"Trees"

I think this is the very one — A portion of the canopy walkway that we enjoyed in the Peruvian Amazon this past summer/winter
(Wikimedia Commons public domain photo)

“Trees,” by Joyce Kilmer

I think that I shall never see

A poem lovely as a tree.

A tree whose hungry mouth is prest

Against the earth’s sweet flowing breast;

A tree that looks at God all day,

And lifts her leafy arms to pray;

A tree that may in Summer wear

A nest of robins in her hair;

Upon whose bosom snow has lain;

Who intimately lives with rain.

Poems are made by fools like me,

But only God can make a tree.

As concern for climate change grows, it seems that there may be at least some ways of dealing with it that wouldn’t involve vast government takeovers of the economy and private life. Here, for example, is something that I could very easily support and that shouldn’t be controversial:

“In New “Mind-Blowing” Study, Planting Trees Reduces Carbon Better Than Carbon Taxes”

Still, even assuming that the scientific argument behind it is correct, I wonder whether this proposed solution will gain much support. After all, it would furnish very little opportunity for increasing government control of the economy, multiplying regulations, empowering bureaucrats, and aggrandizing the administrative state.

Planting trees is within the capacity of private citizens:

“These Mexican Villagers Have Been Working to Plant 5 Millions Trees To Ease the Climate Crisis”

“YouTube Star Known For Kindness Celebrates 20 Million Subscribers by Funding the Planting of Millions of Trees”

By the way, National Arbor Day falls next on Friday, 24 April 2020.

However, some of Earth’s major forested areas are currently under severe threat. The vast and dense rain forest of the Amazon River basin, for example, our planet’s largest intact forest, is being destroyed at a rapid rate — and regional governments bear substantial responsibility for that:

“Amazon fires: What’s the latest in Brazil?”

Happily (or unhappily) we may shortly know much more about “the latest”:

“Hollywood Drones Are Being Repurposed to Study the Amazon Rainforest Like Never Before”

Meanwhile, my beloved native California — once known as the “Golden State” but now, more and more, governed like failed third-world banana republic — is allowing its forests to burn:

“California Can’t Keep the Lights On: Decades of misgovernance and misplaced priorities have left the state fighting fire with . . . blackouts.”

“Victor Davis Hanson: Democrats have turned California into a problem-plagued burning nightmare”

Fortunately, though, there are once again people in the private sector who are trying to help out as they can:

“Matthew McConaughey Serves Barbecue to Firefighters in Los Angeles ‘With Thanks’”

Incidentally, the American Catholic poet Alfred Joyce Kilmer (1886-1918), with whose famous 1913 piece “Trees” I opened this blog entry, will help to illustrate yet again the evils that governments too often visit upon this world: Deployed to France with the 69th Infantry Regiment of the New York National Guard (the famous “Fighting 69th”) in 1917, he was killed by a sniper’s bullet at the Second Battle of the Marne in 1918. Kilmer was 31 years old. He left behind a wife, herself a poet, and five children.