The Heartbeat of Trees: Peter Wohlleben returns to the surprisingly mysterious, often strange world of trees

The Heartbeat of Trees: Embracing Our Ancient Bond With Forests and Nature

By Peter Wohllenben

Greystone Books; 2021

Do trees have heartbeats? That certainly sounds like the sort of question that would intrigue and inspire The Hidden Life of Trees author Peter Wholleben. And indeed he devotes a chapter of his latest book to the subject, in addition to taking his title from it. 

Trees do not, of course, have hearts, and thus don't have literal heartbeats. But, Wholleben points out, what blood is to people, water is to trees, and thus they need something that performs a pumping function similar to the heart. How exactly they pump water throughout their huge bodies is, somewhat surprisingly, still a mystery,. But Wohllenben points, as he so often does, to new research, this bit from a team of international scientists who noticed that a particular tree hung its branches lower at night. Further investigation of more trees discovered that their branches similarly changed positions every three to four hours. Could they be doing this in order to pump water throughout their bodies? Did the scientists discover the heartbeat of trees?

If so, it would make a certain amount of sense that a tree's "heart" beats only once ever few hours, while human beings' hearts beat somewhere between 60 and100 times a minute; it would be one more illustration of the vast difference in the way trees and humans experience the passage of time. Trees are much, much slower in every respect from human beings, from how long it takes them to react to stimuli to how long their lifespans are.

Readers of Wohlleben's previous books will find that Heartbeat is very much more of the same, and will likely be pleased with the discovery, seeing how well-received his earlier books were. As with Secret Life of Trees and The Inner Life of Animals, each chapter is more or less standalone, a complete short, incredibly readable essay of its own, to the extent that a reader can easily pick it up and set it down at their own rate, and almost pick any chapter at random to read, and read the chapters of the book in any order, really.

Each of these generally begins with a question or observation—Why is the forest green, for example—and then Whollenben tackles it, in the process calling on personal anecdotes from his own life among trees as a forester and modern research about the nature of plants and trees. Some passages of the book build upon one another, as in the early chapters where he takes each of our six senses in turn and discusses how they relate to the forest, or later when he recounts various trips to endangered forests where activists are trying to preserve them. 

As with his previous works, Heartbeat of Trees challenges the way we think about trees, offering many new insights that make it difficult to just walk by them on the street without thinking of them as rather dynamic and incredibly strange living things ever again. 

As for the climate crisis, it haunts the background of many sections of the book, and comes to the fore on a chapter on climate change, in which he reiterates forests power to cool the climate and discusses the folly of thinking of wood as a carbon neutral fuel source. He also notes that we need to start thinking more seriously about the world as an ecosystem in which we are a part, rather than the traditional separation we do where we think of the environment as something apart from us.

"The realization that we are still a part of this wonderful system and that we function according to the same rules as all other species is, thank goodness, gradually making headway," he concludes his introduction. "And it's only when it comes to the fore that conversation can be effective—that is to say, when we realize that what we are conserving is not just other forms of life but, first and foremost, ourselves." 

David Williams' Our Angry Eden and the two meanings of taking care of creation

Our Angry Eden: Faith & Hope on a Hotter, Harsher Planet

By David Williams

Broadleaf Books; 2021

The word "care" has several meanings, as author and Presbyterian pastor David Williams notes in his new book, Our Angry Eden. He was inspired to write it, he says, after attending a gathering at his church on "creation care," the idea that we as human beings need to protect the environment because it is God's creation, and that he gifted it to us and commanded us to do so in the first stories of the Bible.

But to take care of creation can have another meaning, too. As Williams writes:

We need to take "care" of God's creation in the way that we take "care" when we find ourselves bobbing precariously on a surfboard with a great white shark moving lazily in the murky shadows beneath. We need to take "care" of it in the way that we take "care" when we teeter on the ledge of a precipice.

We have the power to do enormous damage to the Earth itself but, in the long run, the Earth can and will survive us, and it can certainly survive without us should we succeed in rendering it uninhabitable to human life.

"Do we think creation cares?" Williams asks. "It does not...Creation would continue as if nothing had happened. After a hundred million years, there'd be no trace of us at all."

And as for God, well, God may care about us far more deeply than his creation does, but, Williams writes, "God also allows us to reap the harvest we have sown, no matter what that harvest might be." 

As severe as the words in Williams' introduction may be, his is not a climate book that revels in doomism, but it is stark in its appraisal of how much trouble we're in and, at times, evokes the sort of old-fashioned fear of God that used to be such a staple of Christian sermons, particularly in centuries past. Given the pressures we've put on the Earth, and the damage we've done to it, we probably should be afraid of the future we're creating for ourselves. Certainly afraid enough to change our behavior.

Williams writes like a person who is used to writing strong sermons or homilies, as he's quite adept at telling stories that begin as personal anecdotes and then connect to larger issues and broader themes. He does this throughout the book, which can therefore have the feel of a themed collection of sermons at times.

After his efforts to try and reframe the idea of creation care as not just something worth doing because the environment is fragile, but urgently needed because we are more fragile still, Williams reviews the state of the world, many of the hows and whys that got us into the current climate crisis and, ultimately, suggests ways to face it, particularly ways to do so as Christians.

Although it is not necessary to be a person of faith to read, enjoy and learn from Our Angry Eden, much of the book is specific to the Christian faith, and will prove most relevant to those with a background in Christianity. For example, Williams writes on how caring for climate refugees connects to Biblical edicts to care for strangers. And  how the concept of keeping holy the Sabbath can be extended into a worldview that is beneficial to the Earth. Or how Jesus' proverb of rendering unto Caesar what is Caesar's connects to our responsibilities as citizens in our current republic, the United States of America.

There are also passages that deal with arguments more likely to arise within Christian communities than without, as when he tackles the concept of the rapture (which he calls un-Christian) or argues for becoming vegetarian in a way that evokes faith as well as the more familiar arguments for doing so. 

The book ends with something of an action plan labeled "Nine Ways Forward," offering nine positive, concrete steps we can take to take care of creation, meaning to protect our world, while we also take care of creation, meaning trying to guarantee a continued place of safety on our rapidly changing world.  

God is mentioned repeatedly throughout these steps, but it's well worth noting that these aren't necessarily religious ways forward, but ones that anyone, regardless of faith background, can engage in.

Ecology meets anomalistics—and cryptozoology the climate crisis—in Greening The Paranormal

Greening The Paranormal: Exploring the Ecology of Extraordinary Experience

Edited by Jack Hunter

August Night Press; 2019

In his introduction to the essay collection Greening The Paranormal, editor Jack Hunter explains that the motivation behind the project wasn't merely that the subjects of what he calls anomalistics (that is, the paranormal) and ecology are both interesting subjects, or that the ways they intersect with one another are interesting. 

Rather, those with an interest in the paranormal represent a large and perhaps untapped source of positive activism for addressing various ecological crises.

Belief in the paranormal is "remarkably common in the Western world," Hunter writes, noting a survey that suggests 75.9 % of the U.S. population holds "some form of paranormal belief", while only 53% are afraid of global warming or climate change. 

"Based on these figures it would appear that there are more paranormal believers in the US than people worried about the damage we have inflicted on the global ecosystem," Hunter writes, before asking, "What if the paranormal demographic could also be tapped into for climate change mitigation?"*

So there's that, but there's also, the fact that "approaches emerging from the study of (and engagement with) the supernatural may ultimately help us reconnect with the natural, and in so doing develop innovative approaches to confronting the eco-crisis," and "for the essential task of contributing towards a much broader—necessary—change of perspective concerning our relationship to the living planet." 

Perhaps the best example of this comes in a passage about animism he writes, and the granting of legal personhood status to certain ecosystems, like Whanganui River in New Zealand, the first river to be granted legal personhood. Whether or not we as individuals subscribe to animistic beliefs, it seems pretty clear that if we treated animals, plants and all elements of the natural world as if they had a degree of sentience, we would inevitably treat the world more kindly.  

While his lengthy introduction is perhaps the most compelling chapter in the book, the collection that follows it is an interesting, if curious, one. It ranges so widely that it can be difficult to find throughlines, with "the paranormal" being such an awfully broad topic. I found myself wishing that Hunter's introductory essay, sizable though it is, was the entirety of the book. Or that Hunter, or perhaps some other author like him, would engage in a book-length argument aimed at convincing those three-fourths of Americans who believe in some aspect of the paranormal to start taking action regarding climate change.

Instead, that chapter is followed by sixteen essays, covering subjects as diverse as various Native American spiritual beliefs and worldviews, psychedelic experiences, the concept of soul birds and, most oddly to my eye, a bit of literary criticism focused on predators of humanity in Whitley Strieber's early writing and Communion. 

Of the essays beyond Hunter's, the one I was most interested in was Susan Marsh's "Cryptozoology in a Changing World," as cryptozoology is the aspect of the paranormal/anomalistics which I am personally most interested in (and certainly the one I've devoted the most reading to). 

It was during all of the international coverage of the Brazilian wildfires of 2019, the ones that choked Rio de Janeiro with smoke and turned the skies in Brazil that unsettling, apocalyptic shade that the thought occurred to me that there is a particularly compelling narrative regarding cryptozoology and species loss due to the climate crisis. That is, if we are losing species at such an alarming rate that we may actually be in the midst of the sixth mass extinction, what does that say about the safety of particularly large animals that are apparently so rare that they may not even exist at all?

Among the many intriguing cryptids, those animals thought to perhaps exist but not yet proven to do so that cryptozoologists spend their time chasing, is a giant ground sloth thought to perhaps still live somewhere in the Amazon jungle, and to have inspired indigenous people's stories of the giant monster Mapinguari. If there really is such an undiscovered animal in the Amazon, how would the wildfires there, in addition to the regular, steady rate of deforestation, affect it, or other South American cryptids, like giant anacondas, giant monkeys or De Loys' ape? 

Or, to take perhaps the most famous cryptid for an example, if Bigfoot really is real—and I personally don't think it is—then what are the chances it survives the climate crisis? If there really were a small breeding population of  large apes living in North America, surely these extremely rare animals would be at great risk of going extinct from various extreme environmental pressures before they can be discovered by science. (What a terrible irony would be if scientists did find that there really was such an animal as Bigfoot, but that they went extinct in, say, 2008).  

Marsh's essay takes a different approach to this particular intersection, though. Rather than focusing on how tiny populations of cryptids are at even greater danger than species robust enough to be known to definitively exist, she discusses how ever-increasing human populations and habitat erosion can lead to crytpids becoming more rare...or more frequently seen.

She cites examples of expeditions searching for the Almas and Orang Pendek—hairy hominids rumored to live in Russia and Sumatra, respectively—and how sightings of them have decreased in areas where they were once quite rich. 

In contrast, however, the United States' answer to the yeti-like creatures, the aforementioned Bigfoot, have only increased as our populations have grown. "So, could Bigfoot, Sasquatch and their ilk be growing bolder as they encounter more and more humans in their natural habitats?" 

Marsh notes that the world's other most famous cryptid, the Loch Ness Monster, has been seen more and more as development increased around its supposed habitat, not less and less.  She then cites two of cryptozoology's favorite examples, the okapi and the coelacanth, as animals who were only officially discovered by science once Western "civilization" started to encroach on previously wilder, less-explored regions. 

For cryptozoologists, perhaps there is therefore a silver-lining to the gray clouds of smoke emanating from Western wildfires: Maybe the last of the Bigfoot won't die undiscovered as the planet warms and their habitat buns, but come stumbling out of the fire and into the spotlight of science? 

Concern for animals that  may not actually even exist may seem like misplaced concern, given the urgency of the climate crisis and the mass extinction crisis, but then, concern is concern. A world that's wilder, cleaner and cooler, a world more likely to support Bigfoot, lake monsters and giant Brazilian ground sloths is a world much more likely to support all the animals that we know definitely do exist...including humanity. 

*It is here perhaps worth recalling what Gary Gardner said about faith communities and how they are so well-positioned to effect major, positive changes when it comes to addressing the ecological crises in his book The Earth Cries Out, reviewed in the previous post. Hunter too spends some time talking about organized religion's posture toward environmentalism.                                                                                           

Dressing and keeping the garden: Creation care in Reforesting Faith and The Earth Cries Out

Carpenter-turned-doctor Matthew Sleeth writes in his Reforesting Faith (WaterBrook; 2019) about an instance where he had volunteered to plant trees at his conservative church, and one of the pastors told him that he had "the theology of  a tree hugger." "This was not meant as a compliment," Sleeth writes. 

While the pastor was likely drawing some sort of distinction between conservative values and progressive ones as represented by concern for the environment, it certainly implied that God himself isn't a tree hugger or, as Sleeth put it, "My first reaction to the pastor's comment was, 'Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe God doesn't care about trees.'"

It would be awfully bizarre if God didn't care about trees, of course, as he did create them, right? Nevertheless, the encounter sent Sleeth to seek out his Bible—and I should perhaps here note that Sleeth and his church believe that "Scripture is the inspired, inerrant Word of God"—and start reading, cover to cover, pausing to underline everything the Bible had to say about trees. The result was this book, so obviously the Bible has a lot to say on the subject.

Reforesting Faith is essentially a brisk re-reading of the story of the Bible, from God planting the garden of Eden during Genesis' creation stories, with two important trees at their center, to Jesus' death on a cross made from a tree, pausing to note when and where trees appear, and linger on their meaning.

That Sleeth was able to produce an entire book (even a relatively short one, at under 200 pages) on the subject is evidence to how many trees there are in the story of the Bible, even if Sleeth is pretty generous in his definition of a "tree," including as he does tree-adjacent symbols like bushes, branches, walking sticks, fruit or seed; indeed, as Sleeth writes, "Every significant theological event in the Bible is marked by a tree."

What does this mean? 

Well, for one thing, it means that if Sleeth was prepared all those years ago, he probably could have shut down that pastor who made the tree hugger comment pretty quickly and thoroughly. God obviously does care about trees, and the writers of the Bible—although, again, Sleeth would say the ultimate author, via divine inspiration, was God himself—constantly employed them as plot-points and symbols.

For another, it makes a pretty strong argument that Christians like Sleeth probably should be tree huggers. Forgetting for a moment the absolute ecological necessity trees are (providing oxygen and holding our atmosphere together in a livable configuration) and the many other benefits they provide humanity, of varying degrees of importance (holding soil together, breaking storms, providing food, giving shade, being aesthetically pleasing, etc), they should hold an additional, theological value for Christians. 

Anyone can pause under a tree and appreciate, say, the cool of its shade, the way it sways or seems to whisper in a slight breeze, or the beauty of its intricate construction. And anyone can marvel at the unusual slow time scale that trees exist on, outliving humans by decades or centuries, and contemplate what that says about us and our place in the world. 

But for Christians, they can also be a tangible, almost ever-present signal to stop and consider the two trees of Eden, the olive branch the dove brought back to Noah to let him know the flood was abating, the oak tree God's messengers first met Abraham over before initiating the covenant, the grove Abraham planted in Beersheba, the burning bush God spoke to Moses out of, and on and on, until the story Christians read in the Bible reaches its climax, and Jesus retreats to olive groves to pray fervently, and is ultimately nailed to a tree.

"God's original plan was for humanity to dress and keep trees," Sleeth concludes his book, "For those of us who claim the name of Christ, we ought to take a long, hard look at how well we are fulfilling our role as God's stewards." (Here the author is referring to the second creation story in Genesis, where in Genesis 2:15 "the Lord God took the man, and put him in the Garden of Eden to dress and keep it."). 

If pastors are derisively dismissing congregants who plant trees as tree huggers, then the answer would appear to be "Not great." Hopefully Sleeth's book gets into the right hands then, and can change some minds. Christians wield an incredible amount of social and political power in the world in general and America and particular, and it's hard to think of many things that could effect greater and more rapid good for the world if that power were to be applied for planting and protecting trees.

Gary Gardner notes the political power of Christian communities, much of it unused when it comes to the environmental crisis, in his example-filled, blueprint-like The Earth Cries Out (Orbis; 2021). 

"People of faith bring a set of infrastructural, social, financial, political, and, of course, moral and spiritual, tools to the sustainability challenges of our time," he writes, before listing the many virtues of faith communities, from meeting regularly and being highly motivated to bearing moral authority to controlling "meaningful amounts of investment capital" .and managing land and buildings "that are potential sustainability showcases." 

"Few institutions at the global level have such a broad and powerful tool set," he writes, "Of course, these asserts are seldom utilized to their fullest potential; people of faith are arguably punching well below their weight on the critical issues of our day." 

To extend the metaphor, The Earth Cries Out offers coaching on how throw better, more effective punches. 

Gardner begins his discussion with "signs of the times," a phrase that was "Jesus' terms for societal markings of moral importance." These involve the facts that, if you're reading this blog,  you're likely already well aware of, like the rapidly warming planet caused by runaway carbon dioxide emissions and the sixth extinction ("This unraveling of the fabric of life is nothing less than the decimation of billons of years of God's creative work," as Gardner memorably refers to it). 

So what can faith communities do about the state of the earth, which is in its threatened state in large part because, as Gardner puts it, humanity has corrupted the dominion we were given over God's creation into our domination of it...? 

The chapters that follow discuss various sustainability challenges—energy, land, food—as well as work being done by some faith groups to address them, and often times quite specific examples of efforts, efforts that an engaged and committed church or faith community can replicate.

Many of these actions may be familiar to many readers, including smart divestment (particularly of fossil fuel industry) and reinvestment, solar panel installation, creating community gardens and green spaces (the latter of which can serve dual, environmental as well as spiritual functions), patronizing particularly sustainable and just business models, and so on. 

These may be practices that individuals are already committed to in their personal lives, but Gardner discusses them on the scaled-up level of a parish, congregation or other faith community, where the impact is several orders of magnitude greater than that  personal level. 

Though grounded in the author's Catholic faith, the book is filled with examples that aren't limited to a single denomination, or even a single religion, but strives to be inclusive of people of faith in general. Given the enormity of the crises facing us at this point in history, faith is probably going to be a pretty important component in what is needed to fix the megaproblems before us, regardless of the intricacies of how one worships (or if one worships at all). 

If one does so, though, then The Earth Cries Out offers plenty of strategies to bring to one's fellow faithful. 

Fight, fight, fight!: Michael E. Mann takes on all comers in The New Climate War

The New Climate War: The Fight to Take Back Our Planet

By Michael E. Mann

PublicAffaris; 2021

Michael E. Mann is a scientist, author and climate activist who rose to some degree of prominence—infamy, in some circles—for his part in producing the so-called "hockey stick" graph, a 1999 graph showing the sharp, sudden and then steady increase in temperatures that accompanied the industrial revolution in a compelling visual. That is, it was shaped like a hockey stick, being relatively flat for a long time and then curving dramatically upward. 

Given his years in the field, he's a veteran of the climate war, or, I suppose, a veteran in what he would now term the old climate war, as his new book heralds the commencement of a new climate war. It's relatively late in the book—page 231—that he defines the old climate war as a war on the science itself, in the form of outright denialism of global warming and a climate crisis of any kind, and the new climate war as the war on action to do anything about actually solving the climate crisis.

The war metaphor runs through the entirety of the book. "We are in a war," Mann writes, "but before we engage, we must understand the mind of the enemy," which he defines as "the forces of denial and delay."  He talks of a four-point battle plan*, he reviews the war so far, he names various factions of enemies and their tactics, and he even addresses his continual talk of war: "The surest way to lose a war is to refuse to recognize you're in one in the first place."

It is an apt metaphor for Mann, as it fits the pugilistic tone of the book. In fact, despite his warnings of the enemy seeking to drive wedges into the climate movement wherever they see the smallest cleavage—say, for example, purity tests, like activists attacking climate scientists for flying in airplanes to get to conferences to give speeches, or the fight over carbon pricing, wherein some faction allow perfect to be the enemy of good—he spends an awful lot of time on engaging in internecine warfare himself. 

Perhaps because Mann has been so deeply entrenched in the climate wars himself for so long, he has opinions and experiences with almost every element of it, and so he has opinions on everything. He doesn't hesitate to share these, and even though he warns of the dangers of climate activists fighting among themselves over relatively small matters, which only helps the forces of delay, he engages in quite a bit of seeming score-settling in the book, reliving Twitter battles in which he quotes his own tweets and quotes since-deleted tweets or tweets that he notes have a high likelihood of having come from bots. 

He also attacks his fellow activists, not necessarily in the harshest terms, but a surprising amount of real estate seems devoted to criticizing other climate activists, usually on the grounds that they are doing it wrong, engaging in, for example, "doomism" (on the part of Vox's David Roberts in some tweets, for example) or overshooting in their calls for systemic change (Naomi Klein's identifying capitalism as a major problem in need of being addressed, for example).

Entire chapters are devoted to the need for the members of the climate movement not to fight among themselves, but, well, Mann does an awful lot of relitigating of minor friendly fire incidents in those chapters and some that follow. 

One hopes that Mann doesn't lose too much of his audience in these sections, or distract from his own messaging. The more compelling parts of the book include those on the idea of deflection campaigns, in which corporations move the onus of action from themselves to the individual**, often quite effectively (Among the examples are the famous "crying Indian" anti-littering ad that deflected the responsibility for litter from those companies that produce all the disposable packaging to consumers who don't dispose of it properly, or the gun lobby's "guns don't kill people, people kill people" slogan). 

So too are the sections on what he calls "the non-solution solution," like attempts to geo-engineer our way out of the worst effects of climate change, and his arguments against "doomism", in the chapter "The Truth is Bad Enough." Though that chapter too involves keeping some of his old Twitter fights going, it also effectively argues that there's no need to exaggerate the crisis we're in, which has the risk of paralyzing people with fear—as the title of the chapter indicates, no exaggeration is needed to paint a scary, hopefully action-motivating image of where we're at as a planet. 

Mann seems to love alliteration when discussing the forces of inaction, the enemy armies in the climate wars, or, what he often terms "inactivists." His book details the transition from the old climate war to the new one:

The inactivists have been forced into retreat from "hard" climate denials to "softer denial: downplaying, deflecting, dividing, delaying, and despair-mongering. These are the multiple fronts of the new climate war. Any plan for victory requires recognizing and defeating the tactics now being used by inactivists as they continue to wage war.

That might seem like a victory, what with the enemy retreating metaphor, but we're a long way from a cessation of all hostilities. Still, Mann provides a hopeful note in his final chapter, "Meeting the Challenge":

Despite the challenges detailed in this book, I am cautiously optimistic—that is to say, neither Pollyannaish, nor dour, but objectively hopeful—about the prospects for tackling the climate crisis in the years ahead. The reason for that optimism is a confluence of developments, a "perfect storm," if you will, of eye-opening events that are helping to prepare us for the task ahead. First, there have been a series of unprecedented, extreme weather disasters that have vivified the climate-change threat. Second, a global pandemic has now taught us key lessons about vulnerability and risk. And finally, we've seen the reawakening of environmental activism, and , in particular, a popular uprising by children across the world that has framed climate change as the defining challenge of our time.

I certainly hope that's enough. If you were to read just one book about the climate crisis this year, I don't think I'd recommend this one, if only because of Mann's tendency to get sidetracked by his personal history and his own war stories (Jelmers Mommers' How Are We Going To Explain This?, reviewed in the previous post, is probably a better candidate). But The New Climate War has plenty of redeeming qualities too and heck, who says you only have to read just one book about the climate crisis this year...?

*If you're curious, the plan is: 1.) "Disregard the doomsayers", 2.) "A child will lead them", 3.) "Educate, educate, educate" and 4.) "Changing the system requires systemic change"

**I found this passage  from page 61 particularly well-put:

There are plenty of lifestyle changes that should be encouraged, many of which make us happier and healthier, save us money, and decrease our environmental footprint...But consumer choice doesn't buld high-speed railways, fund research and development in renewable energy, or place a price on carbon emissions. Any real solution must involve both individual action and systemic change....So there is a delicate middle ground—which we must seek out—that encourages personal responsibility and individual action while continuing to use all of the lever arms of democracy (including voting!) to pressure politicians to support climate-friendly governmental policies.