In the epilogue to his book The Treeline, Ben Rawlence gives us an unflinching summary of our current situation with climate change. He uses the forests and the treeline to examine what this means to humanity. Of course, it starts with the trees:
“A forest is not a static thing; it is a constantly evolving mosaic of species in multiple relations with each other as well as with the rocks, the atmosphere and the climate.”
Rawlence follows with a description of the forest ecosystem:
“The pioneering Russian ecologist Sukachev called this interrelated system biogeocoenosis. The Koyukon call it ‘the world that Raven made.’ The precise workings of this most complex of relationships are a mystery whose contours we can only guess and whose outcome we can only admire in the shape of the living breathing forests that sustain life on earth…There is much to fear in what we know and much to hope for in what we do not.”
From there, Rawlence concludes that:
“What is plain from my journey along the treeline is that global warming is well advanced and that while humans may still be able to temper the scale and severity of the warming unleashed, they are powerless to stop it…The speed of the geological changes being witnessed is accelerating more than models predicted. The world is in the grip of unprecedented change. The planet you think you live on no longer exists.”
Nina Munteanu is a Canadian ecologist / limnologist and novelist. She is co-editor of Europa SF and currently teaches writing courses at George Brown College and the University of Toronto. Visit www.ninamunteanu.ca for the latest on her books. Nina’s bilingual “La natura dell’acqua / The Way of Water” was published by Mincione Edizioni in Rome. Her non-fiction book “Water Is…” by Pixl Press (Vancouver) was selected by Margaret Atwood in the New York Times ‘Year in Reading’ and was chosen as the 2017 Summer Read by Water Canada. Her novel “A Diary in the Age of Water” was released by Inanna Publications (Toronto) in June 2020.
The Meaning of Water 