Gentle Decline 1/35: Trees & Tribulations

Hello. This issue is a a double-barreled, two-topic extravaganza (some exaggeration for effect has been employed), dealing with tree-planting plans, and taking a look at Ireland's new Climate Action Plan (among other legislative tools), which is referred to as the "Climate Action and Low Carbon Development (Amendment) Act 2020". Also, reading the thing has infected me with parentheses.

Let's look at the Climate Action Plan first, so we can go on to the more pleasant tree-planting after. It does a few things, most of which are dedicated deckchair shuffling in terms of language and responsibility, and adds the concept of 5 year carbon budgets; the amount of carbon which the State is allowed to produce - that is, emissions minus carbon sinks - from 2021-2025, 2026-2030, 2031-2035, and so forth. The overall aim is for carbon neutrality by 2050.

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I've read the whole thing. There's a summary here, with a link to the text of the full act. In my own summary: I'm really not impressed.

Here are the issues that stand out. First, it devolves responsibility to the local authorities, when it is abundantly clear that they need to be handled at a local level. The amount of carbon, or other pollutants, emitted at the level of any one local authority is never going to be particularly relevant to the overall country, but it does allow the national level - the Oireachtas Committee - to shrug and point the finger at particular local authorities whose figures for a given period are poor.

Second, it sets the carbon budgets up in a very weird way. If the target for a given period is missed, then the following target is amended to compensate. That sounds good, right? Except that the target for the following period may be amended by, at most, 1%. That is not a typo, that is one percent. However, if the target for a given period is exceeded - that is, the State produces less pollution, provides more reduction, etc - the target for the following period may be amended the other way by that much, with no limit. So if someone messes up, the next target doesn't really change, but if we do good, the next target is eased off instead. And of course the targets are not set by this legislation; it just allows for them to be set.

Third, there is explicitly no requirement for the relevant Minister to report on compliance with the plan and/or measures to fix compliance until 2023.

There is no account anywhere in it that I can find of what will happen to local authorities or the state if the carbon budgets are not met.

There's a report in the Irish Times calling this "ambitious" and using words like "transform". I agree that it could be transformative and indeed ambitious, but until we see actual carbon budgets (and measurement rules), it's neither. And with the escape clause of failure being met with only a 1% change in the next target, while success reduces the next target, plus the weaselry of not having to report on anything until 2023, I can't see it having impact worth, well, much at all.

Further, it concentrates solely on carbon emission and sequestration; there're two mentions of biodiversity, and nothing at all about flooding. It is laser-focused on closing the barn door of greenhouse gases.

The really irritating bit of this, though, is that I was hoping - in the face of the evidence - that the Green Party's giving in to the joint conservative forces of Fine Gael and Fianna Fail on just about every other legislation so far was in order to get some actual muscle into this bill. Instead, it is substantially the same as the bill outlined in May of 2019 - which was composed when Fine Gael alone were running things. So I really have to question what the Green Party think they're at. They're effectively a one-issue party, and they should be using their considerable leverage on that one issue. Instead, they appear to be standing idly by and twiddling their thumbs while the plutocrat parties get on with the reality-denying business as usual.

And in any case, 2050 is too far out to make a meaningful difference, and long-term goals lead to procrastination - see the 2020 Climate Reality Check from Breakthrough for some details on that. The 2021 Budget is just out, and I've yet to take a proper look at it - the first glance says it's a little better in environmental and climate terms. But I bet they're still doing sod all about flooding or reforestation.

Anyway. I shall shout at the Greens on Twitter, and in the meantime, let's do some thinking about trees.

One of the most useful things we can do for the future, at a societal level, is to plant trees. Tree absorb carbon, provide habitat for insects, birds and animals, absorb groundwater to prevent flooding, and hold back erosion by literally holding the ground together. Deciduous hardwoods are among the best for all of these purposes, and since we're currently seeing quite a few of Ireland's native ash trees dying, this is a particularly good time to get more trees going.

To this end, I've been collecting acorns, hazelnuts, and chestnuts. After they get appropriate treatments, I'm going to plant them in milk carton "pots" and grow them into seedlings. And once they're well-established seedlings, I'm going to see about planting them. Some will be given to people who own land, in order to have good solid trees there. Some will be planted in places that I already have an eye on in hedgerows and odd corners. And some are going to go into visible places that I reckon could do with trees, with stakes and some wire to make them look official, and we'll see if they stay there. I bet they will. I did some guerilla tree planting in my teens, and many of those trees are still in place today. If you'd like an oak, hazel, or chestnut, let me know, and I'll put one aside for you.

There are some very disparate opinions about how to plant trees from seed. Acorns and chestnuts, according to some sources, need to spend some time in deep cold, and others say to just stick them in soil. Hazelnuts have an odd process recommended which involves burying them in sand until they germinate, and then planting them. I'm going to do some fairly wide reading on recommendations, and go with whatever seems closest to an ideal natural process, modulated for the fact that the Irish climate already has much less frost than even 20 years ago (at least, I think so - some brief cold bursts in recent winters may have skewed that).

I've been collecting the milk cartons for these things since last autumn. There are loads of them stashed in the shed, and Nina is looking forward greatly to me putting them to use so that there'll be some more room in there. It turns out that a milk carton - the cardboard 1l ones, not the plastic jug things for 2l and upward - with the top cut off is a pretty ideal growing pot for a sapling. It's impermeable, so you need to put a hole in the bottom, but otherwise that impermeability makes it every bit as good as a flowerpot; the waxy texture means the roots of the growing tree don't grip onto it as would happen with terracotta, and they stand up neatly on their own, unlike other plastic or paper wraps. They're also shaped to push the root downward, which is useful.

All the nuts I've collected come from fairly local trees, within 2km of the house. I'm not really aware of different species within chestnuts, but the ones I have are mostly from a vigorous tree of about 25 years of age, in the Cluain Aoibhinn estate, and they look, as chestnuts do, very fine. The hazelnuts are from a field that's within about 300m of the house, in straight line distance, with some more from the Straffan Road. And the pedunculate acorns are from the same field, from a tree at the very end of the same Cluain Aoibhinn estate, and from more trees on the Straffan Road, as well as some seriously fat examples from the very tail end of a semi-secret lane off the Rathcoffey road, with a few sessile acorns from a tree halfway along that same lane. I've also noticed in the last few days that there are a few acorns on the small oaks that overhang the end of the back yard, so I shall add a few of those as well. But definitely all local, which pleases me.

Successful saplings will be about 20cm high by this time next year, across all the species, and the hazels might be quite a bit bigger. They could be planted out at that stage, or they can be kept in small-ish pots (probably not the milk cartons anymore, though) for another year. Slow growth via root constriction isn't bad for young trees, it turns out; it makes them rather stronger when they grow up. This makes sense of all the world's oldest trees being weird bent over things growing in cracks in rocks, now that I come to think of it.

Anyway. Trees. Trees good. More trees better. And the limit at which more trees are no longer better is a long, long way away, so more trees will remain better for at the very least, our lifetimes.

This issue brought to you by governmental weaselry, Assam tea, mushroom foraging, and the installation of a cat door for a small black cat (not ours). I'm giving up on trying to say what the next issue will be in advance, but I'm taking requests - hit reply to make yours.

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