[music]

Melissa Harris-Perry: Thanks for sticking with us on The Takeaway, I'm Melissa Harris-Perry.

Across the globe, ancient trees that have stood for thousands of years are dying. Giant sequoia's only found in the California Sierra Mountains, Italy's ancient olive trees, New Zealand's kauri tree. The loss of these trees has immediate effects on the health of forests and long-term impacts on the forest's ability to clear excess carbon dioxide. Historian and Professor Jared Farmer says these ancient trees are important for reasons beyond the issue of climate change. They also tell us about our shared history, culture, and traditions.

Speaking for the trees today is Jared Farmer, professor of history at the University of Pennsylvania and the author of Elderflora: A Modern History of Ancient Trees. Jared, thanks for joining The Takeaway.

Jared Farmer: It is my pleasure. Thank you for having me.

Melissa: Tell me about some of the ancient trees and regions that are of most concern.

Jared: Old trees are in big trouble. They're dying before their time. If you think about it thousand-year plants have lived through so many climatic variations over decades and centuries already, and if they're dying now in groups that's a sign of thresholds being crossed and a harbinger of even bigger changes to come. Trees can't migrate after all, and there's only so much stress they can take. For your listeners, I can quickly list a few worrisome examples of ancient trees and crises. You mentioned one of them, sequoias, up to 20% of all mature sequoias one in five, they went up in flames and died in 2020 and 2021, 20%.

I don't think we have fully processed that news yet. This is the largest and most fire-resistant plant on the planet, which can live up to 3,000 years in age. Meanwhile, whole strands of Great Basin and bristlecone pine, the longest living and most drought-resistant plants on the planet, which can live up to 5,000 years, have recently been sucked dead dry by bark beetles, which is something that's never been seen before. Finally, many of the oldest African baobabs, the longest living of all flowering plants at over 2,000 years, and the largest plants on the continent, have recently buckled under the stress of drought.

Earth is experiencing not just a decline of biodiversity, but chrono diversity. That's a word I invented because I think we need it. I would define chrono diversity as the existence of species of various evolutionary ages, species of various potential lifespans, and also specimens of various ages. We lose all these dimensions of time and longevity when we lose ancient trees and cohorts. That's not just an ecological loss, like you said, that's a profound cultural and spiritual loss. That's the real subject of my book.

Melissa: Say more about that cultural and spiritual loss, in what sense?

Jared: I really wonder what humans would be without ancient trees as they engage our deepest faculties to revere, to meditate. If you think about the Buddha at the Bodhi tree. Also to analyze scientifically. They inspire long-term thinking, they encourage us to be sapient, wise. indeed, I would number ancient trees among a very short number of cosmic symbols that are shared nearly universally across all recorded history. So many of our cosmologies and mythologies and scriptures and epics and folk tales include one or more of these elements.

I'm struck that these foundational experiences of the cosmic shared by humans for more than a million years are in danger of disappearing in really an evolutionary instant. We humans may seem infinitely adaptable, but I'm not sure what would happen to our species if everything in the world becomes young, new, novel, and virtual.

Melissa: That idea of a young, novel, new, even virtual, you're speaking there of what also feels like a very human and particularly very US American tradition of believing in a frontier, believing that the best is always in front of us that the new, the young, is always an improvement on what was old and ancient. How does that US American frontiersman concept challenge or sit not as well with indigenous stewardship or a concept of a broader historical connection?

Jared: Maybe I'll go back to Giant Sequoia because they were unknown to US Americans until the Gold Rush era. Then in the midst of the Gold Rush and the California genocide and this invasion of indigenous California, sequoias became known and instantly became one of the most famous trees in the world and were instantly called the oldest things in the world because people assumed that biggest meant oldest, and assumed in a very racist way that because these trees had fire scars, they must have been maliciously targeted by pyro-maniacal "savages."

Instead of seeing native peoples as having lived with these trees for millennia, there was this sense that we know how to manage these trees and we will manage them essentially by removing native peoples from the scene and then essentially turning these trees into a museum and protecting them from fire. The problem is these trees need fire and if they don't have fire for a long time, then there's too much fuel on the forest. The recent, this heartbreaking mortalities in sequoia country are in some ways a direct result of this hubris of settler time.

Melissa: Is it too late or can we protect the ancient trees of the forest?

Jared: I'll just say a few things. There are still old-growth forests being destroyed right now in Brazil, Indonesia, also British Columbia. There are ancient woodlands Pinyon–juniper and the US Southwest of oaks and the Cross Timber regions of the south that are under threat from development. These all deserve protection and activism. Fundamentally though, if we want old trees above the ground, we do just need to keep fossil carbon in the ground. We need to decarbonize the economy with it our politics and that's really hard to imagine. I know. It's going to take a long time.

I would say the first step is just to insist on hope that there will be a future and it will contain trees and it will contain people who care about trees, care for them, tell stories about them, given the incredibly old history of people venerating trees. If you visualize that future, go about your daily business. Be a caretaker, a caremaker, a sustainer, life-giver. Among plants, there are ephemerals and annuals, biennials, perennials and beyond them all is a category that I call perdurables, and plants like that have perdurance. Perduarance is resilience over time and we could all use that.

We can cultivate our own perdurance by caring for old trees and the old-to-be and keeping up these long-term relationships along with the plants is a rejection of the end. I take hope in the certainty that the future oldest tree of the decarbonized world must already be here somewhere alive.

Melissa: Jared Farmer is a professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania, and author of Elderflora: A Modern History of Ancient Trees. Jared, thank you for this conversation.

Jared: Thank you again for having me.

[music]

Copyright © 2022 New York Public Radio. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use at www.wnyc.org for further information.

New York Public Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline, often by contractors. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of New York Public Radio’s programming is the audio record.