Welcome back to Glass Half Full! These free Tuesday posts have so far offered background on my cli-fi novel, Ada’s Children, which has received a few glowing reviews and comments. I hope you’ll check it out!
Today I’m starting an occasional series that will range farther afield, but still focus on the issues that prompt the apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic events of the novel. Think of it as “ways to avoid an Ada’s Children future.” Today’s post covers the way that the scale of our viewpoint affects how we see several environmental issues. Next week, I’ll tackle Luddism. As you’ll probably notice, both posts feature my own love-hate nuanced relationship with technology.
On February 26, NASA published a stunning photo of Michigan and the Great Lakes taken from the International Space Station, 257 miles above the Earth’s surface. The timing was appropriate, because I’ve been thinking about the difference between orbital views versus boots-on-the-ground views, and how this affects our thinking on a variety of issues.
An orbital view is even wider in scope than the 30,000-foot views popular in business management. Orbital views are the ultimate big picture. Satellite remote sensing can give us an overview of what’s going on over the entire planet, providing vital information about the climate crisis, extinction, and more. More than that, just about everyone who has been this high up has been impressed (or frightened) by the fragile nature of our globe floating in space. All the petty squabbles of human society seem miniscule compared with the need to protect our only home. Photos from even farther out, showing the entire planet as a “pale blue dot,” can have a similar effect for the vast majority of us who will never travel higher than 30,000 feet.
But I have to wonder what is lost if we focus too much on these wider views and never get a close-up, on the ground view? The on-the-ground view risks missing the forest for the trees, but what happens when we miss the trees for the forest?
Speaking of forests, one factoid claims that tree cover is increasing, both globally and in particular regions. It’s popular among those searching for good environmental news to keep their spirits up (can’t blame them) and among libertarians at places like the Cato Institute and the Mackinac Center for Public Policy with a more political motivation. “Between 1982 and 2016, for example, the global tree canopy cover increased by an area larger than Alaska and Montana combined,” is a typical claim, this time from Cato, citing a study in Nature.
The same article also quotes Ronald Bailey, Reason magazine science correspondent and author of Ten Global Trends Every Smart Person Should Know: “Expanding woodlands suggests that humanity has begun the process of withdrawing from the natural world, which, in turn, will provide greater scope for other species to rebound and thrive.” Sounds pretty rosy, right? (Overlooking the false humans-versus-nature dichotomy, which is flawed thinking environmentalists are usually accused of having.)
We might wonder whether this claim is true, or just cherry-picked from favorable studies. Both the World Resources Institute and Global Forest Watch paint a less happy picture. (And maybe it’s worth pointing out that Bailey made this ill-timed claim in his 2020 book: “…broad disease surveillance enables swift medical interventions to halt developing epidemics.”) But here in Michigan, tree cover is increasing, according to Michigan State University Extension.
So let’s assume it’s true that we’re gaining global tree cover. The satellites are seeing more trees and tree cover. But if you actually visit one of these “forests,” the reality becomes murkier. And this is because there’s a difference between a tree farm and a forest. (The scientists are careful to use terms like “tree canopy cover,” while Bailey’s description invokes a thriving, healthy forest.)
You can experience the difference for yourself if you visit a place like Hartwick Pines State Park, home to one of the last untouched stands of white pine in Michigan. The trees are both widely spaced and large (for Michigan, that is; Californians, don’t laugh!). Between them grows an understory of ferns, azaleas, and more. But this old-growth stand is only about 50 acres. (It was saved by a period of degrowth in 1893, which shut down logging in the area. By the time the economy rebounded, loggers considered this scrap too small to bother with, moving north to larger stands.)
In the rest of Michigan, it’s not hard to find single-species tree farms like this one:
A tree farm typically features just one species of tree, and few other plant or animal species. A forest, on the other hand, features a variety of tree species of different ages and a supporting cast of understory shrubs, annual flowers, and the wildlife that depends on this fully developed habitat. And the only way to experience the difference is to go into a particular grove. Is it a forest or a woodlot? It’s not just a matter of counting different types of plants and animals, although birders and botanists do plenty of that. Your body will feel the difference immediately.
Most of Michigan was clearcut in the latter half of the 19th century. Except for a few small patches like Hartwick Pines, it’s all second growth (or third, fourth, or beyond). Some of these forests have been managed for habitat and other values, while others are simply cash crops. I’d love to know how much of each of these types the state has. Michigan’s state forests are certified by both the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) and the Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI). According to SFI, five million acres of Michigan’s forests are managed according to its standards. That’s out of a total of twenty million acres, ten million of which are privately owned, and the other ten split between state and federal ownership.
So it’s a complicated picture. On a subjective level, I’ve done quite a bit of walking in Michigan’s public forests, and the times when the diversity of a true forest makes itself immediately felt are so rare that they’ve seemed special. And of course I have little knowledge of what’s going on in the state’s private forests, other than what I can see from driving across the state on public roads. (It’s also worth pointing out that perhaps the biggest threat to Michigan’s forests, as elsewhere in the US, is permanent human encroachment, in the form of vacation homes and other developments that take away habitat and fragment the landscape.)
The picture of “forest versus tree farm” is complicated by the fact that all forests need management, though I’d prefer the term “tending.” It’s not a matter of “humanity withdrawing from the world,” in Bailey’s phrase. Without proper tending, Michigan’s second-growth forests can quickly become choked with invasives like buckthorn and Russian olive. Both the Chippewa Nature Center (where I volunteer) and the Chippewa Watershed Conservancy spend considerable time and effort restoring their forests. The first stage of a restoration project often isn’t too distinguishable from a clearcut.
Further complicating the picture is the fact that just about everywhere, Indigenous people tended forests, mainly through the use of fire. In some areas, including Minnesota and California, this Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) is making a comeback in public forest practices, with participation from local tribes. I haven’t seen as much of this in Michigan, but it would be great to see more. According to some Anishinaabe elders in Canada, “modern forestry practices fail to reproduce healthy forests by churning the soil, planting trees in rows, introducing contaminants and using herbicides.”
As I mentioned at the beginning, a boots-on-the-ground view risks missing the forest for the trees (or maybe it just quickly gets you into the weeds!). This is what happens when you step down from the satellite view. The picture goes from black versus white to a hugely complicated patchwork of colors. But it’s vital if we’re going to understand what’s going on in the world.
Here’s another example of an orbital view versus a boots-on-the-ground view: There’s a comforting statement going around that says the total land area of the Earth given over to human landscapes such as cities and farms and other activities like mining is actually quite small. I can’t remember exactly who quoted this figure, probably someone here on Substack. But the World Economic Forum puts the figure at 14.6 percent. That does seem small! It’s comforting to think that we’re having such a tiny impact. Certainly there’s room for a few more mines, some solar farms, and more cities. From the orbital view, this seems to make sense. In a similar vein, Elon Musk has said that we could power the US by covering a small corner of Utah with solar panels. It’s only Utah, who cares!
But here’s the boots-on-the-ground view: few land-dwelling species, whether plant or animal, or even migratory birds, live on the whole planet. (Maybe bacteria or viruses are the exception?) Instead, they live in habitats, plant communities, ecoregions, and ecosystems. The biodiversity of the planet springs from the adaptation of plants and animals to their particular niches within these habitats, which can often be quite small. They simply can’t move somewhere else (and efforts to relocate them within their own habitats often fail.)
Remember the aliens in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy? The ones who were going to destroy Earth to put in a hyperspace bypass? Imagine if they told Earthlings, “Don’t worry, the galaxy has plenty of other habitable planets.” This is roughly the position we’re putting many species in.
So a mine or a solar farm of X thousand acres shouldn’t be seen as occupying a tiny percentage of the entire planet, but a much larger percentage of a particular habitat type or plant community. And if that habitat is already dwindling, or the plants and animals within it are already threatened, we should be much less sanguine about any developments within it.
Wetlands are probably the best example in this regard. California has famously lost ninety to ninety-five percent of its wetlands, so any development on the remaining percentage threatens an already highly endangered habitat, as well as all the plants and animals that depend on it. This is why environmentalists are so staunch in their defense of these habitats. Even giving up one percent of such a scarce and threatened habitat type would be too much. The same can be said of prairies in the Great Plains, though maybe they get less attention, and old-growth forests. Given that we’re at the beginning of the Sixth Great Extinction, it’s unlikely that you’ll find any spot on Earth where habitat loss and species extinction are not issues.
Only by paying close attention at the scale of particular habitats can we avoid pushing even more species into oblivion. (If that’s even a concern for most people! I sometimes feel that we’re so focused on stopping climate change that we’re forgetting what it is we’re trying to save.)
One final example of the big picture view versus the small picture. I usually support the UN in its global efforts to combat climate change and other problems. But sometimes that lofty view from New York City overlooks what’s happening down on the ground and far afield. One UN initiative, signed by 190 countries, aims to protect thirty percent of the planet’s land and seas in preserves. Sounds great, right? The planet certainly needs relief from (some) human activities. Brian O’Donnell of the Campaign for Nature said, “This is a scale of conservation that we haven’t seen ever attempted before.”
But with an effort of that scale, is there a danger that some other concerns might get trampled along the way? In this case, definitely. In Tanzania, the Maasai have been violently pushed out of protected areas since 2009 (having already been evicted from Serengeti National Park back in the ’50s). In January, according to the New York Times, the Tanzanian government announced that an additional 100,000 Maasai would be removed from the Ngorongoro Conservation Area. While this might have more to do with tourism than conservation, the UN resolution certainly provides the government with cover for its actions.
I guess I’m naïve, but I thought that this kind of conservation that excludes Indigenous peoples had gone away back in the ’90s. That same Times article points out that Bears Ears National Monument in Utah is co-managed by five Native American tribes, and this isn’t the only example worldwide of conservation areas that include Indigenous people. The government of Tanzania should follow these more enlightened practices.
These are just three examples of the big-picture view versus the close-up, detailed view. The former certainly makes decision-making easier, because it does away with extraneous detail, making it easier to pick one option or another in an often black-and-white debate. But some of those “details” are people and plants and animals, our fellow travelers on spaceship Earth. We need to keep all of them in mind as we tackle big issues like climate change and the Sixth Great Extinction.
To put all of this another way, I’ll resort to an old cliché: the devil is in the details. Next week, I’ll take a look at the devilish details of solar panels and their various uses.
Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this post, I hope you’ll give it a like, a comment, or a share. Next week, I’ll explore the true meaning of Luddism. And on Friday, Ada’s Children continues with Chapter 14, “On the Brink,” in which Carol futilely protests impending nuclear war (that part should sound familiar!), forms a new friendship, and makes an unsettling discovery.