...that Bisk hugged trees.

Through the lovely Gabi, I was introduced to the Carbon Neutral Blog Project. The idea of this is that you write a short post about the project, email it to them, and they'll plant a tree to combat the carbon released to power your blog, which I think is pretty great.
However, I don't know enough about the project to actually write about it, so I'm going to write about trees in general.
I love trees. They take in carbon dioxide, and release oxygen. They do have the minor drawback of having birds in them that like to poop on things, but I'd rather be alive and covered in poop than dead and clean. Once you're dead, it doesn't matter how much poop is on you, and we'd be dead if we didn't have oxygen. Trees also give us food in the form of delicious fruit. They give us shade. We chop them down and build our houses and write our essays on them. You blow your nose on a tree. Plants are the source of our life, and trees seem to be the plant that is the main contributor. Trees seem to have the most uses, and give us the most. In the story of Adam and Eve, they are told not to eat the fruit of the one tree. They eat it, and gain a knowledge of good and evil. Then they get kicked out of the Garden of Eden, and have babies. A tree is what gives them knowledge. I've heard many people say that what really separates us from other primates is our sense of right and wrong. If that's the case, and we accept the story of Adam and Eve as at least partially true, then we have trees to thank for our humanity.
If we prefer evolution, then we have tiny, photosynthesizing bacteria to thank for our atmosphere, which allowed evolution, which led to us.
However, we cannot just say that the world is for us. In the book Ishmael, the point is raised that humans think that the world was created for them and that evolution ended with them. Maybe it was created for us, it's really everyone's own opinion. But it is not just for us. We may be the ones who have built up cities and spread across the Earth, but we share it. We glorify ourselves for pushing the wild back, but we are beginning to push it back too far. Rainforests are uprooted in favor of farming and mining. We destroy oceans for oil to put in our cars to pollute the air with. By trying to better ourselves, we are destroying ourselves.
It's not just us being destroyed, though.
So many animals are being affected by changing climate, and we try to pretend that everything is okay. Right now, it is okay for us. But what about the polar bear who is losing habitat because the ice is melting? What about the sea turtle who has only female offspring, because the sand is too warm to produce any males? We just ignore them, because it's not affecting us yet.
But if we don't do something, it will.
We need to all be planting trees, and flowers and plants in general. Not because they're pretty, but because we need them. We need to combat carbon emissions, until someday we have enough trees that we can undo the damage we've done.
Ecuador is the only country that has environmental protection in its constitution. The rest of us need to start causing such a widespread effort. Political parties, trade, money, and the budget aren't going to matter if we don't do something now. Because if it is our world, we have to protect it, and if we don't, our mistakes will catch us soon.
And really, your parents probably wouldn't mind if you planted a tree in the yard. Shade is nice.