which has allowed the disease to spread more quickly in Minneapolis (10,000 trees lost in 2004, just in the city). Droughts have made our pine forests susceptible to winter damage and pine bark beetles. The emerald ash borer is now on the scene in the state.

But the threat that has me the most disturbed is twofold and not limited to a single type of tree. They’ll attack most hardwoods. I’m talking about gypsy moths and forest tent caterpillars. The two creatures are similar, with masses of caterpillars building webbed homes in trees and stripping them bare. The differences are mostly in the direction the threat is coming from and whether there is a local predator that might keep the population down.

Turns out that there isn’t anything local that will effectively battle the gypsy moths. If we don’t do it ourselves, nothing else is going to take care of it. We’ll start to look like Wisconsin did on the road trip we took across it in May, trees bare of any green, filled only with white, webby masses crawling with dark little bodies.

Of course, we are fighting all these threats to our trees. Individual cities, the Department of Natural Resources, the Department of Agriculture, all are facing off against at least one pest. However, all these entities are facing reduced funding from Governor Pawlenty’s unallotment, on top of other budget cuts.

When the choice comes down, as it must, on what to fund, where do you think the trees will fall? Behind the needy citizens and the crumbling streets for the cities. Behind the sport programs that pay part of their own way for the DNR. Behind agribusiness for the MDA. All reasonable choices, but all choices with consequences to the trees.

This is what our tax policies have brought. While we’ve been sitting still, these pests have been on the move. So when you look out on the stumps where trees once stood, when you see browning pines and empty branches, know that all that green went somewhere, in the form of lighter taxes for those already well off.

When we decide it’s a virtue for money to be collected in the hands of a few, never forget that we all lose. It isn’t always immediately obvious how, but it always happens. Just ask the trees.

Leaders vow to protect Coral Triangle and its people

Manado, Indonesia – Leaders of six Coral Triangle countries promised to take action to safeguard the world’s richest marine resource and some 100 million people depending on it.

The announcement followed a recent WWF report which found that without action on climate change, coral reefs will disappear from the Coral Triangle by the end of the century, the ability of the region’s coastal environments to feed people will decline by 80 per cent, and the livelihoods of around 120 million people will have been lost or severely impacted.
WWF

Coal, Electric Industries Big Winners in Climate Bill Deal

Even as House Democrats are celebrating their deal with conservative-leaning colleagues on climate change legislation, the real winners under the compromise have been the coal, electric and auto industries, who are largely the source of the nation’s carbon emissions to begin with.

Details of the compromise are still emerging, but already the chief sponsors of the measure — Reps. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) and Edward Markey (D-Mass.) — have been forced to lower carbon-reduction targets, cut renewable fuel standards and dole out billions of dollars in benefits to the nation’s largest polluting industries. Many environmentalists say the compromise comes at the too-high cost of undermining the bill’s very purpose, which is to slash emissions dramatically enough to prevent a warming planet from heating further. Some are asking Democrats either to bolster the environmental protections or to scrap the proposal altogether.

Washington Independent

US to Limit Greenhouse Gas Emissions From Autos

The Obama administration is expected to announce guidelines Tuesday that will toughen existing federal mileage standards. Automakers have signed off on the plan, sources say.

truthout

Consumer Reports Eco-Labeling Website

Consumer Reports has an awesome interaction Eco-label website that provides information on what different types of “green” labels mean (organic, natural, free trade, and so on) and how meaningful they are in terms of indicating that a product is more environmentally friendly than other brands. For instance, you can search the label “organic” and get really detailed information about different organizations that certify products as organic and what their standards are. Or you can search by product (food, household cleaners, and so on) and get more information about the types of labels you’ll often see on them.

Sociological Images

Climate Change Odds Much Worse Than Thought

The most comprehensive modeling yet carried out on the likelihood of how much hotter the Earth’s climate will get in this century shows that without rapid and massive action, the problem will be about twice as severe as previously estimated six years ago – and could be even worse than that.

Science Daily