William Moomaw is a global authority on climate change. A founder of the Center for International Environment and Resource Policy at the Fletcher School of Diplomacy in 1992, he was a lead author of five Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports, including the 2007 report that shared the Nobel Peace Prize. It was his realization that we had a global problem with a mounting tide of carbon in the atmosphere, and if it kept going as it had been, we would soon be unable to breathe!

Why? Human beings had been clearing forests since way before the Industrial Revolution, and if the speed of rising carbon continued, he realized, we would all expire. 

How is that, you ask? What do forests have to do with “breathing?” It turns out, a lot! The tallest, biggest trees in forests, collaborate with what I call “the forest underground.” Tall canopy tree leaves (translate: “solar collectors”) provide streams of sugar-waters to feed the forest underground, while pulling carbon dioxide (CO2) out of the atmosphere. The “underground” is just trying to survive, too, so it is getting the carbon to build those annual rings we are so familiar with, higher up into the solar sunshine. (Remember counting those tree rings to find out how old a tree was before it was cut down?)

It is the “forest underground” that helps turn carbon into tree rings, and then this army of tiny underground beings, worms and fungi (Hint: with flood water held its its pores) sends the oxygen back to the atmosphere for the four and two-legged folks (like us!) birds and other living beings, to breathe.

Moomaw is joining us in Greenfield this Sunday! He comes with years of insights. We are so fortunate that he is able to join us at the (non-denominational) Unitarian Universalist in Greenfield. While he will offer the good news about the science, the real meat of his spoken word to us is why he has made “pro-forestation” such a high priority in his life!

 Watch the YouTube video, “William Moomaw: Standing Trees Vermont: Proforestation” to learn more and join us for the real celebration!

All Souls, 399 Main St. (opposite Greenfield’s new Library and old P.O. (free parking on Sundays). Excerpts of YouTube if needed, 10 a.m. before his program starting promptly at 10:30 a.m. on Sunday, April 7. It is well worth your time!

Pamela Kelly

Greenfield