Tree Planting Calls Attention To Global Warming

On April 21, a group of students from Alice Lloyd Pilot Program's class in Planet Management planted a ten-foot Norway Maple in the U-M diag. A plaque will be mounted by the class on an adjacent concrete bench. The plaque will spell out several major ways in which global warming can be reduced including global reforestation.

The class claims that this will require intensive reforestation efforts around the world. According to the World Watch lnstitute, planting 320 million acres of trees (nearly twice the size of Texas) by the year 2000 in developing countries would cut net carbon dioxide releases from tropical forests by one-half. This wood would meet growing demands created by fuel and industrial producís and rehabilítate deteriorating ecosysterns. As trees grow they absorb carbon dioxide through photosynthesis, storing the carbon as wood and giving us oxygen. The reduction of carbon dioxide reduces global warming.

According to James E. Hansen of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, global warming has begun. Five of the warmest years of this century have occurred in the last decade. With an increase in carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, methane, and chloroflourocarbons the earth is overinsulated as the atmosphere traps heat that normally escapes into space. If we continue our present course a rise of three to eight degrees fahrenheit could occur as soon as 2030. This would result in earth's highest temperatures of the last two million years.

The class utilized a global version of the action research community problem solving process developed at the U-M School of Natural Resources.They decided which issues they were going to work on and what actions to take. The class chose to plant the tree because of global deforestation presently occurring at the rate of five football fields a second. The newly planted tree represents the student 's hope that others will also take initiative to reduce global warming.

Project donors include U-M Plant Operations, Turner's Nursery and Landscape Contractors, Rainforest Action Movement and the Alice Lloyd Residence Hall House Council.