The Giving Tree: A Metaphor for Climate Change

By C.M. Poznansky

About the Book
With climate change, we are all facing a very serious existential crisis. This guide is intended for a non-science readership who want to understand the facts and science of global warming and climate change. The Giving Tree: A Metaphor for Climate Change, illustrates the ABCs of climate change and shows how serious a crisis we face, while offering hope and solutions. But first, we have to take the facts of climate change seriously.
About the Author
Mark J. Poznansky, C.M., O.Ont., PhD, is the immediate Past President and CEO of Ontario Genomics, and in retirement he founded Saved by Science (www.savedbyscience.org) - a visionary and forward-thinking website advocating for genomics-enabled technologies including Synthetic Biology. In 2020 he published a book under the same name.
Dr. Poznansky served as President and Scientific Director of Robarts Research and served on the Merck USA Scientific Advisory Leadership Board. He earned his bachelor’s and PhD from McGill University School and served as the Associate Dean of Medicine at the University of Alberta.
Shoshana Israel is a marketing and communications professional. She has over 15 years’ experience working with non-profit organizations in Canada, the United States, and Israel. She specializes in print and digital media, including creating magazines and films. She lives in Mevaseret Zion, Israel with her husband and four sons.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dorrance Publishing Company
• Release date: Apr 24, 2023
• ISBN: 9798886839722

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The contents of this work, including, but not limited to, the accuracy of events, people, and places depicted; opinions expressed; permission to use previously published materials included; and any advice given or actions advocated are solely the responsibility of the author, who assumes all liability for said work and indemnifies the publisher against any claims stemming from publication of the work.

All Rights Reserved

Copyright © 2023 by Dr. Mark J Poznansky and Shoshana Israel

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted, downloaded, distributed, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, including photocopying and recording, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented without permission in writing from the publisher.

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FIG. 1 THE BOY AND THE TREE

The Giving Tree is a children’s book written by Shel Silverstein in 1964. But this is not a children’s book. It is an accounting of how we, in our relationship with the tree and by extension coal and other fossil fuels, have changed the Earth’s climate through global warming. We discuss what the implications are for our very existence, and what we must do to reverse those changes in order to survive and, in the extreme, avoid extinction. We wrote this book because we have grown to appreciate the words of the young Greta Thunberg to the United Nations when she said:

You say you hear us and that you understand the urgency. But no matter how sad and angry I am, I do not want to believe that. Because if you really understood the situation and kept on failing to act, then you would be evil. And that I refuse to believe.

She went on to say:

You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words. But I don’t want your hope. I don’t want you to be hopeful, I want you to panic. I want you to feel the fear I feel every day and then I want you to act.

This work is written to give you a better understanding of what that existential crisis really is, to help you understand why Greta Thunberg is panicking the way she is, and perhaps most of all, to help you understand why she is correct to panic.

DEDICATION

In a very real sense, this book is dedicated to the future of humanity: to our children and their children, and to all the generations that follow.

It is specifically dedicated to our grandchildren/children: Avi, Effi, Olivia, Gil, Zachary, Rafi, Zev and Orly.

The book is written with the urgent warning that in order for them to live healthy and prosperous lives even remotely resembling our own, we must commit ourselves to protecting our environment and solving the issues of global warming and climate change.

Chapter 1

Introduction

I am a tree. Well, that’s not entirely true. I am a tree representative of all trees: past and present, and with some good fortune into the future as well. And I’m about to tell you my story, a story that ranges over a period of more than 500 million years. In fact, the story can even include my earlier ancestors, the first green things, like mosses, algae, and very simple plants. These have existed for twice that amount of time, 1 billion years, and maybe even longer.

And I am a boy, and I represent…well, really all of humanity. Well, maybe not all humanity, but at least that which is commonly known as Modern Man. My story is at least 1,000 times shorter than that of my good friend the tree; maybe only 300,000 years or so. Some say that I’m really older than that since there is evidence of something called Homo Erectus who appeared 1.5 million years ago, and four legged primates that go back even further (40-50 million years). But 300,000 years is the age given for Modern Man, so let’s stick with it.

My relationship with the tree was, for the most part, very positive. Between roughly 1 million years BCE (which was well before I even became Modern Man) and 1950 CE, which is pretty recent, we got along really well. There were no major problems. Perhaps maybe just a few… you might call them skirmishes. I cut down a bunch of trees to clear land to farm, for wood to heat my house and even, in fact, to build it. There were lots of trees, and nobody really noticed.

But by 1950 or thereabouts, the relationship started to sour, and it’s gotten worse year by year. Today it’s a real problem. Some even say that it’s put all of humanity—that’s of course all of us—in grave danger. A few even say that we humans may even be in danger of becoming extinct. Some use the expression that our relationship has now become an existential threat.

To tell you the truth, it’s entirely my fault. It’s also becoming very clear that if we (e.g., the boys—and girls) are to survive even just another hundred years or so, we’re going to have to make some pretty serious changes. It’s not a matter of, Sorry, we’ll try not to do it again. We’re going to have to dramatically change the way we do things. We’re going to have to change how we treat many aspects of our surroundings, especially our environment. In particular, we’re going to have to change how we interact with trees, both alive and dead, who were for so many years our good buddies. I’m talking of course of how and where we source our supplies of energy and how we continue to cut down trees.

(Just a note about nomenclature to make sure that we’re all on the same page: BCE means before the common era. It used to mean before Christ (BC) until we became religiously and politically correct. And of course CE refers to the common era, or after year zero, the day given for the birth of Christ, which is assigned as the start of the common era. When we talk about temperatures, we’re going to be using the international or more commonly accepted Celsius or metric scale. If you’d like to convert, one degree Celsius is 1.8 times larger than one degree Fahrenheit).

But let’s go back and rediscover the history of the tree and the history of the boy. We’ll start with the tree, because after all, she’s a lot bigger and a lot older. Let’s recount a bit of her history.

It’s not exactly clear when I (the tree) first arrived, but it was under 500 million years ago, so I’m nowhere near as old as some stuff…but I am a lot older than you. And in case you were wondering, here’s a definition of who and what I am: I’m a perennial plant with a long stem, usually called a trunk. I come in many different shapes, sizes, and even colors, and I possess the secret of longevity. I have been known to live for thousands of years. When I was last counted, just a few years ago, there were more than 3 trillion mature trees in the world. But that number has dropped by almost 4,000 trees since you started reading that last sentence. Can you imagine? That’s 700,000 trees disappearing each and every hour of the day! Think about it for a minute. That is the number of trees being cut down per hour not per day, month, or year. Some have taken to calling it systematic deforestation on a massive scale and that’s an important part of my history. The rate at which I’m disappearing, or really being cut down, is impressive, and it’s a real problem, not only for me but for you as well. And that’s why I’m telling this story. You may consider yourself an ordinary person, a Johnny-come-lately, if you will  but your impact on me and my friends has been huge, and not all good. And that’s the story that I’m about to tell.

Since it’s not just about me, to jog your memory, I’ve compiled a brief history of the Earth, at least in terms of its various lifeforms and my many ancestors, who, as a matter of fact, also contribute to the problem, though not strictly speaking on their own.

FIRST APPEARANCES

(These are rough approximations, but you’ll get the drift).

3.7 billion years ago: Simple single celled organisms, bacteria and microbes first appear, some 800 million years after the Earth was formed.

3.5 billion years ago: Here is the first evidence of photosynthesis (defined below) and the production of oxygen on Earth…but in very miniscule quantities.

1.7 billion years ago: There is the first appearance of multi-cellular organisms and sex…the earliest evidence of sexual interactions between living entities.

850 million years ago: The first complex land plants start to appear on open, barren lands.

530 million years ago: First fish appear in the oceans during what is called the Cambrian explosion, which was a huge expansion in the variety of lifeforms on Earth.

370 million years ago: I ARRIVE, THE FIRST REAL TREE WITH A TRUNK, REACHING TOWARDS THE SKY.

While I will admit blame for some of the negative occurrences on Earth today, I also take credit for providing an atmosphere where all living animals can live and thrive. You see, before I, and my other green predecessors, came along, there was little or no oxygen in the atmosphere, so you wouldn’t have been able to breathe. The earliest green plants (which pre-date me by approximately 500 million years) started to leak oxygen into the atmosphere through the process of photosynthesis (you’ll see the definition shortly). By the middle of the Devonian Period (400 million years ago), green plants and early trees (originally our friends the Gilboa trees) were spewing out enough oxygen and producing enough soil and shelter for small animals to thrive. That was our role in altering the pace of change on Earth. By spewing out all that oxygen, we sped up the process of evolution and allowed for whole new varieties of species to evolve.

ANOTHER BUNCH OF FIRSTS

350 million years ago: The earliest land vertebrates appear arriving from the sea.

200 million years ago: We see the first appearance of the dinosaurs.

60 million years ago: The first primate appears.

7 million years ago: The earliest apes appear.

350,000 years ago: The boy, the first Modern Man, has arrived.

And so, just to put it in the context of our own (the boy’s) development, here is another short LIST OF FIRSTS. It’s pretty impressive to see just how young we really are compared to earlier life forms.

4,000,000 years ago: Earliest bipedal animals arrive (standing on two feet).

350,000 years ago: First appearance of Modern Man.

320,000 years ago: First appearance of stone tools.

150,000 years ago: First use of fire.

75,000 years ago: First evidence of cooking.

50,000 years ago: First evidence of clothing.

20,000 years ago: First use of organized speech.

10,000 years ago: First human settlements.

So now, let’s get back to me, the tree, and have a look into how I came to be. I come from a pretty humble background. Me and my cousins, there were many of us, started off as small, fern-like plants growing right on the land. But we were known to be relatively competitive, and since we all need energy from the sun to grow, we tried to outgrow one another by reaching up to the sky in order to capture those sun rays and grow to be taller and stronger than our fellow cousins or friends. And as we grew taller, we had to grow stronger stalks or stems so that we could grow higher to capture more of the sunlight without literally falling down. With such growth, we then developed wood to keep our stems strong so that we would not be brought down by winds or storms, or by our competitors.

How did we get to be so strong? Well, it starts with a simple chemical process which is pretty much fundamental for life on Earth, at least the lives of all plants and animals and that’s called:

PHOTOSYNTHESIS

The process of photosynthesis is basic to the vast majority of life forms on Earth. It is the way by which green plants and certain other organisms actually transform the light/radiant energy from the sun and convert it into chemical energy stored in the plant. The wood of a tree is perhaps the best example and the basis for much of this story. That stored energy is of course the same energy that we ultimately use for almost everything we do (heat our homes, grow our food, drive most of our cars, and of course power all our industries). Chlorophyl, the green stuff, has to be present to act as a catalyst.

The chemical reaction is simple enough:

 Chlorophyl

Carbon Dioxide + Water + Sunlight ————————Sugar + Oxygen

Or  more scientifically-speaking, using chemical terms:

    Chlorophyl

6CO2 + 6H2O + Solar Energy—————————C6H12O6 + 6O2

Which translates to six molecules of carbon dioxide plus six molecules of water, add some solar energy in the form sunshine, and in the presence of a green leafy plant, which contains chlorophyl, you get one molecule of glucose and six molecules of oxygen. The glucose molecule that is produced contains six atoms of carbon, 12 atoms of hydrogen, and six atoms of oxygen. As an added bonus, but one that is critical to human and all animal forms on Earth, the reaction also produces six molecules of breathable oxygen released into the air, which is of course what we require to live. And that’s all the chemistry that you’ll need to understand our relationship.

It’s really pretty simple, then I, the tree or plant, take all the sugar molecules, technically it’s glucose, and link them together to make more complex sugars like cellulose, which is the most important component of wood. Put simply, the energy from the sun is captured and stored directly in complex sugar structures in wood, giving it its strength. This is essential in understanding what fossil fuels are really about, which is a critical part of my ongoing story. The energy is stored in the chemical bonds between the carbon (C), hydrogen (H), and oxygen (O) atoms. The energy remains in those bonds until it is released, usually by combustion or burning. Here’s a rough analogy: Take a rubber band and stretch it. You’ve now taken energy from your hand and arm muscles and transferred it to the elastic components in the rubber band. If you do nothing, the energy remains in the rubber band, but if you let go of the rubber band, the energy is released as kinetic energy, and the rubber band flies across the room…and might even break something. Or, if you wish, you can keep the elastic band stretched and store that energy until you want to use it. That’s what happens to the energy stored in fallen trees or other vegetation that die.

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FIG. 2 HOW PHOTOSYNTHESIS WORKS

So, what did we (the trees) do for a living other than grow higher and higher and compete for the sunlight with our cousins? Well, in addition to nurturing ourselves, we provided sustenance (food and shelter) for a whole host of different lifeforms, probably numbering in the hundreds of millions of different species. At first, we worked primarily with tiny microbes maybe 1-2 billion years ago when we were just plants, and then we went on to provide comfort, food, and shelter to simple insects, which appeared 400-500 million years ago. By the time the first birds arrived seeking shelter and food around 60 million years ago, we had matured a lot, and we were starting to look like the trees that are seen in some forests today. Those many critters ate some of my green leaves, and for the most part, it was fine, as we had the wherewithal to regrow the vegetation through that process I just described photosynthesis, getting energy from the sun, water from the Earth, and carbon dioxide picked up out of the atmosphere. And when I think about it, we had a pretty good relationship with those living creatures. I took the energy from the sun, and I used it for both my own growth and sustenance, as well as theirs. And of course, I also gave off oxygen for many species to live and breathe.

Through the course of time, many of us died from any number of causes. Some of us simply died of old age; some of us didn’t get enough sun or water, or weather did us in. Some of us even got infected by some bug or disease that we had no defense against, and we died much earlier than expected.

And so, after a time, either by natural incident, by bad chance, or simply by old age, I died. I didn’t have a proper burial. In fact, I just lay where I fell, and then other close and not so close relatives also died, and they just fell on top of me. And so generation after generation continued to grow and then die and lay to rest on top of one another, and of course my