India Plants 50 MILLION Trees in 1 Day
What an outstanding and inspiring achievement! WE CAN restore the world -- together -- and we can do it rapidly.
In last month's issue, Worship WITH Nature, we touched on Hinduism's fundamental grounding in biodiversity mysticism (my term), aka. animism. This phenomenal achievement, carried out by about 800,000 people in July 2016, really means a lot on many, many levels. India's recent deforestation (of last 100 years) is causing enormous ecological viability issues locally, regionally and globally. From a scientific perspective, India's forests were intrinsic to Earth's "tropical forest moisture conveyor belt" for thousands, likely millions of years. And locally/regionally these forests help house pollinators, maintain hydrological health, absorb and store greenhouse gasses, and much much more.
This image show recent era changes in India's western forests, as global population has grown from 1 Billion in 1804 to about 7.5 Billion in 2017. India's forests had been in place for thousands, perhaps millions of years before our modern era of phenomenal human expansion. The deforestation shown here has taken since the Industrial Revolution, circa 1850.
And here is an image of a year in the life of the "tropical moisture conveyor belt," where in moisture circulates from East to West, 365 days a year. In short: as the planet rotates, the sun warms tropical oceans and forests causing evaporation and transpiration. This conveyor belt system is the only moisture system that interacts with both hemispheres, thus co-determining global weather and storm events. With the tropical deforestation of the last 50 years, we've greatly reduced and destabilized this function.
By replanting tropical forests, restoring local biodiversity, biodiversity productivity and ecological functionality en masse, we should be able to rapidly reclaim the tropical moisture conveyor belt's function, which is central to slowing the rate of global warming, protecting our temperate climate system, and saving species.
Read National Geographic's full article on this grand, world bettering event, "India Plants 50 Million Trees in One Day."
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--Chris Searles
