SCIY.Org Archives

The forests are the “lungs of the earth.” They respire
oxygen and inhale carbon dioxide; they also build soil,
absorb moisture and translate sunlight into biomass
more efficiently than any other ecosystem on earth.

In the view of Rudolf Steiner, the German mystic and
creator of Biodynamic Gardening, the forest organism
itself has organs. These include the soil, the plant
stalks and the wind. The soil is the digestive organ of
the forest.

The wind is the breath of the forest.

The tree bodies are the vascular system. From
their roots deep in the ground trees bring up both
water and minerals. Transpiration humidifies the air,
moderates extremes of temperature, and creates complex
microclimates that are rich habitats for many diverse
life forms. The minerals come to rest in the tree’s body,
which will one day become topsoil.

One of the great benefits of forests is to moderate hard
rains so that the water soaks into the soil and subsoil.
Rain soaks into the forest floor and feeds the streams
and aquifers. Because a native old growth forest recycles
nutrients so efficiently, the water running from it is very
pure, with little mineral content and few suspended
solids.

---

In this way a forest supports the adjacent aquatic
ecology. It is the quality of water that drains from the
forest which is important. In the Temperate Zone forests,
whole fisheries have been destroyed when logging,
especially clear-cut logging, takes place. Without the
trees, erosion soon begins to change the chemical and
particulate composition of the water. Migrating salmon
for example require small gravel in the streambed for
their spawning. The gravel must be just the right size
relative to their eggs so the eggs will be protected from
predators. It must be porous enough so that the fry,
when they hatch, can escape. When silt covers the gravel,
the fish eggs die, fisheries are destroyed, the habitat of
the aquatic plants is impaired and water supplies are
degraded.

Forests have a great effect on rainfall. They actually
create rain. Trees send a huge volume of moisture into
the atmosphere. One medium sized, ordinary elm tree
for example, will transpire 15,000 pounds of water on a
clear, hot, dry, day. As a storm front moves through from
the ocean, the moisture that has evaporated upward from
the land helps to recharge rain clouds in a continuous
cycle. The moisture from the earth surface is in micro-
droplets that atmospheric moisture condenses around,
then falls back to earth. Vast amounts of water vapor
rise to the clouds, then fall again as rain.

In both temperate and tropical rainforests there is
also the phenomena of fog drip. As fog rolls through,
water droplets are caught on the vegetation and drip
down to moisturize the lower zones. The capture of water
by this action adds significantly to the moisture levels
of these forests.

Another significant effect of forests is the creation of
electrically charged, negative ions. Negative ionization
occurs heavily near waterfalls, on ocean beaches and in
moist forests. A concentration of ionization creates an
electrical field. The work of pumping water up out of the

---

subsoil and transpiring it tends to moisturize the area
and contributes to the negative ionization. Laboratory
experiments show that plants will grow significantly
larger in a negative ion-rich environment than in neutral
or positively charged environments such as cities, clear-
cuts or hot, windy deserts.

The forest is not simply a random group of trees. It is a
vast complex of organisms which have lived together and
differentiated their forms and relationships over millions
of years. Their circulation of energies creates a giant
metabolism. Native forest provides habitat for the largest
number of species per acre of any ecosystem, except
possibly a coral reef. Because of this, reforestation cannot
repair damage.

When industrialists replant forests they
do not replant with the intention of returning a native
forest ecosystem. Usually the land is replanted with some
designer tree species that has economic importance and
other species are left out. Tremendous amounts of money
are now being spent to create genetically engineered
trees for replanting cut over or damaged sites. In fir
forests for example, after the clear cut, the industry
spends millions of dollars, mostly on poisons, trying to
defeat the healing succession of the forest in order to
immediately replant fir trees. If the previous forest was a
mix of cedar, alder and other trees with the fir, only the
commercially valuable fir will be replanted.

All of these replanting efforts are essentially “tree plantations”
and were never meant to recreate a native forest. The true
native forest with all of its complex web of life is gone and
replaced by a tree farm, more like a corn field but with a
longer life-span. Far from being a perpetual forest, as the
ballyhoo of corporate public relations offices would like
to picture it, these tree farms function in permanently
damaged soils and reduced nutrient condition.

The human family has done very well as forest
dwellers for several million years. Native people of the
great forests of China, Europe, and the mixed forest of

---

the eastern North American continent lived in one of the
richest habitats possible. The few native agriculturists
remaining in tropical rainforests can today easily grow
more food per unit of energy input than the modern
industrial system. Some continue to practice swidden
agriculture, one of the most energy-efficient systems
known. The ancient system rotates small clearings
in the forest. The dozens of domesticated and semi-
domesticated garden plants feather off into the mature
forest so that there is no real break in the ecosystem.
These complex gardens are products of the natives’ deep
knowledge of living things. The gardens flow with the
tendency of natural life toward diversity and mutual
benefit.

Later, as a part of our analysis of solutions we will
present a contemporary version of this sophisticated
food system.

How the Forests Went Down

It is estimated that more than one third of the earth
was forested prior to the culture of empire. This is
roughly 30 billion hectares (nearly 94 billion acres).1
The most recent estimates show that only about a tenth
of the forests remain, some 4 billion hectares (about 9.9
billion acres).2 It is important to note here that these
figures refer to any assemblage of trees, not just the
climax ecosystems. The amount of uninjured old growth
forest remaining has never been calculated; indeed, this
minuscule, high-value remainder is so much in demand
by the timber industries of the world that any calculation
would be immediately outdated because the trees are
disappearing so fast.

When forests are cut, the rainfall, which the trees had
moderated, rushes over the bare surface of the Earth,
carrying off the loose soil. The silt-laden runoff swells and
overflows the riverbanks, flooding the lowlands, scouring
out and widening the riverbeds. When the living system
of roots, which held the soil on the hillsides, is gone,

---

landslides become increasingly frequent. When the dry
season returns, no reserves of moisture remain in the
ravaged soil. A worsening cycle of flooding and drought
begins. Without the moderating effect of the transpiration
of the trees, and without the forests’ tendency to attract
rainfall, drought increases.

Throughout the world this process of depletion is
occurring. If it were not for all of the other crises on
the planet, the disappearance of the world’s forests
alone would be considered a planetary emergency, so
important are the services of forests to the planetary
ecosystem.

All of the major forest ecosystems of the planet are
under severe attack. The forests of all continents are
suffering severely.

Throughout the foothills of the Himalayan Mountains
forest destruction is proceeding rapidly. Goat herders
work their way up the slopes felling trees, selling the
firewood, burning it for their own use and feeding the
twigs and leaves to the animals. People who then try to
farm the steep slopes often follow these goat people. The
demand for firewood in the denuded lowlands and the
attempts to farm even the steep, high mountainsides is
stripping the land. Floods, erosion and drought are the
result.

Nepal is headed toward desert status. Firewood
shortages in Nepal force the people to use dung and
crop residues for fuel to heat their habitations and cook
their food. Authorities calculate that depriving the soil
of this dung and residue reduces the annual grain yield
of the country by 15 per cent.3

Through the ages of empire, forests have receded
before the goats of the herders and the people with
the plow. Because forest soils are rich, civilized people
always seek to clear them and plow the fertile soil. This
destruction is rivaled by that of the charcoal burners
who have gone out like locusts and stripped the forests

---

for the metal smelters, for lime kilning, for the ceramics
industry, and to provide fuel for cooking and heating of
houses. The ancient empires were deforested early. For
example, the plateau east of the Turkish Mountains,
where the present city of Ankara is located, was once a
forested region. Its fate was similar to that of the Armenian
highlands. Authorities believe that the original forest
covered 70% of the land area of the plateau; forest cover
is now reduced to 13%. The remainder of the plateau has
now irreversibly regressed to steppe conditions.4

Author Thor Heyerdhal has made many journeys in
reed rafts since his book Kon Tiki was published. In a
recent journey he sailed a reed raft along the southern
coast of Arabia. He and his crew hauled ashore in a
desolate area of Oman. In a short expedition inland
they discovered a huge open pit copper mine from the
Sumerian era five thousand years in the past [emphasis added]. It is
difficult, now, to imagine that this desert once harbored
forests which could support smelting on such a scale.
But the evidence is there.

Even the Sinai which is located to the Southeast
and the Negev, East of the present state of Israel, bear
evidence of past, perhaps abundant forests. The 1960
investigations of Sir William Flinders Petrie into mining
operations in the Wadi Nash area of the western Sinai
desert, believed to date from the third millennium, BC,
yielded unmistakable clues:

---

The forests of the Mediterranean region all figured
centrally in the strategies of the empires through the
ages. Besides being burned at the smelters, forests were
the raw material for the shipbuilding industry. As nearby
forests disappeared, a major thrust of imperial strategies
was to conquer the forests of other areas to be used to
build more ships for war and for trade. Whole empires
rose and fell based on the availability of forests.

The wars of the empires also caused much
deforestation because of deliberate burning of whole
forests in order to debilitate the enemy. Many of the
instruments of war required forests. Wood was used
for chariots, battering rams, fortifications, scaffolding
and other instruments of the siege against walled cities.
Forests were used in the siege of Lachish, in 588 BC
by the Babylonian, Nebuchadnezzar. “After 2500 years,
layers of ash several metres thick still remain, higher
than the remains of the fortress walls. The hills for miles
around were cleared of trees. The wood was piled outside
the walls and fired. Day and night sheets of flame beat
against the walls until eventually the white-hot stones
burst and the walls caved in.”6

Archeology corroborates Biblical reports that much
of what is presently Lebanon had closed-canopy forests
and Israel was once forested or at least had considerable
natural tree cover. The cedar forests of Lebanon were
logged early by the Egyptian empires to be used for
building materials and ships, and by all the following
empires until they were gone. Today, the only remaining
remnant groves of the Cedars of Lebanon are located in
some of the monastery yards, which exist in the former
forested zone. A few years ago, when a small amount of
forest still stood outside of the monasteries, a UN Food
and Agriculture report recorded a scene that is ages old

---

but still continues in remnant forests throughout the
world:

The practice of destroying forests as a war strategy
continues today. Defoliation of the tropical forests of
Vietnam by United States’ chemical warfare stands out
as an egregious example. U.S. “humanitarian” aid to the
Nicaraguan Contras was used to purchase chainsaws
so that they could destroy and incidentally make some

---

money from the sales of irreplaceable tropical forest
along Nicaragua’s southern border. Contra attacks have
also targeted ecological restoration efforts. In Guatemala,
the Drug Enforcement Administration of the United
States government has sponsored the spraying of many
thousands of acres of tropical rainforest. Because of
the secretive nature of the project it is not known what
poison is being sprayed, but it is known that many
unnatural fires occurred in the Guatemalan forests and
this indicates that the forest has been debilitated.

Deforestation Follows the March of Empire

The Moors burned the bulk of what was left of the
North African forests in the early Middle Ages on their way
to Spain. The forests of Spain and Italy dwindled steadily
and then their final destruction was accomplished by the
Moors who brought sheep. The deforestation of Spain
and Italy became severe at that time.

The great forests of Europe and the British Isles began
to go down for Celtic bronze smelters. Destruction stepped
up with the Romans, who cleared the land for agriculture
and shipbuilding. European forest destruction continues
to the present day.

As colonists invaded North America, they simply
burned huge tracts of forest in order to open it up
to European-style agriculture. In 1756 John Adams
spoke for the perception of the empire. Referring to the
area of the continent now covered by cities, industrial
wastelands, toxic waste dumps, poisoned air, poisoned
waters and forests dying from acid rain, he observed:

---

In Canada the southern agricultural regions have
lost two-thirds of their forests. In the United States,
deforestation has had a longer history. “In the United
States 900 million acres were originally wooded with
more than 1,100 species of trees, a hundred of which
had great economic value. Only 647 [species] remain
and only 44 million acres have preserved their original
forest.”8

Farther south on the American continent, Mexico,
which was originally 50 per cent forested9 has lost
one-fourth of its forest lands each century since the
conquest.10 Much of the forest of Mexico went to fire the
smelters to melt the ores of Mexico’s mines. In some
areas whole forests have disappeared for this purpose.
Today, there are no forests in Mexico that are in their
original condition.

The Poison Air, The Poison Rain

Not only are chainsaws, road building and land
clearing threatening forests, now, the airborne poisons
that float up from civilized areas are killing the forests
of the earth. Notice first began to be taken when lakes
began to die. After the biological death of hundreds
of lakes in Scandinavia and North America, scientists
concluded that it was something in the air that was
causing it. Then it was realized that forests were also
dying. There is controversy as to which combination
of chemicals is doing the most harm, but there is no
doubt that the airborne poisons floating off industrial
areas is the cause. These contaminants are changing the
chemistry of whole regions.

The acidity is changing the pH (acid/alkaline) balance
of the soils. Plants are specifically adapted to this
balance. Different species can tolerate different levels
of acidity. The plants that grow in any ecosystem grow
there because they are adapted to exactly that soil. As
acid rain changes this balance over time, not only forests
but also whole ecosystems will die out.

---

There are many areas in Russia, Scandinavia, Europe
and North America near industrial zones where forests
are already dead. Even areas where there are green
and apparently healthy forests there is also damage.
Close study has shown that the rate of growth of trees
slows down when they are impacted by the poisoned
air. Investigation has shown also that regeneration rates
slow down or stop. That is, there are fewer or no infant
trees growing up from the forest floor.

In Central Europe, the Worldwatch Institute says that:
“Trees covering more than 5 million hectares-an area
nearly half the size of East Germany- now show signs of
injury linked to air pollutants.” In North America, forest
death is beginning in some areas of the northeastern
U.S., southern Canada and with trees in and around
Mexico City. In southern California, the Southeast and
Appalachia, studies have shown impact. It is safe to
say that anywhere industrial poisons reach, ecological
damage occurs.

Acid rain not only effects the natural ecology, but
people and agricultural crops as well. The Worldwatch
Institute states that: “In the United States, [ground
level] ozone is lowering the productivity of corn, wheat,
soybeans, and peanuts, with losses valued at $1.9-4.5
billion each year.”11 Poison industrial air causes human
allergies, contributes to emphysema, heart disease and
other medical conditions.

The Vanishing Tropical Rainforest

Tropical rainforests are the womb of life on this
planet. Some of the older tropical forest areas have been
standing for 70 to 160 million years. Norman Myers
points out that, “Following the glaciations of the Ice
Ages, when much of the temperate zones became barren,
tropical forests supplied a reservoir of life forms by which
the sterilized areas recovered much of their biological
health.”12 As we slide into the depths of the crisis of

---

the Final Empire, much disruption will be due to the
destruction of tropical rainforest. One of the immediate
results is the greenhouse effect. The destruction of
tropical forests contributes a large portion to the carbon
dioxide buildup because tropical forests are the major
reservoirs of carbon on the planet. As tropical forests
are burned and decomposed, the carbon dioxide goes
into the atmosphere along with that from burning fossil
fuel. These are two important factors producing the
greenhouse effect.

Forests in general and tropical forests in particular
are stabilizers of climate for the planet. The green mat
absorbs heat and generates rain. These factors have led
to the climatic patterns that we now have. When these
factors are gone, we can expect wild fluctuations in all
meteorological systems.

Civilization equals aridity

As we reach the depths of the crisis we can expect heat
and aridity, interspersed with torrential rain. There will
be unusual winds, tornadoes and cyclones as weather
systems at different elevations of the atmosphere mix.

The destruction of the bulk of the tropical forests has
happened in the last half of the Twentieth Century. It is
a phenomenon of excess human population, extortion
by the transnational corporate elite and clearance for
temporary cattle grazing by colonial elites. [Emphasis added.]
In 1950, 15 per cent of the earth’s surface remained covered
by tropical forest. By 1975 this was down to 12 per cent and,
given the general exponential increase of civilization, it
will be gone by 2000.13 The rate of destruction is so
large and increasing so fast that in the eighteen years
between 1966 and 1984 the area of tropical forest in
Ivory Coast was down 56 per cent; in Gambia, 35 per
cent; in Costa Rica, 45 per cent; in El Salvador, 37 per
cent; in Nicaragua, 33 per cent; in Ecuador, 17.5 per
cent; in Thailand, 40 per cent; in the Philippines, 28 per
cent; and in Australia, 23 per cent.14

---

The earth’s islands have been devastated by the
expansion of the European Empire. Islands, because
of their isolation usually develop delicate and unique
life systems. They are easy to approach and ship
“resources” from. Because islands are usually small
and easily controlled, colonial elites have been able to
remove their raw materials quickly.

Haiti was once a
tropically forested island. Now, less than 2 per cent of
its original forest remains. After the Native American
population was worked to death, the colonial elite used
African slaves to work the soils of the bottomlands with
plantation agriculture. After the elite was dispatched by
a slave revolt, population began to climb and even the
mountainsides were stripped. The denudation of the
remaining forest has reduced the rainfall by nearly half
in the last ten years. The country now imports 70 per
cent of its food.15

The Planetary Greenhouse

Among the swift planetary changes about to occur
within the next several decades is the warming of the
earth caused by the “Greenhouse effect.” The warming
of the atmosphere is caused in part by the increase in
carbon dioxide created by human activities. The burning
of fossil fuels and deforestation are the primary producers
of the carbon dioxide abundance. The other sources of
warming are methane, the chlorofluorocarbons, oxides
of nitrogen and low elevation ozone. The effect of these
substances in the high atmosphere is to reflect heat
back to the surface of the earth rather than allow it to
refract back out into space. Beginning with the industrial
revolution, the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere
began to rise. In the past one hundred years the level
of carbon dioxide has risen twenty five per cent and the
level of atmospheric methane has doubled.16

There is little scientific dispute that a planetary
warming will occur because of the Greenhouse

---

phenomenon, although there is considerable dispute
concerning the intricacies of all of its effects.

 This change that the planet is about to undergo will
be extremely swift on a geological time scale. It will shred
ecosystems. We know that some plant and animal species
are more resilient when impacted with temperature and
climactic changes than others are. The most susceptible
will be the first to go and as the web of the ecosystem
begins to develop “blank spaces,” the natural flows of
biological energy will be disrupted.

The effects of empire are to shift planetary energy
flows out of cycle. The Greenhouse effect is one of the
major influences in this disruption. As the cycles of
life are deformed on earth we can expect to see wild
fluctuations in temperature, moisture, winds, ocean
currents and other macro-flows of planetary energies.

One aspect of our prescription for balanced living is
to create large inventories of seed. We do not know what
the climates will bring specifically, but the wider range
of seed that we have and the wider the diversity of our
food growing system, [the better the chances of] our survival.

The Failing Ozone Layer

An important role of the high atmospheric ozone layer
is to filter out ultra-violet light. Holes in the ozone layer
have been opening each year and growing larger. The
breakdown of the chemical makeup of the ozone layer
is caused by chlorofluorocarbons, particularly, cfc-11,
and cfc-12. These are produced by refrigerants, aerosol
propellants, solvents and blowing agents for plastic foam
production.17 The immediate effect of more ultra-violet
light on humans will be increased incidence of skin
cancer. The effects on the ecology are less understood.
Different species of plants and animals will react in
different ways to the increase in ultra-violet light. As
these impacts deepen the ecological system will be
damaged in ways similar to the changes being created
by the Greenhouse effect. The species most susceptible

---

to the changes will be the first to go and as they go the
ecosystems will progressively deteriorate. The changes
from the thinning ozone layer and the Greenhouse effect
will be so swift that ecosystems will not have time to
adjust to the changes such as they did when the ice age
retreated over many hundreds of years.

---

1.  International Green Front Report. 1988. Michael
Pilarski. Friends of the Trees pub. P.O. Box 1064,
Tonasket, WA 98855.  p.11.
2.  World Resources 1987: An Assessment of the
Resource Base that Supports the Global Economy. 
International Institute for Environment and
Development and the World Resources Institute.
Basic Books. New York. 1987. pp. 58,59.  (This
study gives a  figure of 4.1 billion hectares of forest
remaining).
State of the World 1988.  Lester Brown, et. al., Worldwatch
Institute.  W.W. Norton.  New York. 1988. p.83. 
(This study gives a figure of 4.2 billion hectares of
forest remaining).
3.  Brown.  op. cit.  p.88.
4.  Man and the Mediterranean Forest: A history of
resource depletion.  J. V. Thirgood.  Academic Press. 
1961.  p. 52.
5.  ibid., p. 57.
6.  ibid., p. 58-59.
7.  ibid., p.73.
8.  Before Nature Dies.  Jean Dorst.  Houghton Mifflin
Co. Boston.  1970.  p.136.
9.  Losing Ground: Environmental Stress And World
Food Prospects.  Erik P. Eckholm. W.W. Norton &
Co. New York. 1976.  p.35.
10.  The Hungry Planet: The Modern World at the Edge of
Famine.  Georg Borgstrom. Collier Books. New York.
Second Edition. p.  309.
11.  State of the World 1985.  Lester R. Brown, et. al. 
W.W. Norton & Co.  1985.  p.121.
12.  The Primary Source: Tropical Forests And Our Future. 
Norman Myers.  W.W. Norton & Co.  1984.  p. 12.

---

13.   Gaia: An Atlas of Planet Management. Norman
Myers, General Editor. Anchor Books. Garden City,
New York. 1984.  p. 42.
14.  World Resources 1987. op. cit.  pp. 268-269.
15.  The Oregonian. (newspaper) Portland, Oregon. 
7/21/88. p. B-3.
16.  Scientific American. September, 1989.  Vol. 261, #3.
“The Changing Climate,” by Stephen H. Schneider.
P. 73.
17.  Scientific American.  op. cit. “The Changing
Atmosphere,” Thomas E. Graedel & Paul J. Crutzen.
p. 63.