Today we need to think about aiding the migration of forests from the Equator towards the poles. The fastest runner in the tree kingdom is Spruce, which uprooted and dashed 700 miles per century as the glaciers retreated 12,000 years ago. It was a dazzling and record-setting display, but not even Brother Spruce is fast enough to hold to the pace of the track we are witnessing in 2007.

How fast? Many northern insects hibernate in winter, placing themselves in a low-energy state that allows them to survive the extremes of northern winters. The sachem skipper butterfly (Atalopedes campestris), on the other hand, is a southern species, and it stays active through winter months. That makes it more vulnerable to being killed by sudden frost, and that determines how far north it can successfully breed. The range of the little skipper butterfly has expanded 420 miles from California to Washington State in just 35 years. In 1998 alone, the butterfly expanded its range north by 75 miles.

We must be chastened by the warnings of Lovelock that ecosystems will be increasingly squeezed as the balance of biological activity on the planet tilts pole-ward. Bioregionalists must become permaculturists. Diverse forests have the resilience and mobility to host the necessary migrations of companion pollinators and mycorrhizae. Plantation forests do not. We must begin to recognize our role is changed. We are the midwives of the next ecosystem stasis. We are the bulwark that holds soil against spreading deserts. We need fewer people, more trees. The people we have need to reach out and help the trees. If they fail, we fail, and our planet will die.

In 1979 we began planting trees in Tennessee. At first we planted hybrid poplars because they grew the fastest, could be coppiced for renewable applications, propagated easily, and were bred for restoring damaged soils, such as severely eroded hillsides and formerly industrial sites. If you would like to order some hybrid poplars to plant at a site near you, please visit this site. In the 1980s we began planting American chestnuts, black walnuts, and a number of tree varieties that were threatened or whose presence was lost from the original diversity of central Tennessee. We seeded more than 80 acres in Tennessee in the 1980 and 1990s, and also assisted reforestation efforts in Iceland, Russia, Germany, Scotland and Australia. After 2000, we began experimenting with other fast-growing carbon-sequestering plants, such as temperate bamboos, and we have now planted many acres of those crops on an experimental basis. We also plant a large diversity of trees, hoping to improve the resilience and sustainability of new forests.

In 2006 we began to plant strategically to divert the spread of deserts, which we expect to become a challenge to human survival in the coming centuries as the global thermometer climbs inexorably upward. Consider for a moment what it is like outdoors where you live when temperatures exceed 100 F (37.8 C). What if there were 100 days each year when those temperatures prevailed and there was no rain? What if, at the same time, diminished energy availability meant having to do without air conditioning? What if it also meant getting all of your food locally? Now suppose, just a few years later, perhaps for your children, there were 200 days each year when those temperatures prevailed? At what point do you give up and migrate poleward? And who else is making the same decision?

Large forests make their own climate. They hold and draw water and make rain. They slow the wind at ground level. They recycle soil nutrients. The host in-migrations of eco-refugee species. Most importantly, they clean the atmosphere. They are carbon scrub-brushes.

Today we are working with our partners in the West Bank, Palestine, to plant trees to reforest the desert. Team leader Murad Al Khufash has spent five years training with us and is now teaching dedicated groups of young Palestinians and Israelis to seed even the most resistant soils. The trees he is growing are providing shade and shelter, conserving soil and water, providing food and fuel, and sequestering not only carbon dioxide but also depleted uranium and other toxic metals in the shell-strewn ground. Murad is decontaminating a war zone and sowing peace with every seedling.