TREE

"Fair Trade supports some of the most bio-diverse farming systems in the world.
When you visit a Fair Trade coffee grower's fields,
with the forest canopy overhead and the sound of migratory songbirds in the air,
it feels like you're standing in the rainforest."
-- Professor Miguel Altieri, Leading expert and author on agroecology

The American reading his Sunday paper in a state of lazy collapse
is perhaps the most perfect symbol of the triumph of quantity over quality....
Whole forests are being ground into pulp daily to minister to our triviality.
~ Irving Babbitt

There appears to be a deeply embedded uneasiness in our culture about throwing away junk that can be reused.
Perhaps, in part, it is guilt about consumption. Perhaps it also feels unnatural.
Mother Nature doesn't throw stuff away.
Dead trees, birds, beetles and elephants are pretty quickly recycled by the system.
--William Booth

"If we lived in a desert and our lives depended on a water supply that came out of a steel tube, we would inevitably watch that tube and talk about it understandingly. No citizen would need to be lectured about his duty toward its care and spurred to help if it were in danger. Teachers of civics in such a community might develop a sense of public responsibility, not only by describing the remote beginnings of the commonwealth, but also how that tube got built, how long it would last, how vital the intake might be if the rainfall on the forested mountains nearby ever changed in seasonal habit ot amount. It would be a most unimaginative person, or a stupid one, who could not see the vital relation between the mountains, the forests, that tube and himself."
-- Isaiah Bowman

Acknowledging the physical realities of our planet does not mean a dismal future of endless sacrifice. In fact, acknowledging these realities is the first step in dealing with them. We can meet the resource problems of the world -- water, food, minerals, farmlands, forests, overpopulation, pollution -- if we tackle them with courage and foresight. ~ Jimmy Carter

* We ought to think that we are one of the leaves of a tree, and the tree is all humanity. We cannot live without the others, without the tree. -- Pablo Casals

Only after the last tree has been cut down, only after the last river has been poisoned,
only after the last fish has been caught, only then will you find that money can not be eaten.
~ Cree Indian Prophecy

* I PLEDGE to live, work and act in a loving, respectful way towards this Earth that I call home, and towards all who live upon it, every insect, animal, fish, bird, plant, human and tree.... ~ Guy Dauncey

Children have become disengaged from nature
and we need to reintroduce them to the pleasure that it brings.
If we do that they will care for it.
Through the simple act of planting a tree we can open their eyes to nature's beauty.
-- Dame Judi Dench

All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree. -- Albert Einstein

"If you look closely at a tree you'll notice it's knots and dead branches, just like our bodies. What we learn is that beauty and imperfection go together wonderfully. -- Matthew Fox

Life without love is like a tree without blossoms or fruit.
-- Khalil Gibran

Instead of trying to be responsible for all the problems in the world, we should take on what we love and care about. Then we honor both our inner world and the outer world at the same time. There’s no separation between the two, and there is no hesitation, no self-doubt. This will help us develop great faith that others are taking care of their piece. People who don’t know the details about climate change may care deeply about the forests, the animals, and the children. It is very important that we share, not only our merit, but also the responsibilities. Somehow we have to relieve ourselves of the enormity, which is so debilitating. ~ Paul Hawken

I have come to terms with the future. From this day onward I will walk easy on the earth.
Plant trees. Kill no living things. Live in harmony with all creatures.
I will restore the earth where I am. Use no more of its resources than I need.
And listen, listen to what it is telling me.
-- M.J. Slim Hooey

We take trees for granted. We don't believe they are as much alive as we are. -- Ziggy Marley

"The cultivation of trees is the cultivation of the good, the beautiful, and the ennobling in man, and for one, I wish to see it become universal." ~ J. Sterling Morton, Founder of Arbor Day * "Each generation takes the earth as trustees. We ought to bequeath to posterity as many forests and orchards as we have exhausted and consumed." ~ J. Sterling Morton, Founder of Arbor Day

* "The battle we have fought, and are still fighting for the forests is a part of the eternal conflict between right and wrong, and we cannot expect to see the end of it ... So we must count on watching and striving for these trees, and should always be glad to find anything so surely good and noble to strive for." ~ John Muir Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountain is going home; that wildness is necessity; that mountain parks and reservations are useful not only as fountains of timber and irrigating rivers, but as fountains of life. ~ John Muir The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness. ~ John Muir

"...Unfortunately, MAN is in the woods, and waste and pure destruction are making rapid headway.
If the importance of forests were at all understood, even from an economic standpoint,
their preservation would call forth the most watchful attention of government."
~ John Muir

Federal policy over the past century has largely failed to promote an energy system based on safe, secure, economically affordable, and environmentally benign energy sources. The tax code, budget appropriations, and regulatory processes overwhelmingly have been used to subsidize dependence on fossil fuels and nuclear power. The result: increased sickness and premature deaths, depleted family budgets, acid rain destruction of lakes, forests, and crops, oil spill contamination, polluted rivers and loss of aquatic species and the long-term peril of climate change and radioactive waste dumps–not to mention a dependency on external energy supplies. ~ Ralph Nader

Sleeping in the Forest
I thought the earth remembered me,
she took me back so tenderly,
arranging her dark skirts,
her pockets full of lichens and seeds.
I slept as never before,
a stone on the riverbed,
nothing between me and the white fire of the stars but my thoughts,
and they floated light as moths among the branches of the perfect trees.
All night I heard the small kingdoms breathing around me,
the insects, and the birds who do their work in the darkness.
All night I rose and fell, as if in water, grappling with a luminous doom.
By morning I had vanished at least a dozen times into something better.

-- Mary Oliver

"We must protect the forests for our children, grandchildren and children yet to be born.
We must protect the forests for those who can't speak for themselves such as the birds, animals, fish and trees."
-- Qwatsinas (Hereditary Chief Edward Moody), Nuxalk Nation

"What may be possible for a minority of humankind, albeit at great cost, simply cannot work for the humankind. Our kind of progress depends on lacerating the Earth, on gouging out its riches, on stripping is life-sustaining skin of soil and forest, on poisoning its pure air, on defecating copiously in its pure water... the single most important indicator of environmental decline is the extent to which the damage done is reversible. The most heinous ecological crime of all is for any one generation so seriously to assault the web of life that the damage done is literally irreversible for every generation that follows."
~ Jonathon Porritt

 

"Fairness is an efficiency parameter if we look at the whole global civilization. It is not an efficient way of meeting human needs if one billion people starve while another billion have excess. It would be more efficient to distribute resources so that at least vital needs were met everywhere. Otherwise, for example, if kids are starving somewhere, dad goes out to slash and burn the rain forest to feed them -- and so would I if my kids were dying. And this kind of destruction is everyone's problem, because we live in the same ecosphere." -- Karl-Henrik Robert

* "A nation that destroys it's soils destroys itself. Forests are the lungs of our land, purifying the air and giving fresh strength to our people." ~ Franklin D. Roosevelt

"I feel most emphatically that we should not turn into shingles a tree which was old when the first Egyptian conqueror penetrated to the valley of the Euphrates." ~ Theodore Roosevelt If there is any one duty which more than another we owe it to our children and our children's children to perform at once, it is to save the forests of this country, for they constitute the first and most important element in the conservation of the natural resources of this country. -- Theodore Roosevelt

By means of trees, wildlife could be conserved, pollution decreased and the beauty of our landscapes enhanced. This is the way, or at least one of the ways, to spiritual, moral, and cultural regeneration. ~ E.F. Schumacher Our ordinary mind always tries to persuade us that we are nothing but acorns and that our greatest happiness will be to become bigger, fatter, shinier acorns; but that is of interest only to pigs. Our faith gives us knowledge of something better: that we can become oak trees. ~ E. F. Schumacher

All things are connected.All things share the same breath - the beast, the tree, the man... the air shares its spirit with all the life it supports. ~ Chief Seattle

Except during the nine months before he draws his first breath, no man manages his affairs as well as a tree does. -- George Bernard Shaw

A man doesn't plant a tree for himself. He plants it for posterity.
-- Alexander Smith

A hypocrite is the kind of politician who would cut down a redwood tree, then mount the stump and make a speech for conservation. -- Adlai Stevenson

See how nature - trees, flowers, grass - grows in silence; see the stars, the moon and the sun, how they move in silence... We need silence to be able to touch souls. -- Mother Teresa

It is remarkable how closely the history of the apple tree is connected with that of man. ~ Henry David Thoreau Every creature is better alive than dead, men and moose and pine trees, and he who understands it aright will rather preserve its life than destroy it. ~ Henry David Thoreau

"We are faced with having to learn again about interdependency and the need for rootedness after several centuries of having systematically—and proudly—dismantled our roots, ties, and traditions. We had grown so tall we thought we could afford to cut the roots that held us down, only to discover that the tallest trees need the most elaborate roots of all."
-- Paul L. Wachtel