SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
plants
Only Plants Can Save the People
We might not have control over the next administration’s assault on the environment, but for now, what we can do is plant native plants on land that’s considered “private.”
Nov 24, 2024
In 2016 I believed this to be true: “Solo el pueblo salva al pueblo/ Only the people can save the people.” It’s the Latin American protest phrase recently used by communities recovering from devastating floods in Spain.
In that spirit, the day after Donald Trump’s first election, I made a pledge to myself (and a plea to others) to welcome difficult conversation, to “call in” rather than “call out,” and to trust the basic goodness of neighbors to bring us through the administration to a safer world of shared values, acceptance, and care.
But eight years later, contemplating another outrageous Trump ascendence, my faith has wavered. Although I still believe in people, we, alone, just don’t seem to be enough. So today, amid intersecting ecological, social, and political crises, I’d like to propose a different phrase: “Only the plants can save the people.”
Plants, on the other hand, are peaceful and apolitical—complex, adaptable, even sentient beings that began filling Earth’s atmosphere with oxygen 2 billion years before the first bipeds traversed soil on two feet.
Hear me out: Is it such a radical idea to suggest we might do well to look beyond human ingenuity alone, and instead toward the vast interconnectedness of species with whom we share the planet? The worldview that puts homo sapiens at the top of the decision-making ladder seems to have done little but entangle us in useless loops of struggle and defeat. Climate disaster has become just another thing many people now accept; a new normal that’s easier, bafflingly, than making any kind of structural shift to quell its root causes.
And yet, while humans doomscroll through paralysis, plants continue sequestering carbon, supporting biodiversity, cleaning the water and the air, and mitigating erosion. What might the world look like if we actually sought leadership, with renewed reverence and kinship, from the dirt beneath our feet?
In 2016 we’d learned to live with burning forests, but not a fire season that spans more than half the year. We knew about hurricanes, but inland folks never imagined the waters could come for them. Over the past eight years, we’ve seen MAGA amplify while biodiversity plummeted. Greenhouse gas levels rose while children in cages screamed for their families; floods, fires, and droughts accelerated while a global pandemic exacerbated suspicions and divisions. Temperatures ticked up as a racial justice reckoning raged and state-sanctioned military violence quashed peaceful protest on public streets and university campuses.
Plants, on the other hand, are peaceful and apolitical—complex, adaptable, even sentient beings that began filling Earth’s atmosphere with oxygen 2 billion years before the first bipeds traversed soil on two feet. The argument that they can save us isn’t a fairytale dream, but one based on real scientific scholarship, ecological principles, and the acceptance that humans are just one small part of a complex web of life on the planet. Native plants that have evolved in sync with insects and animals in specific bioregions are what will continue to support the trophic levels of all life, from insect to megafauna, on which our very existence as humans depends. This basic biological truth persists no matter how many billionaires claim we can technologize our way out of ecological collapse.
There is even evidence that nature can mend divisions between people. From Richard Louv’s Last Child in the Woods to more recent studies linking gardening to general well-being, we are learning “officially” what most people who come in from a walk in the woods or a dip in a sparkling lake have known for millennia: that time spent mingling with and caring for species outside the human realm is not only healing, but critical for our survival. Caring for the natural world can actually ameliorate all sorts of ailments, like loneliness, isolation, and depression—ills that may contribute to the surge of anger and loutishness that’s been plaguing our society.
Over the past eight years I’ve had two children, and I’ve watched them transform from furry, wriggling infants to curious kids who talk to plants and animals just as they talk to other humans. My son spent the morning of November 6 dancing around in pink bunny pajamas, feeding oatmeal to his stuffed animals. My work, now, is focused on preserving his joy while being honest about the fact that there’s been an almost 70% decline in species’ populations since I was his age. My daughter, who will spend her formative years in a country whose top officials don’t value her life, got on the bus to public school today, where she’ll be compelled to put her hand over her heart and recite the Pledge of Allegiance. My work, now, will be to teach her that “America” could stand for a promise of what’s to come; it could honor the billion-plus acres of thriving forest and prairie, the billions of birds and buffalo that fed its landscapes before colonizers arrived. “God” could stand for the spirit of the land that sustains us.
. My belief is that the plants can save the people; my hope is that we’ll let them.
This is not to suggest we turn our backs on other urgent struggles, like resisting authoritarianism and militarism, protecting human rights, stopping fossil fuel extraction, preserving our public education system, further democratizing healthcare access, and more. It does not mean we stop prioritizing the intergenerational solutions of climate justice communities hit first and worst by the ravages of these intersecting crises.
What it does mean is no one has to wait to get started. While those larger struggles persist, we can make change right away in our own homes and neighborhoods.
According to entomologist and Homegrown National Park founder Doug Tallamy, the American lawn (think bright green rectangle) took up close to 63,000 square miles as of 2021. That’s 63,000 square miles of “no vacancy” for the plant life that’s sustained us for millions of years; 63,000 square miles kept poisonously crisp with chemicals, mowers, and blowers. Those miles, almost the size of all our national parks added together, are currently acting not as the carbon sinks, watershed managers, and biodiversity regenerators they could be, but rather as a vast food desert for the insects and birds that critically transport energy within and across bioregions.
Luckily, transforming empty landscapes into regenerative ecosystems is something we can do without professional help or waiting for the next election. Volunteer networks, native plant landscaping companies, books, regional “how-to” guides, and do-it-yourself trial and error are all useful—critical, even—for beginning the vast rewilding needed to improve our environments and communities. A single milkweed plant in a pot won’t change the world, but in community, it’s a great start.
We might not have control over the next administration’s assault on the environment. But for now, what we can do is plant native plants on land that’s considered “private.” That could be three feet on your apartment’s fire escape, a 20x20 green lawn, a garden space in front of your small business, or replacing a tangle of invasives in your backyard. We have the power to change our relationship to the Earth; to do something good, simple and measurable; to reshape the landscapes of the future and transform them into bird-and-bee commons—now—without waiting for policy from above. And we can do it while forging relationships within our communities, getting outside and away from the manipulations of screens, reconnecting with our instincts, rebuilding alongside the species with whom we share the planet by digging our hands in dirt that knows no borders.
My hope is the despair many of us feel in the face of the next administration will not be met with more despair, or even with anger. My hope is we’ll collectively say “enough,” that we’ll recognize our shared worth and commonalities not only with each other, but with the other species around us. My belief is that the plants can save the people; my hope is that we’ll let them. And in reconnecting with our local landscapes, we can reconnect with each other, so that four years from now, the people will be able to save the people once again.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Discovering Intelligence in Unexpected Places
If our human intelligence has discerned over thousands of years which plants are edible and nutritious and healing, wouldn’t the evolutional ingenuity of plants which feed and sustain us and all life also constitute intelligence?
Aug 27, 2024
From the largest to the smallest and the oldest to the youngest creatures on Earth—Antarctic blue whales and coastal redwood trees, minute bacteria and human beings—we are all enmeshed in layers of relationships. We need each other, though some more than others.
Plants evolved hundreds of millions of years before the first humans and transformed the Earth—through their creativity in surviving predators—into a livable environment for all animals, including humans. We needed plants for our evolution and need them now for our survival from climate disaster. They, however, did not need us for their existence and would survive without us.
Putting humans at the top of the evolution chain as the crown of intelligent life, a Western worldview, is—as some keenly grasp—mistaken. The baleful consequences of this simplistic hierarchy are everywhere: out-of-control climate change; accelerating rates of animal and plant extinction; dead zones in the oceans and mass mortality of coral reefs; the vast pollution of land, air, and water; and the mounting likelihood of human extinction with nuclear war. All caused by humans, humans with financial and political power much more egregiously than others.
Perhaps you have you noticed that late summer asters and goldenrod tend to grow as companions. Why? Together—their combined beauty—attracts more pollinators.
Certain scientists who study plants—from the simplest to the exotic—are stirring controversy with their “ Are plants intelligent?” Consider that we humans owe our lives to plants for their food, medicines, and critical balance of 21% oxygen in the air we breathe. If our human intelligence has discerned over thousands of years which plants are edible and nutritious and healing, wouldn’t the evolutional ingenuity of plants which feed and sustain us and all life also constitute intelligence?
Studies have found that elephants recognize themselves in a mirror, crows create tools, dolphins demonstrate empathy and playfulness, and cats exhibit similar styles of attachment as human toddlers. The given explanation is that they have brains with neurological capacity for consciousness and intelligence.
But plants do not have a central brain. Could their mode of learning to evade insect predators and maximize their growth come from a diverse form of intelligence, possibly be distributed across their roots, stems, and leaves? Could the whole plant, then, function as a brain? Recent studies of plants have stirred the possibility that they are conscious and intelligent. Take communication, something we humans claim as our domain through language and more recently acknowledge that animals also possess.
Botanists have found that not only do alder and willow trees alter their leaf chemistry to defend themselves against an invasion of tent caterpillars, but that leaves of faraway trees also change their chemical composition similarly. Warned, as they are, by airborne plant chemicals released from the original trees under attack. Goldenrods signal an attack by a predator through strong chemical communication sent to all other goldenrod neighbors, just as humans warn their neighbors about a nearby fire or flood or crime.
Without any recognizable ears, plants sense sounds. The vibration of a predator insect chewing on its leaves causes a plant to make its own defensive pesticide. Beach evening primrose responds to the sound of honeybees in flight by increasing the sweetness of its nectar to attract them for pollination. Tree roots grow toward the sound of running water, including in pipes, where the roots often burst through causing great difficulties for municipalities. How do the various plants hear these stimulating sounds?
Plants have memory, some anticipating from past experience when a pollinator will show up for the plants’ pollen. Plants express social intelligence: Members of the pea family form relationships with bacteria living in their roots to have the bacteria supply beneficial nitrogen for the plants’ growth. Several kinds of plants provide a home and food for compatible ants who then attack the plants’ ant pests. Perhaps you have you noticed that late summer asters and goldenrod tend to grow as companions. Why? Together—their combined beauty—attracts more pollinators.
In finishing, I express my immense respect for the Indigenous worldview where wind, rocks, air, and rain are our kin, together with plants and nonhuman animals. We, humans, the most recent beings, depend on all of these elder kin; and this awareness, this worldview of connectivity among all beings, is our path back to Earth well-being.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Nearly Half of Flowering Plant Species Face Threat of Extinction
"Effectively managing the plants and fungi that form the building blocks of our habitable planet is key to halting wider biodiversity loss and restoring Earth's ecosystems to full function," says a scientific report.
Oct 10, 2023
Global scientists warned Tuesday that 45% of known flowering plant species could be at risk of disappearing, underscoring the need for urgent international action to tackle the planet's sixth mass extinction—the first driven by human activity.
That figure is among the key findings from State of the World's Plants and Fungi, the fifth annual report from the U.K.'s Royal Botanic Gardens (RBG), Kew about such species amid the intertwined biodiversity crisis and climate emergency.
"The resources and services that nature provides—from food to fresh water—have arisen through eons of ecosystem-building by microbes (including fungi), plants, and animals, and their interactions with geochemical processes," says the report. "Because we are currently degrading ecosystems, releasing greenhouse gases into the air, and polluting water resources at such a rapid rate, we risk destabilizing the global equilibrium that these evolutionary processes have established."
"Effectively managing the plants and fungi that form the building blocks of our habitable planet is key to halting wider biodiversity loss and restoring Earth's ecosystems to full function," the publication stresses.
"Every species we lose is a species that we don't know what opportunities we're losing... It could be a cancer-fighting drug, it could be the solution to hunger."
The report "relies on two major advances," said Alexandre Antonelli, director of science at RBG Kew. "Firstly, the recent release of the first geographically complete World Checklist of Vascular Plants—a landmark achievement after more than 35 years of meticulous and highly collaborative work. Secondly, the wealth of information on fungal diversity newly harnessed from the analyses of environmental DNA in soil samples across the world, integrated with other morphological and molecular evidence from fungarium specimens."
"In 11 chapters, we present compelling stories of what we can learn from these and related sources of data, and how these learnings can help us foster future research and conservation. This report is based on groundbreaking original research papers and reviews from many international teams of scientists," he added. Specifically, it draws on the expertise of 200 researchers at 102 institutions across 30 countries.
The checklist features 350,386 species of known vascular plants—but as many as 100,000 more have not yet been formally identified, and experts estimate that 3 in 4 undescribed vascular plants are likely already at risk. Given that, Kew scientists are calling for all newly described species to be treated as threatened unless proven otherwise.
"Ideally, partnerships between taxonomists and experienced conservation assessors would aim to describe and assess species simultaneously, to maximize opportunities for effective conservation action," said Matilda Brown, a researcher in conservation assessment and analysis at RBG Kew. "In the meantime, if accepted, our recommendation could aid in the protection of many tens of thousands of undescribed threatened species, by treating them as threatened as soon as they become known to us."
The fungi section of the report points out that "only 155,000 species have been formally named, while estimates of the total diversity have ranged from 250,000 in the 1800s to as many as 19 million species in recent decades." Now, scientists estimate that there are 2.5 million fungal species on the planet—meaning that over 90% remain unnamed.
However, the effort to identify species continues. Since just 2020, scientists have named more than 8,600 plant species and over 10,200 fungal species.
"Naming and describing a species is the vital first step in documenting life on Earth," said former Kew scientist Tuula Niskanen, now at the University of Helsinki in Finland. "Without knowing what species there are and having names for them, we won't be able to share information on the key aspects of species' diversity, make any assessments of species' conservation status to know whether they are at risk from extinction, or explore their potential to benefit people and society."
"It is essential to know what species of fungi we have here on Earth and what we need to do for them," she added, "so that we don't lose them."
Brown issued a similar warning about plant losses, telling the BBC that "when we consider that 9 out of 10 of our medicines come from our plants, what we are potentially staring down the barrel at is losing half of all of our future medicines."
"Every species we lose is a species that we don't know what opportunities we're losing," she added. "It could be a cancer-fighting drug, it could be the solution to hunger... And so to lose that, before we get a chance to study it would be a tragedy."
The new publication joins a series of alarming reports this year, from February NatureServe research that found 34% of plants species and 40% of animal species in the United States are at risk of extinction while 41% of U.S. ecosystems could collapse, to a September study that revealed dozens of genera—the next thickest branch from species on tree of life—have been lost since A.D. 1500 due to human activity.
The Kew report also comes after last December's Kunming-Montreal Biodiversity Framework—a historic pact to safeguard and restore nature that followed years of negotiations but which some global advocates warned is nowhere near strong enough.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular