Speaker 1: Hello everyone, and welcome to Talk Nerdy. Today is Monday,
Speaker 1: March tenth, twenty twenty five, and I'm the host of
Speaker 1: the show, Doctor Kara Santa Maria. I am just getting
Speaker 1: over COVID, so I'm a little bit sniffy. I apologize
Speaker 1: if you can hear it in my voice, that is why.
Speaker 1: But I'm feeling much much better. I'm finally testing negative.
Speaker 1: I have emerged into the world again after many, many
Speaker 1: days of being trapped inside of my house. So I
Speaker 1: am appreciative of that. I'm appreciative that I've gotten better,
Speaker 1: and I'm appreciative that my infection was not too bad
Speaker 1: due to the wonder of vaccines. Thank you science. Before
Speaker 1: we get into this week's episode, I do want to
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Speaker 1: top patrons include Anubadavaje, Daniel Lang, David J. E. Smith,
Speaker 1: Mary Neiva, Brian Holden, David Compton, Gabriel F. Harmio, Joe Wilkinson,
Speaker 1: Joseph Lemore, Pasquale, ge Latti, Rica Mahraj and Ulrika Hagman.
Speaker 1: Thank you all so so very much. All right, let's
Speaker 1: get into it. So this week I had the opportunity
Speaker 1: to speak with doctor Lauren E. Oakes. She's a conservation
Speaker 1: scientist and of course a science writer. She's held various
Speaker 1: appointments at Stanford University over many many years as a researcher,
Speaker 1: a lecturer, and an adjunct assistant professor in the Department
Speaker 1: of Earth System Science. Her previous book was called In
Speaker 1: Search of the Canary Tree, and she has a new
Speaker 1: book out called tree Keepers, The Race for a Forested Future. So,
Speaker 1: without any further ado here she is doctor Lauren eos
Speaker 1: Well Lauren, thank you so much for joining me today.
Speaker 2: It's a pleasure to be here. Thank you.
Speaker 1: So I am really excited to talk about your new book,
Speaker 1: Tree Keepers, the Race for a Forested Future. But as
Speaker 1: always on talk nerdy Before we dive into the content
Speaker 1: of this book and some of the kind of I
Speaker 1: don't know, debunking some mythology and things like that, I
Speaker 1: would love to learn a little bit more about you
Speaker 1: and how you came to write this book. So, you know,
Speaker 1: reading different bios of you on the internet, sometimes you're
Speaker 1: sort of referred to as a conservation scientist. Sometimes you're
Speaker 1: referred to as an ecologists. Like what did you study
Speaker 1: in school?
Speaker 2: What are you? Yeah? Yeah, the language kind of morphs,
Speaker 2: you know. But my training I was in the interdisciplinary
Speaker 2: Environmental science program at Stanford. I received my PhD there.
Speaker 1: Well, that makes sense. Then it was interdisciplinary, so of course.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but we did have what they call fields of depth,
Speaker 2: so mine where ecology and land change science, mainly in
Speaker 2: forest ecology, looking at how forests are impacted by climate change,
Speaker 2: how forests respond, and species that regenerate in the wake
Speaker 2: of forest mortality. I can tell you a little bit
Speaker 2: about that, and then I have also done a lot
Speaker 2: of research and land change science, so looking at land use,
Speaker 2: land change, drivers of land use and land change. You know,
Speaker 2: that's really thinking about the relationship between people and how
Speaker 2: our landucio systems are managed.
Speaker 1: So interesting. I don't think I've ever heard that label
Speaker 1: before land change science. And so is it is it historical,
Speaker 1: is it future oriented or do you kind of look
Speaker 1: at both what has happened in the past to inform
Speaker 1: how to make decisions about the future.
Speaker 2: Well, land change scientists again draw from a number of disciplines,
Speaker 2: but are really looking at the drivers of land use change,
Speaker 2: and they may be focusing on biophysical changes. So a
Speaker 2: land change scientist could be a geographer who's working a
Speaker 2: lot with remotely remotely sensed data to look at Okay,
Speaker 2: here's point A or time period A, and this was
Speaker 2: what the landscape looked like. And here's time period B,
Speaker 2: and now it's forest was cleared or there's a new
Speaker 2: development here, or something is changed in this landscape. And
Speaker 2: then usually there's a level of research to look at,
Speaker 2: you know, what happened in that place, whether it's social
Speaker 2: science to assess, you know, what was happening in the
Speaker 2: communities or policy. Maybe there's a larger policy in the
Speaker 2: area that's helping drive some land use change. But yeah,
Speaker 2: it's inter disciplinary field and you know, has been around
Speaker 2: for a number of years.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and obviously that training and that interest area heavily
Speaker 1: informs your writing, and especially this book that we're going
Speaker 1: to focus on a little bit more. Not that we
Speaker 1: have to you know, focus on it the whole interview,
Speaker 1: but I'm curious just so that we do you have
Speaker 1: like operational definitions early on And this is my ignorance
Speaker 1: here when as a land change scientist, when you talk
Speaker 1: about you know, transformation of the landscape, do you make
Speaker 1: a differentiation between like intentional impacts and unintentional impacts.
Speaker 2: Yeah, my focus has largely been in forest ecosystems, as
Speaker 2: you know, but our species relationships are constantly evolving and
Speaker 2: forests are always changing. So there are you know, changes
Speaker 2: in flux that may be naturally occurring. But then there
Speaker 2: are the drivers you know, or of our human footprint
Speaker 2: and in you know, recent years, this age of anthroposceine,
Speaker 2: those changes may be contributed to maybe attributed to climate change,
Speaker 2: or they may be attributed to you know, direct land conversion.
Speaker 2: When you get a development in an area or a
Speaker 2: clearing of a forest. A lot of people in my
Speaker 2: lab group when I was at Stanford were focusing on,
Speaker 2: you know, kind of the hot spots of deforestation, looking
Speaker 2: at a lot of forest degradation in the Amazon in Kungo,
Speaker 2: trying to figure out what are effective ways to manage
Speaker 2: those lands better. And so you opened with the question
Speaker 2: of am I a conservation scientist, you know, and really
Speaker 2: a conservation scientist has the goal of, you know, sustaining
Speaker 2: a functioning natural world. And so yes, I would say,
Speaker 2: you know, I am a conservation scientist as well. You know,
Speaker 2: my interest is you know, as a researcher and really
Speaker 2: more as a practitioner. I've worked a lot with local
Speaker 2: organizations that are experiencing changes in their area as a
Speaker 2: result of climate change or as a result of development,
Speaker 2: and they're thinking about, you know, how do we manage
Speaker 2: these systems better?
Speaker 1: Yeah, And that word management, I think is important for
Speaker 1: maybe folks who are listening to this conversation who haven't
Speaker 1: thought about what we're about to dive into as deeply,
Speaker 1: Like I'm going to have a lot of very naive
Speaker 1: questions here, because even though it's something that I have
Speaker 1: thought about it, and I have interviewed people about it,
Speaker 1: and I have worked with individuals on topics in these areas.
Speaker 1: It's not an area where I have even a modicum
Speaker 1: of expertise, and I'm curious, you know, just to kind
Speaker 1: of push maybe not the point, but the question a
Speaker 1: little deeper. One thing that I'm always fascinated by is
Speaker 1: how we label things, how we categorize things, sort of
Speaker 1: the constructs that feel relevant to us. And we often think,
Speaker 1: because it is the anthropathy and right, everything we do
Speaker 1: has a consequence, and it's a large consequence, because human
Speaker 1: beings are massive drivers of change on this planet. But
Speaker 1: at the same time, there is often a management component
Speaker 1: to the work that we do and intentionality. If we
Speaker 1: choose to do this, we're hoping that these things will
Speaker 1: follow versus, Oh, I'm just doing what I do and oops, oops,
Speaker 1: look what happened as a result of that. And so
Speaker 1: I'm curious, sort of land management scientists, or even with
Speaker 1: you in your writing, do you make firm distinctions between
Speaker 1: those things or is that a very fuzzy line.
Speaker 2: Between the intention It sounds like the intentionality, Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm doing this and I'm doing it on purpose.
Speaker 2: I would say in most cases, the and the breadth
Speaker 2: of projects I've worked on now in you know, well
Speaker 2: three continents, really a lot in Latin America, North America,
Speaker 2: I've spent some time in Indonesia. There is an external
Speaker 2: driver of change, be that climate change, be that a
Speaker 2: company coming in and the citing you know, purchasing land
Speaker 2: that they want to convert for ag purposes. You know,
Speaker 2: those are just a couple examples, and then the local
Speaker 2: community or the local people there are impacted in some
Speaker 2: way and want something different. There's an intention from you know,
Speaker 2: the outside developer, but that may be a different intention
Speaker 2: than what a community wants or needs, you know, in response.
Speaker 2: But I also think more and more and we can
Speaker 2: talk about it as we get into you know, tree
Speaker 2: keeping and tree keepers. We need those parties coming together,
Speaker 2: and parties are coming together to think about, you know,
Speaker 2: how do we use land and productive ways while also
Speaker 2: keeping trees, and how do we make the tree keeping
Speaker 2: you know, financially viable. And then it's not you know
Speaker 2: that then it's like a collective intention. Everybody's after the
Speaker 2: same goal.
Speaker 1: Right, right, And that's probably where a lot of the
Speaker 1: difficulties come in. Is when there are multiple sort of
Speaker 1: parties involved, and sometimes those parties aren't even people, right,
Speaker 1: they're the people who are speaking for shall we say,
Speaker 1: the animals or the you know, the other other forms
Speaker 1: of the local ecology. So there are multiple parties involved,
Speaker 1: and sometimes their goals are not aligned, and sometimes they're
Speaker 1: in direct kind of opposition to one another, and that's
Speaker 1: probably where things start to get a bit complicated.
Speaker 2: Definitely.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And and so I'm going to put a final
Speaker 1: kind of button on this point before we get into
Speaker 1: the specifics of tree keepers and of trees especially. I
Speaker 1: was asking about these sort of intentional consequences versus these
Speaker 1: unintentional consequences, but very often because the globe is a
Speaker 1: closed system, I don't even know how to put words
Speaker 1: into this, probably because it's early, probably because I have
Speaker 1: like COVID brain fog right now. But like you mentioned,
Speaker 1: how like climate change is always going to have an
Speaker 1: impact right on a local ecological system. And then maybe, okay,
Speaker 1: an intentional forest clear Let's say somebody's like mining for
Speaker 1: gold and they're clearing a portion of the forest. We
Speaker 1: see this all the time in the Amazon, and then
Speaker 1: obviously they're going to be intentional consequences of that. But
Speaker 1: ultimately that very clearing of that forest for the gold
Speaker 1: mining is also contributing to climate change, which is then
Speaker 1: driving another layer of impact. Right, So a lot of
Speaker 1: times these things end up kind of building on themselves,
Speaker 1: don't they for sure?
Speaker 2: And in land change scientists and people are doing this research.
Speaker 2: We talk a lot about feedback, so you know, it's
Speaker 2: just a constant cycle of what we are doing as
Speaker 2: people to the environment, what's the environment, how the environment
Speaker 2: then responds as well as you know, these external forces
Speaker 2: beyond you know, which which maybe climate change in others.
Speaker 1: Very often when I speak with science writers on the show,
Speaker 1: which I would say make up a pretty large component
Speaker 1: of the individuals that I interview on Talk Nerdy, are
Speaker 1: scientists slash science writers or some kind of combination of
Speaker 1: the two. I'm I'm always curious how you decided to
Speaker 1: kind of focus on this specific project. For many people,
Speaker 1: it's a culmination of like years of their research interests. Yes, okay,
Speaker 1: but what I guess I'm curious a big question, which
Speaker 1: is what were you hoping when you sat down to say, Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm going to work on this book. What kind of
Speaker 1: questions were you trying to answer or stories were you
Speaker 1: trying to tell? And then by the end of it,
Speaker 1: did you end up where you started or did it
Speaker 1: become a totally different project than you intended?
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, starting with all the big questions, right,
Speaker 2: we should get back to we should get back to
Speaker 2: why I write. You know, it's like an interesting mix too,
Speaker 2: when you're a scientist and a writer. Yeah, I think
Speaker 2: I think at the big picture, you know, I love storytelling.
Speaker 2: I feel like there's a lot of research and you know,
Speaker 2: positive action out there that doesn't get you know, media coverage.
Speaker 2: And I really enjoy the process of taking what I
Speaker 2: consider to be problem solving, problem solving research or people
Speaker 2: doing really innovative things in communities to help the environment
Speaker 2: and therefore help themselves, and telling about that work. So
Speaker 2: in my career has been kind of a mix of
Speaker 2: going back and forth between them doing research, applied research,
Speaker 2: working with communities on land, these changes that they're experiencing,
Speaker 2: how do we manage those systems better? And then also
Speaker 2: the writing part. So I kind of go in and out.
Speaker 2: And I obviously just spent a couple of years with
Speaker 2: my head down. But why did I go into hoping. Well,
Speaker 2: I'll tell you a little bit of the origins how
Speaker 2: I got interested in.
Speaker 1: Yes, please, yeah, yeah, there's kind of what I would asking.
Speaker 1: In the least direct way possible.
Speaker 2: I touched upon forest mortality. So my PhD focused on
Speaker 2: a tree species, yellow seater kellichopsist new contensus. It's a
Speaker 2: magnificent species in the Pacific Northwest and in parts of Alaska.
Speaker 2: It's dying because of climate change. And I was looking
Speaker 2: at how those forest communities, how the other species in
Speaker 2: that ecosystem respond after the death of this tree, and
Speaker 2: also thinking about and researching, doing a lot of social
Speaker 2: science research, interviewing people in communities. How are they responding
Speaker 2: to the loss of this tree, Are they managing their
Speaker 2: forests any differently, how are they impacted, and how are
Speaker 2: their lives affected. It sounds like a pretty depressing topic,
Speaker 2: but I actually found it quite hopeful, which is actually
Speaker 2: why so my first book cul was called In Search
Speaker 2: of the Canary Tree and came out of this research.
Speaker 2: And you know, I had gone to Alaska at the
Speaker 2: time to do this work because I thought of it
Speaker 2: as like the front lines of climate change, you know.
Speaker 2: Rewind you know, two thousand and nine to twenty ten,
Speaker 2: twenty eleven. When I was doing this research, you know,
Speaker 2: we weren't experiencing the amount of wildfires and other impacts
Speaker 2: that we're experiencing in the West now, but they were
Speaker 2: certainly predicted. And you know, warming in the northern latitudes
Speaker 2: were you know twice, if not three times the global averages.
Speaker 2: So from my philosophical and scientific perspective, you know, Alaska
Speaker 2: and the northern latitudes were kind of a looking glass
Speaker 2: into the future. But coming out of that research, you know,
Speaker 2: both the work that I was doing for my PhD
Speaker 2: and writing in Search of the Canary Tree, you know,
Speaker 2: I had been thinking so much about loss and also
Speaker 2: seeing communities come together to adapt, seeing species respond in
Speaker 2: positive ways other species, seeing changing but flourishing forests. I
Speaker 2: was thinking about regrowth and you know, where are there
Speaker 2: places in the world where that have experienced, you know,
Speaker 2: a real decline in forest cover, but then something turned around.
Speaker 2: Now they're increasing. This was you know, twenty eighteen, twenty nineteen.
Speaker 2: There were countries on my radar at the time known
Speaker 2: for what's called a forest transition, going from loss to forrest,
Speaker 2: gain Bhutan, Chile, Costa Rica, Vietnam. Those were a few
Speaker 2: that had my attension. But then I was also thinking about,
Speaker 2: well could this happen in a global scale like here,
Speaker 2: you know, as both a scientist studying land use change,
Speaker 2: you know, well read person reading about our environmental narratives,
Speaker 2: really reading our environmental narratives across the world as a
Speaker 2: story of loss. But I wanted the optimistic story of
Speaker 2: you know, could we turn it around? What would turn
Speaker 2: it around around? That same time, in twenty nineteen, a
Speaker 2: study came out in the journal Science. It was led
Speaker 2: by a scientist at Eth Zurich named Jactually he was
Speaker 2: a senior author, Tom Crowther, and another scientist, John Franzwambastam,
Speaker 2: who was the lead, and they were looking at it
Speaker 2: was called the Global Tree Restoration Potential, and they were
Speaker 2: essentially looking at how much more forest could the world support,
Speaker 2: and they came up with about a trillion trees it
Speaker 2: was one point two And then what they also did
Speaker 2: was estimated the amount of carbon those trees could store.
Speaker 2: It hit the media big. I mean, you know, everyone
Speaker 2: who's a scientist would love to get in science, the
Speaker 2: journal Science, and not all those studies, you know, get
Speaker 2: a lot of media and this one had about you know,
Speaker 2: seven hundred media articles published soon after.
Speaker 1: So it was kind of like, plant all these trees
Speaker 1: and we'll save our planet.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and part of it was Tom Crowther has since said,
Speaker 2: you know, I made a mistake in the communications, like
Speaker 2: I didn't really think that if I just you know,
Speaker 2: if I said planting, everyone would think if I said restoration,
Speaker 2: everyone would only think planting. You know. In truth, the
Speaker 2: work of one point two trillion trees or one trillion
Speaker 2: trees is about tree keeping and the places that we
Speaker 2: have trees now is about growing the forests out that
Speaker 2: aren't mature yet, and yes, about you know, planting, but
Speaker 2: planting is only a part of that. And it also
Speaker 2: took off because it seemed, you know, well, first of all,
Speaker 2: every not every, but mostly everybody really likes trees. You know,
Speaker 2: I feel like we have a long affinity for trees
Speaker 2: being in and around them. It's not necessarily a controversial issue.
Speaker 2: And so you had oil and gas companies and like
Speaker 2: total standing up saying you know, here's the commitment we're
Speaker 2: going to make to forests, to trees. The problem and
Speaker 2: where it became a bit dangerous, as some scientists said,
Speaker 2: or quoted was that some people thought it would alleviate
Speaker 2: the need to reduce fossil fuels, and that is not true.
Speaker 2: Like the first and foremost thing we need to do
Speaker 2: if you're addressing climate change is reduce their fossil fuel consumption.
Speaker 2: And then yes, trees, you know, have a role to
Speaker 2: play for carbon sequestration, but of course there are other
Speaker 2: gases that are also contributing. So so as we dig deeper,
Speaker 2: you can see it's quite complicated. But I but I
Speaker 2: wanted to Basically, there were a lot of media headlines
Speaker 2: around that time. You know, you can still do it
Speaker 2: if you google like tree planting and climate and you'll
Speaker 2: see headlines, you know, saying this is an incredible climate solution,
Speaker 2: some saying it won't work. You know, tree plantings failed,
Speaker 2: and you know they're all seven hundred to fifteen hundred
Speaker 2: word articles. I wanted to take a deep dive into
Speaker 2: the complexities and into the topic of you know, to
Speaker 2: really what extent can tries save us and how? And
Speaker 2: that was the motivation for this project. So I was
Speaker 2: interested in the answer to that question. But I was
Speaker 2: also really interested in the journey, like what would I
Speaker 2: learn along the way by trying to answer that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think that's obviously. I mean, you know
Speaker 1: it better than most. That's so important when we're talking
Speaker 1: about good quality science writing is we have to have
Speaker 1: that journey. We have to hear that story, because without
Speaker 1: the story, what we're hearing are a bunch of facts
Speaker 1: and figures, and it's very.
Speaker 2: Easy to sort of so overwhelming.
Speaker 1: Yeah, forget them, or yeah, we get overwhelmed by them,
Speaker 1: We forget you use context, Yeah, exactly, it's like, oh wait,
Speaker 1: more or less I can't remember, right, But once we
Speaker 1: anchor it into narrative, it starts to become meaningful to us.
Speaker 1: And so I guess like that is the big question here, right,
Speaker 1: is it's not so simple as we often think it
Speaker 1: is when we are scrolling and we just read a
Speaker 1: media headline. It's not just plant more trees and everything's
Speaker 1: going to be fine, or you know, maintain the force
Speaker 1: that we already have and everything's going to be fine,
Speaker 1: because it's more complicated than that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and everybody likes black and white, you know, as
Speaker 2: Tom Crowther said to me at one point, like there
Speaker 2: were all these sexy headlines. You know, plant trees, don't
Speaker 2: plant trees like how do you make a sexy headline
Speaker 2: out of the gray between? You know, it's difficult. I
Speaker 2: guess I made a book instead.
Speaker 1: And it's interesting that you chose to title. And I
Speaker 1: know that we don't always the titles of our books
Speaker 1: are not always our first choice. They're not always our choice.
Speaker 1: But it's interesting that ultimately, let's say we landed on
Speaker 1: this title, which does seem to emphasize the keeping of
Speaker 1: the trees over the planting of the trees.
Speaker 2: Yes, and that it points to both the need to
Speaker 2: keep the forests that we have currently standing, and also
Speaker 2: you know, to invest in and figure out how to
Speaker 2: keep the ones we're planting. You know, it's an active,
Speaker 2: long term stewardship if you want to get the benefits
Speaker 2: that a tree can provide. And I'm not just talking
Speaker 2: about carbon. We should chat about all the other benefits
Speaker 2: that trees provide. But you know that doesn't come in
Speaker 2: the first the initial act. Sure, there are some benefits
Speaker 2: that come short term, and also, you know, evidence showing
Speaker 2: they have an effect on people engaged in the restorative work.
Speaker 2: You know, there's an active healing or probably a positive
Speaker 2: effect on our mental state from doing that work. Right
Speaker 2: in the short term or that day you spent tree planting.
Speaker 2: But really, if you want the benefits for those trees,
Speaker 2: you've got to keep them into the future. And that
Speaker 2: is the great challenge. I did keep. I did pick
Speaker 2: the title, but it took a long time.
Speaker 1: Oh nice, nice, nice, nice, I love it.
Speaker 2: It's not I think there was some like youth mystery
Speaker 2: novel or something that came out right before that had
Speaker 2: the name tree Keepers and my Heart's than to the floor,
Speaker 2: and I wrote those.
Speaker 1: Different genre, a different genre, different part of the bookstore, yeah,
Speaker 1: different subheading, yeah, for sure. So so I think that
Speaker 1: obviously points to an important next question, which is, let's
Speaker 1: get into it right, let's talk a little bit about
Speaker 1: some of the benefits that trees confer, because I think,
Speaker 1: you know, if you were to ask me straight up,
Speaker 1: I would say some of the things that you mentioned, Okay,
Speaker 1: sequester carbon large scale maybe respiration right, like and in
Speaker 1: that that the sequestration of carbon shade, like you know,
Speaker 1: I think about urban planning, so like it makes it
Speaker 1: literally colder underneath where the trees are than places that
Speaker 1: are just concrete. Like that's important, but like what else,
Speaker 1: there's probably a bunch of stuff in the soil that
Speaker 1: the trees are like managing for there's probably a lot
Speaker 1: that I don't know is going on with these trees.
Speaker 2: For sure, And I think, you know, there's some interesting
Speaker 2: studies coming out now even looking at the effects of
Speaker 2: trees and you know, the percentage of tree cover or
Speaker 2: forest cover in proximity to agricultural lands like or integrated
Speaker 2: with that those trees can play a really critical role
Speaker 2: in restoring the soils underneath, you know. So when you
Speaker 2: hear these arguments of is it only ag or is
Speaker 2: it only forest, and you know, actually the ag needs
Speaker 2: the forest. You know, if we cleared all our forests
Speaker 2: and just tried to make farmland everywhere, like, it's not
Speaker 2: going to work for a lot of reasons.
Speaker 1: And yeah, why not mix them, right, why not have
Speaker 1: dual use?
Speaker 2: Yeah, and there's you know, studies showing that in some places,
Speaker 2: in many places you you actually see an increase in
Speaker 2: productivity because of those restorative properties that the trees serve
Speaker 2: through their you know, root structures, through the communities fungal
Speaker 2: and microizi they have underneath and so on. But actually
Speaker 2: I think you know, for me, you mentioned it a
Speaker 2: little bit, but the urban setting. You know, as an
Speaker 2: ecologist who spend a lot of time in remote forests researching,
Speaker 2: this chapter on urban forestry was actually, you know, one
Speaker 2: of the most eye opening to me because you know,
Speaker 2: these are the places where more people, you know, on
Speaker 2: a per capita basis come in contact with trees on
Speaker 2: a daily basis than these you know, remote, relatively pristine,
Speaker 2: intact forests that we've talked about, and so yeah, you've
Speaker 2: an enormous cooling effect. There's some studies coming out of
Speaker 2: Portland showing neighborhood with a well canopied neighborhood as you
Speaker 2: might call it, compared to a neighborhood without as many
Speaker 2: trees or without a good tree cover, can be twenty
Speaker 2: degrees cooler in the summer. Now, think about you know,
Speaker 2: the effects for the community members there, if you have
Speaker 2: elderly community members, economic effects if you're turning on fans
Speaker 2: or air conditioners to to cool.
Speaker 1: Yeah, kids playing outside, like just the health and wellness
Speaker 1: of the children, Yeah, that's huge.
Speaker 2: There have been studies showing correlation, so not causation, but
Speaker 2: still correlation. Some interesting findings on tree cover and test
Speaker 2: scores of kids in schools that have more tree cover
Speaker 2: that one of the most seminal studies that kind of
Speaker 2: kicked off some of this research on how trees affect
Speaker 2: our psychology and mental processing or studies by a psychologist
Speaker 2: Roger Erlick in the nineteen eighties, and he found that
Speaker 2: simply having a view of nature can accelerate accelerate healing
Speaker 2: and recovery time for hospital patients. And now there's you know,
Speaker 2: I talked with researchers this was actually really fascinating study
Speaker 2: going out and trying to look at how the terpenes
Speaker 2: that you breathe in. So if you're in a forest,
Speaker 2: you can smell these, you know, I if you find
Speaker 2: yourself walking in a yeah, just a relatively intact forest,
Speaker 2: secondary primary, there's a smell. I find it does have
Speaker 2: a calming effect, you know. And there are practices what
Speaker 2: we call forest bathing and other cultures. And now there's
Speaker 2: you know, Western science is trying to understand like does
Speaker 2: that smell or do those terpenes, those compounds that are
Speaker 2: in the air have a calming effect on our brains. Anyways,
Speaker 2: we could talk for a long time about benefits. There
Speaker 2: are a lot of them also, you know, in communities,
Speaker 2: in urban settings, there have been some studies showing that
Speaker 2: they are associated with reduced crime. You think about it
Speaker 2: as more people are out in the neighborhood, you want
Speaker 2: to go take a walk through that green space. There
Speaker 2: are more eyes out in the community than there would
Speaker 2: be without it.
Speaker 1: And it is important that you mentioned too that, like
Speaker 1: some correlation does not necessarily mean causation, because we do
Speaker 1: see this complicated interplay between socioeconomic status, between povery and
Speaker 1: try cut right that in the poorest neighborhoods we see
Speaker 1: the most concrete and in the most affluent neighborhoods we
Speaker 1: see the most tree cover, and so you know, but
Speaker 1: that doesn't necessarily mean that working towards a let's say,
Speaker 1: in some cases it might be an dependent variable working
Speaker 1: towards changing the dependent variable may have a sort of
Speaker 1: feedback loop on the independent variabile like you never know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the inequities are you know, really very much overlaid.
Speaker 2: And there's been some interesting work in the US and
Speaker 2: in Europe to assess, you know, our equitable or inequitable
Speaker 2: distribution of trees. If you go to Seattle, where I
Speaker 2: spend some time, you know, I think averages around twenty
Speaker 2: three or twenty four percent tree cover. Wow, that sounds great.
Speaker 2: That's pretty good. There are some really magnificent shaded streets
Speaker 2: you can walk down with a beautiful canopy above you.
Speaker 2: But it's not that way everywhere, and there are certainly
Speaker 2: pockets with far less than that. And then you're right,
Speaker 2: they are overlaid with other challenges and they tend to
Speaker 2: be in poorer areas.
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Speaker 1: the chef. And even here, like I think about Los
Speaker 1: Angeles where we're like such an interesting urban area because
Speaker 1: we're massive compared to how most urban areas are very
Speaker 1: like condensed into a small space. We're very sprawling, right
Speaker 1: and very spread out here, and so you have every
Speaker 1: different type of neighborhood. And in Los Angeles a lot
Speaker 1: of people do live in houses. We have a lot
Speaker 1: of apartment living as well, but kind of a higher
Speaker 1: than I think average for an urban area or a
Speaker 1: large urban center number of single family homes with you know,
Speaker 1: land around them and we have all these initiatives, and
Speaker 1: so obviously I'm jumping around a little bit, but I
Speaker 1: see all these initiatives here in LA, from you know,
Speaker 1: our local museum to local nonprofit organizations like just giving
Speaker 1: trees away, especially in lower income areas, saying like here's
Speaker 1: some trees. Just you want a tree, here's a tree
Speaker 1: you want to plant in your yard, take it for free,
Speaker 1: take care of this tree. We want more trees out there,
Speaker 1: and we can't, like we don't have the budget or
Speaker 1: the funding or for whatever reason from a municipal perspective,
Speaker 1: we're not always prioritizing city planning here, right, So like
Speaker 1: you want to do it individually, you've got the option
Speaker 1: as well. And it makes me wonder, like, is is
Speaker 1: it about an approach at all levels? Do we want
Speaker 1: it like to be kind of haphazard and also at
Speaker 1: a sort of city or state level planning?
Speaker 2: Mm hmmm, well I love these questions question. No, but
Speaker 2: it felt important and almost more tangible to look at
Speaker 2: them in the urban context. But then they parallel what
Speaker 2: you have, what you've and you know, more remote ecosystems
Speaker 2: is maybe someone comes in and gives you these trees
Speaker 2: or plants these trees from an outside but again, how
Speaker 2: are they sustained into the future In urban cities or sorry,
Speaker 2: urban areas. A lot of times you're getting funding, as
Speaker 2: you mentioned, through various mechanisms for that planting, and then
Speaker 2: the question of longer term maintenance. You know, sometimes yes,
Speaker 2: cities have those budgets, but a lot of times it don't,
Speaker 2: and so they'll come back, they'll look for a year
Speaker 2: or two to get established. But then the longer term
Speaker 2: maintenance of that tree falls on the adjacent landowner. So
Speaker 2: if you're a busy person in a community and you've
Speaker 2: got a lot of the working three jobs, like you know,
Speaker 2: who knows what all the scenarios, situation, what your situation is,
Speaker 2: but you know, unless you have the time and resources
Speaker 2: to care for that tree longer term, that's a challenge,
Speaker 2: you know, and that adds a challenge. I loved what
Speaker 2: someone said to me in Tacoma, where I spent some time.
Speaker 2: It's one of the least treed cities in the Evergreen State.
Speaker 2: His question was, what if trees in cities were like
Speaker 2: street lamps. You know, if you think of a street
Speaker 2: lamp as an essential or a streetlight, sorry, a street
Speaker 2: light as a well. Both of them would be essential
Speaker 2: to you know, the urban community. They are stopping traffic,
Speaker 2: they are providing light in your community, and when they break,
Speaker 2: you know, there's a budget and there's someone who's going
Speaker 2: to go out and fix them. What if we saw trees,
Speaker 2: you know, the same way in urban communities. Unfortunately, not
Speaker 2: everybody does, and we don't have the same funding mechanisms
Speaker 2: in place, so it is a bit haphazard in the
Speaker 2: sense of, you know, the funding comes from lots of
Speaker 2: different sources.
Speaker 1: Is that a function of just like pure ignorance. Do
Speaker 1: you think that there's an assumption that because it's you know, green,
Speaker 1: and because it's natural and it's just going to take
Speaker 1: care of itself, like nature will just make it okay,
Speaker 1: and we don't have to do any maintenance, We don't
Speaker 1: have to do any management.
Speaker 2: No. I think it's just the reality of tree keeping
Speaker 2: in any kind of text needs to be economically viable.
Speaker 2: I don't know. When I was in college, I studied
Speaker 2: environmental studies at Brown. At that time, there was a
Speaker 2: paper presented. I can remember it. It's probably my sophomore year.
Speaker 2: Costanza was the author, and it was one of the
Speaker 2: first great evaluations of nature services ecosystem services. It was
Speaker 2: this idea of like could we break nature into all
Speaker 2: these little components? And they did and then say what
Speaker 2: services they provide to people and who are functioning, you know,
Speaker 2: on earth, and then put an economic value on it.
Speaker 2: And I remember thinking, well, this seems crazy to me.
Speaker 2: Don't people just want to protect nature? Like that was
Speaker 2: my you know, idealistic self at twenty like it's wonderful.
Speaker 2: Why don't we all want it? Why can't we all
Speaker 2: keep why can't we keep it all? But in reality,
Speaker 2: when you have economic pressures for land, people need a
Speaker 2: productive use. You know, if your option is to clear
Speaker 2: the land and build a or B or you know,
Speaker 2: fharm X or y, the alternative to keeping those trees
Speaker 2: needs to have a financial incentive for people, you know.
Speaker 2: And so while I thought at the time that was
Speaker 2: crazy and also could we ever implement that, you know,
Speaker 2: now twenty years later, countries are valuing their nature services
Speaker 2: as a means of building it into the economic system.
Speaker 2: And you know, we have all different mechanisms now for
Speaker 2: what we call payments for ecosystem services. Maybe you're paying
Speaker 2: someone to do something differently to their water to protect it.
Speaker 2: Maybe you're paying someone to keep those trees for the
Speaker 2: carbon they will sequester in the next twenty thirty, thirty
Speaker 2: five fifty years. So what I thought of was crazy.
Speaker 2: Now I view is, as you know, essential, because protecting
Speaker 2: nature or keeping a functioning natural world has largely been
Speaker 2: like a external to where you can system their externalities.
Speaker 2: Those impacts are all externalities.
Speaker 1: I think about some of the individuals that I've spoken
Speaker 1: with on the show before and in my personal life
Speaker 1: before who work in wildlife management, especially in some African countries,
Speaker 1: and the sort of awareness that I had when I
Speaker 1: visited some of these countries that the rhetoric that we
Speaker 1: often hear in the West, which is that there's just
Speaker 1: these like big wild spaces and don't get me wrong,
Speaker 1: they're stunning spaces and they feel very wild, and they
Speaker 1: are very wild in many aspects. But the animals in
Speaker 1: these like large preserves in much of Africa, are named,
Speaker 1: they're tagged, they are fully managed, right, They're watched, like
Speaker 1: we know who these lions are, we know who these
Speaker 1: you know, elephants are there, and there's decision making about
Speaker 1: culling and about relocation, and you know about even something
Speaker 1: as scary to us in the West as an idea
Speaker 1: like trophy hunting is actually in an intentionally managed effort
Speaker 1: in a lot of these places to protect the animals
Speaker 1: and to raise money, and a lot of people just
Speaker 1: don't recognize that. So that brings me to this kind
Speaker 1: of parallel question, which is that the rhetoric that you
Speaker 1: often hear about like rewilding, like well, why don't we
Speaker 1: just kind of let it go back to itself? You know,
Speaker 1: And it's like, but what what I'm hearing from you
Speaker 1: is this idea that like there has to always be
Speaker 1: active management. Now, sometimes that active management is more hands
Speaker 1: on versus more hands off. But you can't just walk
Speaker 1: away and say, okay, there, that area is going to
Speaker 1: take care of itself, because even if we're actively not
Speaker 1: doing anything there, our activities as a human species have
Speaker 1: affected it.
Speaker 2: There's no Christine, there's nothing we can just you know,
Speaker 2: I used to call it fortress conservation, where this idea
Speaker 2: that you could set up a national park and or
Speaker 2: you know, set line, you know, put lines on the
Speaker 2: earth as this protected area and it would stay stagnant
Speaker 2: and b forever. And that's certainly not true.
Speaker 1: But everybody thinks it is, I feel like such a
Speaker 1: crime and misconception, right.
Speaker 2: Even our ideas of you know, I think a lot
Speaker 2: of ideas of some of the most again intact forests
Speaker 2: like Congo and Amazon. Like if you think of we
Speaker 2: go to the heart of the Amazon, nobody's there. Well, actually, yes,
Speaker 2: there are people there, and there are indigenous people there,
Speaker 2: and they're living more harmoniously with nature than we do elsewhere.
Speaker 2: We people living elsewhere can certainly learn from communities that
Speaker 2: are managing their lands far more sustainably. Like our relationship
Speaker 2: is out of balance.
Speaker 1: And they are managing them right, Like these indigenous groups
Speaker 1: are still actively managing their land. Yeah, they're not just
Speaker 1: turning their backs.
Speaker 2: I was also going to point to natural regeneration that
Speaker 2: you know, we've talked a lot about planting, talked a
Speaker 2: lot about doing and this is the idea of active
Speaker 2: restoring and active management. But a lot of times in
Speaker 2: land that have been used for cattle grazing, for example,
Speaker 2: simply changing the land use, removing those cattle no longer
Speaker 2: raising cattle on that land can help recovery. If there's
Speaker 2: a seed bed in that forest, so there's a on
Speaker 2: those lands, you know, if there's a seed bed from
Speaker 2: the forest that was there still in those lands or
Speaker 2: in adjacent lands. I visited a project in Panama. This
Speaker 2: was on the Azuero Peninsula. It was towards the end
Speaker 2: of my research and reporting. It was really incredible effort
Speaker 2: bringing together local landowners and farmers. They had been cattle
Speaker 2: ranching in the area for a long time. The lands
Speaker 2: are degraded, the productivity has gone down, and also as
Speaker 2: a result of climate change, the dry season is much
Speaker 2: longer now. So when you think of all these cattle
Speaker 2: needing to eat their green grass, like they're not getting
Speaker 2: that because of the hot dry season. The cattle that
Speaker 2: I saw in the region where you know, starving, really
Speaker 2: skinny cattle and not thinking about here they're getting a
Speaker 2: lot of money for the meat. So people in that
Speaker 2: area wanted and needed to transition their land use to
Speaker 2: something else, you know, and growing forests could help, you know,
Speaker 2: restore biodiversity in the area, could help with ecotourism, could
Speaker 2: help sequester more carbon and anyhow, this project had been
Speaker 2: carbon certified and is supported by Microsoft. But the point
Speaker 2: that I wanted to make was they were doing and
Speaker 2: still are doing a lot of planting and you know,
Speaker 2: I didn't write about this at the time, because they
Speaker 2: keep sending me updates on how things are going. And
Speaker 2: now they're also saying, you know, just the act of
Speaker 2: getting all these landowners to stop the cattle farming is
Speaker 2: also helping the regeneration happen. Like the trees we planted
Speaker 2: are doing well, and then there's a whole other generation
Speaker 2: that we didn't even expect because you know, they're coming
Speaker 2: back from the seabed. So that is an act of
Speaker 2: you know, in some ways letting the wild return, but
Speaker 2: facilitating it, you know, through changing the land use, through
Speaker 2: some planting, yes, but largely through removal of those cattle
Speaker 2: that we're you know, stamping down and grazing on the
Speaker 2: land all the time.
Speaker 1: And that, of course, I think raises a complicated, a fascinating,
Speaker 1: an important question about the way that all of these systems,
Speaker 1: in the most sort of stochastic way like interact with
Speaker 1: one another. So, okay, removing the cattle grazing, and then
Speaker 1: you see all of these positive sort of consequences coming in.
Speaker 1: And yet at the same time, we don't need cattle
Speaker 1: for food, but we kind of need cattle for food,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, Like we can make global
Speaker 1: decisions about meat consumption for you know, the health of
Speaker 1: the population, and we can affect change in a way
Speaker 1: that we can massively reduce, let's say, beef consumption and
Speaker 1: the amount of just like resources that raising beef requires.
Speaker 1: At the same time, I think about it kind of
Speaker 1: the way that I think about fossil fuels. Right, we
Speaker 1: definitely need to stop utilizing fossil fuels the way that
Speaker 1: we do, but we also can't tomorrow turn off that
Speaker 1: faucet or we would have like global economic collapse. And
Speaker 1: I think about a lot of these different systems in
Speaker 1: that way. We want to move towards something, and we
Speaker 1: want to do it way faster than we're doing it
Speaker 1: right now. But at the same time, there have to
Speaker 1: be economic alternatives, because people aren't going to stand for
Speaker 1: reforesting ag land if that's their only source of being
Speaker 1: able to feed themselves.
Speaker 2: Explaining that latter part a little more. People aren't going.
Speaker 1: Well, that's the question, right, And that's why I think
Speaker 1: we have so much global pushback. Is in certain areas
Speaker 1: there is this idea I don't know if an idea
Speaker 1: is the right word, but there is a deep belief
Speaker 1: that the reason we're doing things the way we're doing
Speaker 1: them right now is because this is what we need.
Speaker 1: Right we have X number of people on the planet,
Speaker 1: we have to feed them. We have x amount of
Speaker 1: arable land. How do we utilize this land? And it's
Speaker 1: interesting because I think what you're doing in this book
Speaker 1: is you're looking at that very data and you're saying,
Speaker 1: it's not so simple as let's just turn every let's
Speaker 1: just plant trees everywhere in the world, and then we'll
Speaker 1: all be happy, right, But it's also not so simple
Speaker 1: as let's clear all the trees so that we can
Speaker 1: mine for gold and you know, let the cattle graze
Speaker 1: and grow sugar beets and alfalfa. There's a balance here
Speaker 1: because there are still eight billion people on the planet.
Speaker 2: And I don't you know, I definitely point towards what
Speaker 2: I believe, you know, and what others I interviewed one
Speaker 2: hundred and fifty people involved in restoration around the world.
Speaker 2: I think is you know most beneficial, which is we
Speaker 2: have colliding crises here, you know, from climate and from
Speaker 2: the climate crisis and biodiversity crisis. There's even health problems
Speaker 2: that come from you know, more forest degradations. So they're
Speaker 2: all intersecting, I mean, the pressures, and they will continue
Speaker 2: to be real. We need wood products. We've talked a
Speaker 2: lot about you know, food consumption, and certainly, yes, like
Speaker 2: you know, if we could change our behavior and not
Speaker 2: eat meat, that would protect a lot of forests and
Speaker 2: keep give a lot of people land to have forested places.
Speaker 2: But again, the communities living near those forests would then
Speaker 2: have the same question of how how do they gain
Speaker 2: you know, what's the economic value they gain by keeping
Speaker 2: the trees? How do they build a sustainable system? And
Speaker 2: there's all kinds of you know, efforts to support those communities,
Speaker 2: you know, non they're called non timber related project. There
Speaker 2: are products that come from forests. You know, this can
Speaker 2: be beekeeping and bringing honey from the forest and making
Speaker 2: that into something new. So I don't take a deep
Speaker 2: dive on the there have been great books out there,
Speaker 2: many books written on the consumption side, and certainly you know,
Speaker 2: whether we're talking about fossil fuels or beef, reducing both
Speaker 2: of them at a global scale. You could snap your
Speaker 2: fingers like what's all all the problems? You know?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: But moving forward I think of and that's again, you know,
Speaker 2: points to the title of the book. I think that
Speaker 2: treekeeping is something we can integrate into a lot of
Speaker 2: different land uses, and are integrated into agricultural production in
Speaker 2: some places too. We also need to think about and
Speaker 2: people are thinking about how land use changes when it
Speaker 2: becomes unproductive for cattle or when it comes unproductive for farming.
Speaker 2: Those communities are, you know, in need of doing something different.
Speaker 2: And if there have been forests on those lands before,
Speaker 2: and those lands could still support forests, why not have
Speaker 2: them there into the future. Why not help build them
Speaker 2: there into the future.
Speaker 1: So then I guess that leads me because you're right
Speaker 1: like that that's not the focus of your book, but
Speaker 1: one of the things that you do touch on, and
Speaker 1: I think it's an important conversation about that sort of
Speaker 1: extractive practice is I guess I don't know if I'm
Speaker 1: using the right words, but like timber right long, like
Speaker 1: literally cutting down trees to then be able to make
Speaker 1: things like houses and furniture and paper. And so I'm
Speaker 1: curious your I guess maybe just like your ethical take
Speaker 1: on it's a complicated question, right, So similar to fossil fuels, Yeah,
Speaker 1: the world would be great if we just never used
Speaker 1: fossil fuels. It'd be great if we didn't have to
Speaker 1: cut down trees to make houses, but we do. So
Speaker 1: is there a future where we don't, or is there
Speaker 1: a future where we do it in a more sustainable way? Like,
Speaker 1: what's your kind of takeaway after doing all this research.
Speaker 2: Well, it was interesting to take a look back at
Speaker 2: some of the forest transitions that have happened historically. So
Speaker 2: in parts of Europe Scotland for example, as one. There
Speaker 2: are other countries that in the last hundred two hundred,
Speaker 2: three hundred years experienced forest transitions, and a lot of
Speaker 2: times they were you know, post war really if you
Speaker 2: look at post World War one or post World War
Speaker 2: two policies where countries didn't want to rely on imports
Speaker 2: from other countries and so they change their forest policy
Speaker 2: domestically to say, okay, let's start planting forests. And those
Speaker 2: forests were you know, monoculture forests largely for wood product.
Speaker 2: So while you could say that that story is a
Speaker 2: story of lost gain if you just say, oh, there
Speaker 2: was the forest there before, and was the forest gone
Speaker 2: and now there's a new forest, Yes, but when you
Speaker 2: start looking into what those forests are, you know where
Speaker 2: they native forests where they multiple species, biodiverse, are they
Speaker 2: now monocultures? You know that there's a real question of
Speaker 2: what are we losing versus what are we gaining? So,
Speaker 2: you know, I definitely make the point and others certainly
Speaker 2: do from many interviews that now, when we think about restoration,
Speaker 2: in the ideal scenario, we're thinking about restoring ecosystems in
Speaker 2: a way that support a diversity of species, you know,
Speaker 2: and that's not always possible, and that won't always be
Speaker 2: possible because we need timber. But I think that any
Speaker 2: project could start with that, you know, that question, to
Speaker 2: what extent could we restore native species here? You know,
Speaker 2: there have been probably ten or fifteen or twenty species
Speaker 2: most commonly planted in efforts around the world, you know,
Speaker 2: for a long history. But there are some you know,
Speaker 2: seventy three thousand tree species known on Earth. So that
Speaker 2: was also some of the fascinating things to research as
Speaker 2: you start thinking about, Okay, well, if we actually want
Speaker 2: to address two colliding crises here about a climate crisis
Speaker 2: and a biodiversity crisis, we could do that, but only
Speaker 2: if we're planting and supporting, you know, regeneration of biodiverse
Speaker 2: areas as well. That's really different than the timber question.
Speaker 1: No, but it's an important one because they speak to
Speaker 1: each other.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: I think we often think in different levels like mic grow,
Speaker 1: macro miso. What we're talking about here are large efforts
Speaker 1: and super important efforts like national sometimes multinational efforts, but
Speaker 1: it can happen all the way down to the individual
Speaker 1: level as well. Right, So I'm curious. You know, we
Speaker 1: haven't talked too deeply about it, but we have kind
Speaker 1: of touched on policies or on decision making at these large,
Speaker 1: sort of multinational levels. But what about like you and
Speaker 1: your home in you know, Bozeman, or me and my
Speaker 1: home here in Los Angeles? Are there things that I
Speaker 1: can be doing, whether it's from a voting or policy perspective,
Speaker 1: or whether it's from an individual sort of maintenance and
Speaker 1: management perspective of my own property to help improve biodiversity.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I've recently wrote an article an Emergence magazine. It's
Speaker 2: a great magazine if you haven't come upon it. But
Speaker 2: I was actually researching post fire regeneration. So what are
Speaker 2: some of these communities doing in LA and your area?
Speaker 2: It sounds like that are recovering or just barely from fires.
Speaker 2: I mean there's some there's a really incredible effort now
Speaker 2: among community members to collect wild seed and plant wild seed.
Speaker 2: People have been collecting in that area on their properties.
Speaker 2: So yes, thinking about a diversity of species that you
Speaker 2: can plant on your own property, if you are a gardener,
Speaker 2: if you have land, is certainly great. When I was
Speaker 2: with I worked with the Climate Adaptation Fund for a while.
Speaker 2: It's used to be one of the largest funders of
Speaker 2: adaptation efforts in the US, and some of the most
Speaker 2: interesting projects I found were pollination projects in cities where
Speaker 2: people were really clearly planting in their gardens, you know,
Speaker 2: plants that would support pollinators and other species that we're
Speaker 2: moving through those areas. You know, even if you're in
Speaker 2: a more rural area and your farmland, doing that work
Speaker 2: is great, is helpful. Getting involved in your community to
Speaker 2: understand your forest cover is a really interesting way to
Speaker 2: engage with this topic. I have just started, you know, locally,
Speaker 2: I've been working on this global book for many years,
Speaker 2: and I've just started getting more involved in my local community.
Speaker 2: And you know, there's a lot of complexities to managing
Speaker 2: what here in Bozeman is twenty seven thousand urban trees.
Speaker 2: You know, there arefore people checking in on these trees,
Speaker 2: and yes, developments coming in, and yes policies that could
Speaker 2: be changed and improved to help keep the forest cover
Speaker 2: here in this community. But I think any community could
Speaker 2: have that. And maybe you're sitting there in you know, Arizona.
Speaker 2: I mean I live in the desert. But actually Phoenix,
Speaker 2: for example, has a was one of a great example
Speaker 2: of a city that went out there and has been
Speaker 2: doing some really interesting work and good work to increase
Speaker 2: their urban tree cover for cooling effects and addressing tree
Speaker 2: inequities in that region as well or in that city
Speaker 2: as well.
Speaker 1: You know, I have to ask, and in some ways
Speaker 1: I feel like this might be a closing question, so
Speaker 1: before I dive into it, I do want to make
Speaker 1: sure that we've covered you know, from where I'm sitting,
Speaker 1: I feel like the important takeaway so far for me
Speaker 1: has been this is gray right. This is a very
Speaker 1: complex question, and it's not so simple as let's just
Speaker 1: plant a bunch of trees wherever we can plant them
Speaker 1: and then walk away and hope that, like you know,
Speaker 1: nature finds a way. But this is a situation that
Speaker 1: requires a lot of active management and a lot of
Speaker 1: important decision making for all of the different interested parties
Speaker 1: so that we can find sort of the most equitable
Speaker 1: and best possible solution giving all of these different pressures.
Speaker 1: Now that said, you started this this sort of conversation
Speaker 1: by saying, you know, I was working on this project
Speaker 1: and I was writing about this topic, and it sounded
Speaker 1: really depressing, right, and you were talking about your dissertation,
Speaker 1: but like it sounded really depressing, but ultimately I found
Speaker 1: it really hopeful, and I'm curious if we can kind
Speaker 1: of bring that back to tree keepers. You know, we're
Speaker 1: talking about these problems that feel sometimes insurmountable, but clearly
Speaker 1: you write with so much hope for the future, and
Speaker 1: so I'm wondering, Hey, where do you find that hope
Speaker 1: and how do you implement it?
Speaker 2: Well, first, I mean I was just amazed at, I guess,
Speaker 2: the diversity of people that are tree keepers. You know,
Speaker 2: I talk to so many people living in different settings
Speaker 2: and coming from different backgrounds, and you know, trees captivated
Speaker 2: them in some way. I think you know, that connection
Speaker 2: in some ways is an ata. I write about that
Speaker 2: through the eyes of my son and watching him and
Speaker 2: as his relationship with trees and nature has grown. But
Speaker 2: to me, so I find hope in that, and that
Speaker 2: was part of my effort, you know, in writing this
Speaker 2: book is I want I would like everyone first to
Speaker 2: enjoy the narrative and second to reflect on, you know,
Speaker 2: how can I be part of this and what is
Speaker 2: a small role that I could play? And I think
Speaker 2: there are many regardless of where you regardless of where
Speaker 2: you live. And then the other thing, particularly, you know,
Speaker 2: for a lot of at the larger scale, I guess
Speaker 2: for companies and governments that are making tree commitments. I
Speaker 2: wanted to send the message that I think this work
Speaker 2: is yes, complex, but there's lots of lessons learned already
Speaker 2: and there are you know, guardrails or general principles I
Speaker 2: think that can guide this work. And every project needs
Speaker 2: to be tailored to the local context and the local
Speaker 2: community and supported by a local community. And yes, that's hard,
Speaker 2: but I think there are themes across them. And I
Speaker 2: also think that there are a lot of good companies
Speaker 2: and leaders working to make the effort of tree keeping
Speaker 2: better and to find the way is to make it
Speaker 2: economically viable. So there's you know that there's my hope too.
Speaker 1: And how do you maintain that on a kind of
Speaker 1: daily basis? How do you how do you tap back
Speaker 1: into that when you're starting to feel a little bit
Speaker 1: discouraged or overwhelmed, especially and I don't you know, obviously
Speaker 1: we don't, we don't need to get into politics right now.
Speaker 1: I've been spending a lot of time there. But you know,
Speaker 1: right now is a time where a lot of people
Speaker 1: are struggling to find hope because they feel like the
Speaker 1: political will isn't there necessarily. So, you know, how do you,
Speaker 1: as an individual who's really steeped in this content, what
Speaker 1: do you tell yourself in those moments where your hope
Speaker 1: is hard to catch?
Speaker 2: I mean, I guess I think about if you focus
Speaker 2: on what got us into the climate mess. You know,
Speaker 2: it was the actions of many, many, many people, collective action,
Speaker 2: and certainly you know, some are more responsible than others,
Speaker 2: but we're playing a part. And so I guess I
Speaker 2: flip the coin and say the same is true in
Speaker 2: the solution space. You know, what are the good things
Speaker 2: that I can do to contribute? Yes, I would like
Speaker 2: to spark more change at a larger scale, but I
Speaker 2: also believe I can make a difference at a small
Speaker 2: scale and hopefully potentially let's all put her, you know,
Speaker 2: cross our fingers that will have an impact to and
Speaker 2: do course and do time.
Speaker 1: I love it, and it's so true sometimes when we
Speaker 1: are feeling like our hands are most tied behind our back,
Speaker 1: or we're feeling like the most like a very tiny
Speaker 1: tiny cog in like what's increasingly feeling like an authoritarian wheel.
Speaker 1: The ability to to be empowered to make these kind
Speaker 1: of small scale decisions, to support the leaders that we
Speaker 1: want to support, to engage in active change in our
Speaker 1: on our own personal property or within our communities is
Speaker 1: it's not just a way to recapture that hope, but
Speaker 1: it's a way to feel like we're and not just
Speaker 1: to feel like but to actually be doing something when
Speaker 1: when it's it's hard to feel like we're affecting change
Speaker 1: against the background of what's happening politically right now.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and i'd say also to dress you know this moment.
Speaker 2: I mean, I am a scientist who's worked on environmental issues.
Speaker 2: I work on climate. My husband is a you know,
Speaker 2: doctor who works on infectious disease outbreaks and public health. Like,
Speaker 2: you know, in a time when science is called into
Speaker 2: question like this, and so many people in fields I
Speaker 2: value and care about and believe are critical are laid off.
Speaker 2: I also think about, like what can come from this
Speaker 2: period of disruption, like how do you not give up?
Speaker 2: How do those people come together? What's the pivot? And
Speaker 2: I don't think anyone has an answer to that, but
Speaker 2: I think that if you throw your hands up and say, well,
Speaker 2: we can't, then we can't. You know what will chart
Speaker 2: the path forward is people figuring out how to come
Speaker 2: together again differently.
Speaker 1: And we will. And I'm I'm not just hopeful, but
Speaker 1: I'm confident that we will, because I think that that
Speaker 1: is how the pendulum swings, is that sometimes we get
Speaker 1: comfortable and then we have to realize that we can't
Speaker 1: get too comfortable. And hopefully, for those who are listening
Speaker 1: right now, they are curious and they, you know, their
Speaker 1: appetite has been wedded to be able to pick up
Speaker 1: your book Tree Keepers, to read about the hope that
Speaker 1: is in front of us and the type of future
Speaker 1: that we can have on this planet with some planning,
Speaker 1: some decision making, and some and some real stewardship.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think in a time when it feels
Speaker 2: like people are going different ways. I think, you know,
Speaker 2: one of the lessons I took from the different people
Speaker 2: involved in tree keeping is that it also brings us together.
Speaker 2: So I look to that, to the act of treekeeping
Speaker 2: for that too during these times.
Speaker 1: I love that well everybody. The book is tree Keepers
Speaker 1: the Race for a Forested Future by doctor Lauren E. Oakes.
Speaker 1: Lauren Thing, thank you so much for being here with
Speaker 1: us today.
Speaker 2: Thanks for having me good questions. It was a good conversation.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was so fun, and everybody listening. Thank you
Speaker 1: for coming back a week after week. I'm really looking
Speaker 1: forward to the next time we all get together to
Speaker 1: talk to Arbi