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During the last week I was forwarded an alarming news item published by CBC stating that the Canadian Government had been lobbying other countries, such as the US, to limit what counts as “sustainability.”^[1]

Like many industries, and especially Forestry, have broadly succeeded at convincing people their industries are “sustainable.” It seems perfectly reasonable on the surface that Forestry is “sustainable,” after all, you can of course, plant another forest. This successful marketing tactic relies on omission of the reality of biology, nature, and the actual facts about how this industry operates, as well as the degree to which governments are involved in making sure capital generated from the destruction of our Carbon sinks continues flowing to the right people.

As the CBC article indicates, Canada ranks third in global deforestation, and no letter from the former Premier of Alberta is going to change that fact. Especially after the former Premier of British Columbia willingly allowed a forestry company to cut down 1000+ year old trees in his own riding, with only 2.7% of coastal ancient forests left intact.^[2] Photos of the devastation of what remains after these epic monuments to the beauty and perseverance of ecosystems are destroyed are well documented by photographer TJ Watt. ^[3]

Are we to believe this is a sustainable practice? Cutting down ancient trees that had been successfully sequestering Carbon for more than a thousand years Fern Gully-style and calling it necessary for profits might strike you as a little bit ludicrous. As it would also be if you found out that the forestry industry also sprays millions of hectares of newly-planted monoculture forests with Glyphosate (Round-Up), using airplanes to douse vegetation, all with government approval. The government, when asked to conduct a review of this practice, responded that it was “not warranted.” ^[4]

In a time of climate crises and ecological collapse, it seems even more ludicrous that our political system works in favour of these companies…But we don’t need to analyze this political nonsense of lobbyists and governments gaslighting the public for their own agendas.

The incomparable beauty of these forests is breathtaking.

How does a tree live for over a thousand years, trees that started as seedlings at some point during the Roman Empire? These trees and more broadly, the implications of the ecosystems they foster to support them, is such a well-designed system that it has been running undisturbed for dozens of human generations.

The design of nature is astounding. It is itself sustainable, requiring no outside inputs or disturbances. It rises and swells and declines and dies and retributes on its own. In the agricultural world, a widely held belief is that plants “suck” the nutrients “out of the soil,” a direct by-product of the chemical input mindset.If we look at an ancient tree system however, we can see that assumptions like those couldn’t possibly be true.

In some remarkable studies, rather recent, (2009-2010), done by some incredible scientists, it was found that networks of trees in only a 30×30 metre plot, a single tree had 47 connections to other trees. Direct, underground connections. The people working on these studies show that there is an intricate and amazing web of fungi and microscopic soil ecology that is supporting and pushing and pulling with the flow of nature in these ancient environments.^[5]

These systems cannot be replaced by sending small armies of tree planters to install industry-favoured crops, and they cannot be understood by bulldozing what remains of a tiny viable area of 2.7%. They cannot be regenerated if the time frame is on such a scale that to future generations of humans “Twitter” would be a mere footnote in the history book of the Internet. They cannot be rebuilt if the industry plans to simply harvest again in decades.

We cannot be sustainable with our industrial practices if we actively ignore and fight the beauty that the natural world has gifted us to make a short-term profit. No amount of lobbying can change that fact.

The power of true sustainability lies in understanding the incredible design that nature has provided. The same design that we are an intricate part of, the same design we were born from: the same design that we are continuously destroying.

A walk in a forest is a truly incredible thing.

Graham

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