13. The Role of the Forest
When someone dies the bell tolls. When the forest dies and with it a
whole people, then no-one lifts a finger. Viktor Schauberger^1Only people who love it should care for the forest. Those who view the
forest merely as an object of speculation do it and all other living
creatures great harm, for the forest is the cradle of water. If the forest
dies, then the springs will dry up, the meadows will become barren
and many countries will inevitably be seized by unrest of such a kind
that it will bode ill for every one of us. Viktor Schauberger^2Viktor Schauberger, who believed that the highest quality water
depends on the forest, predicted that deforestation would bring
water shortage and climate change. As equatorial deforestation has
greatly accelerated since he died, it might be useful to summarize
the effects of this devastation.Evolution of the forest
Plants have been around for 420 million years, which is only 9% of
Earth's history. Without plants there could be no life, for plants are
the essential link for converting the Suns energy into food. Trees are
the highest form of the plant, and the most efficient exchangers of
energy between the Earth and the Sun. The forests are the main
source of oxygen, an essential building block of life; they are the
Earth's 'lungs.' There have been three periods when forests have
flourished: in the Carboniferous Age 350 million years ago, when
land vertebrates became established; in the Eocene, 60 million years
ago, when primitive mammals first appeared, and in the last
500,000 years, when the cultures of modern man developed. It
seems that in each case a boost in the oxygen content of the atmos-
phere, which the forests delivered, may have been the trigger for
evolutionary explosion of Earth's life forms.
These extensive forests developed in the equatorial regions
where the heat was available to prime a remarkable engine for mod-
erating the extremes of temperature and the often chaotic nature of
- THE ROLE OF THE FOREST