Imagine being responsible for all the lives of these noble spirits, when they are planted at the hands of you and yours. Plant Redwood and Ash and Maple and Cottonwood and Oak and Sycamore. The earth gives thanks. The Egrets return. Life is good.

Redwood trees live a thousand years, when the climate makes them happy. But here in this northern California valley of Santa Clara, or silicon, south of the cool native redwoods in the coastal mountains, drenched out here by abundant sun and little rain, they take special nurturing if they are to live well.

When the earth is impacted by the repeated crossings of heavy equipment, 20 ton tracked vehicles used for road construction, for example, trees cannot live well. When the earth is covered for two or three feet with a layer of rock and gravel, with a clay
content of less than 50 percent, trees cannot live well.

Do you want to plant trees in this soil? Do you want them to live well? Fixing the problem is easy, if you have a truck mounted, 24 inch diameter auger. Make sure that your truck is convertible to either tracks or 4 wheel drive with knobby balloon tires, since many of the trees are needed on steep embankments.

Do you want happy urban trees? Well then, simply drill a 24 inch diameter, 4 foot deep tree holes in the impacted soil. Then interconnect with deep trenches all of the holes to each other and to a drainage grade using a 6 inch wide, two foot deep 20 horsepower trencher. Refill the holes and trenches with a mix that incorporates at least 70% of the original dirt (with big rocks and boulders removed), 15% imported sand (get a dump truck for this), and 15% (or less, avoid overdoing it here) imported planter’s mix (you know, potting soil).

Then plant the trees in the refilled holes. Your trees should have be at least 4 feet tall and should have at least a 12 inch deep, well developed root ball. They are being thrown to the wolves. A two inch diameter, eight foot stake, at least one per tree, is recommended.

The more trees you plant together the better. Their canopies and their root systems will interconnect, allowing them greater wind stability and moisture retention.

The urban forest is a technological forest, an artificial forest, one that must be maintained if it is to thrive, and your job isn’t done yet. Water the trees via bubblers (all of them adjustable up to 30 gallons per hour each) which drip into a 4 inch diameter 2-4 feet deep gravel filled PVC pipe (perforated every 3 inches on the pipe surface with 1/2 inch diameter holes), into a 6 inch diameter three foot deep hole. Make sure there are nearly as many bubblers as trees, and position the bubbler holes adjacent to either trenches or tree basins. Another method that works on freeways and places where the systems will be undisturbed is to use soaker hoses. Your watering system should be on an automatic timer and you need to water the trees once per week all summer long (enough to fill percolation basis around their canopies) for their entire lifespan.

If all that heavy equipment is too rich for your blood, prepare to do it yourself. You will need to spend a season breaking earth with a pick and digging it out with a shovel and hauling it around with a wheelbarrow. Give yourself a break, using the 2.5 pound pick as much or more than the 5 pound pick, and try to alternate between a right handed stance and a left handed stance. You should probably get yourself a good pair of gloves, too, and be sure to wear safety glasses when you are breaking through rock. You may need a 20 pound “breaker bar.” And remember to install that watering system, while you’re at it…

Then plant an urban tree grove, and watch it thrive. Every 10-20 years you should consider planting, removing or replacing trees throughout the grove in order to keep its total biomass increasing as fast as possible. It will bring our global carbon debt down.

Yeah, and it will make it nicer too. We know, Gilligan.

There is nothing in this world more powerful than an idea. History is full of examples where a shared idea changed entire civilizations, for good or ill.

For the first time in human history, an idea can be broadcast via the internet to every corner of the earth at negligible cost. If the idea has intrinsic power, the message will carry itself, from one viewer to another.

Why is reforesting the earth such an idea? It doesn’t have an audience waiting with fists full of dollars, like perpetual financial data, search engines, interactive games and other amusements. It doesn’t have the corollary to that, multi-million dollar marketing budgets, either.

But there is a worldwide audience waiting for this idea and the information to help them contribute to making it a reality. A new worldwide generation of people who share a global consciousness and who are ready for something more redeeming than the endless search for material riches. Reforesting the earth is one of the highest callings that anyone can choose to follow. Reforesting the earth unites people. It requires hope. It requires cooperation.

To reforest the earth we must clean up our rivers, and salvage our topsoil. To reforest the earth we must learn new models of capitalism, that have a longer view and take a less exploitative approach. To reforest the earth we must include all the inhabitants of the restored forests, enlisting their support by letting them own their fair share of the harvests.

Reforesting the earth requires appropriate technology, an evolving formula for implementing technology in harmony with nature.

Reforesting the earth is an endeavor that will not only ensure the survival of our planet, but in the successful achievement of this goal will lead to a more enlightened global civilization.

This message ecoworld.com seeks to spread via the internet. Without the power of money and marketing muscle. But with the power of an idea. By May 2045, let’s cover five million square miles with 80 billion great canopy trees. That’s all it takes. Let’s put the forest back.

The new green revolution is the fusion of nature and technology. Nature and technology in harmony. Nurture the planet, ourselves, and make money, and, of course, reforest the earth!

Ecosystems are biological, they are economic, but they are also macro-physical and micro-physical. Look to the science of astro-physics, elementary particles. Don´t these phenomenon exist in reality, in an ecosystem? And if so, isn´t everything we build and design, no matter how advanced it may be technologically, just an ecosystem?

Nature and technology are not only in harmony, nature is technology! We are realizing that economies are ecosystems that can´t be managed well by central state planning. Technology is a force of evolution. This is the next green revolution. We are realizing that technology itself is the creation of ecosystems. Technology can be the friend of the environment, a force for its survival and prosperity.

lf technology is nature, then freedom of resource use is wealth and survival. Ecologists, profiteers and survivalists share fundamental traits. Outer space is the place where no legal or enforceable power can regulate resource use. The United States should deregulate and colonize the Solar System at once. Technology necessary to sustain outer space habitats will employ the same technology necessary to eliminate or recycle 100% of urban waste.

There is an infinity of choices that every living creature faces in every instant of time. This makes 50 years a very, very long time. Time enough to grow to 8 billion people? Time enough to reforest the planet and harvest timber at extremely high sustainable levels. Time enough to colonize the moon and mars.

Reforest the earth! Nurture the planet, ourselves, and make money. All of this follows from learning how to reforest the earth. Giant new forests of diverse renewable products; timber, fruit, nuts, and other harvestable flora and fauna. How much value can such an enlightened plantation yield on a sustainable basis? What better way to reclaim wasteland?

COMMITTEE OF ONE BILLION
If one billion people on earth plant 3 trees per year all over the world, we will add 5 million square miles of forest to the world in twenty years (if the trees are 35 feet apart, which is why they have to be great canopy trees).

NATURE AND TECHNOLOGY IN HARMONY
Astonishing but true, that people still don´t realize that reforesting the earth and colonizing the solar system are mutually reinforcing ideas! Big bubbles filled with air, water and redwood trees, orbiting the earth at la Grange point five (”L5″). Sounds good to me. Closed loops in space equal quatenary cleaning on earth. More systems means lower costs. Technological crossovers, shared markets - bubbles in space and enlightened plantations on earth. Get it?

FEWER LAWS & REGULATIONS
Let the Eagle land, of course. But what if from that moment onward your land was under federal control? No new garage, no driveway, not even an aquaduct to save the Aral Sea. Environmental protection stifles remediation efforts! Of course we need laws and regulations. When do they cross the line? When does one rather shoot than let the Eagle land?

LIBERTARIAN SOLUTIONS
Elephants and Rhinos (in Africa, mind you) live because the locals made a deal with the hunting safari tours. Elephants cost $12,000 USD to kill, Rhinos USD 28,000. Is it right. No. Are the species extinct? No. Libertarians lose a lot of fans here but who saved the Rhino? Hunters. I´m so sorry. The market while not sancrosanct does have an inevitability that it is better to throw jujitsulike into productive ends than try to thwart. What would the libertarians think of Nukes? Nice Star Trek like clean antimatterlike Nukes?

COMMITTEE OF ONE MILLION?
Ok so we´ve only planted about 1,500 trees. That would more than qualify our humble ecoworld.com nursery for the committee of ten million. To restore the forest canopy of the planet to 20 million square miles, ten million people would have to plant 300 trees per year for 20 years. Now. Just think. We´ve almost qualified for the committee of one million. Because only one million people have to plant 3,000 trees per year for 20 years, in order to restore the earth to its original forest canopy. That´s only one in every 6,000 people on earth. Do you and yours want to be one in 6,000? Do you want to be a member of the committee of one million?

REFORESTATION IN ACTION
It gets very hot in San Jose. Well over 100 degrees on the hottest of days. But in the wide Sycamore Groves and groves of Ash and even Oak, when they´re thick enough, you can stay cool.