Aligning with Life: a Spiritual Response to Climate Crisis

I was reading an essay, To Take Wilderness in Hand by Michelle Nijhuis, in the book Old Growth.  The essay is about the controversy among restoration experts and Native planet advocates about whether to simply restore or "migrate' endangered species of trees, insects, birds and animals.  For many, many decades the position of both has been that "right plant in right place" meant only native plants that grew here before western contact.  We have all seen the havoc an invasive plant causes, right?   And fundamental to that is understanding that the plant is not destructive in its own native habitat.  But transplanted it does not have natural predators or other factors that limit it.  It can over run other plants and take sun and water from them and destroy balance.  We all know how transported insects have devastated whole forests who had no defense against them and no natural predator birds- and thus killing trees wildly.

This becomes even hotter debate when you start talking about animals and birds (and insects) being moved around or creating mitigation areas for them.   Many of the efforts to simply move animals to suit humans have failed miserably resulting in the death and even extinction of the animal species.   But also moved animals have wound up without predators ravishing the area they moved to.  The removal of predator species like wolf, coyote or bear have led to the gross over population of species they prey upon like deer or rabbits to the point that those animals then destroyed the local flora and fauna because things were so out of balance.  (Equally dramatic stores about the restoration of a whole ecosystem when those animals - wolves or buffalo were reintroduced where they had been.)

Therefore, naturalists have generally just taken the position that we should not be intervening - not transplanting plants, or moving animals, or removing ones we don't like...that we should leave nature to her own rebalancing methods.

However, now climate change has gotten so bad, so a new debate is taking place.   Particularly about trees that normally migrate to different temperature zones very slowly (by decades) by birds dropping seeds some score of miles away and the tree growing there and reproducing.   This is neither the speed nor distance that would allow them to migrate out of severe climate change.   Because a state 100 to 200 miles north may in fact come to have the same weather conditions that historically its neighbor to the south has had before climate change, some restoration specialists are now recommending trying to wholesale move species north to try to save them.   As we are also experiencing mass extinctions happening of many species greatly exasperated by climate change there are similar conversations about whether moving animals will be a necessity and what do we owe them given what we have done to their liveable environment?

As I read this essay, I felt deeply conflicted.  I have been in the "don't mess with things - God already created perfection" camp.  Aware that we have only unbalanced that perfection.  But the idea of no longer having any CA Redwoods is certainly unbearably sad.   What do we owe other species in the mess we have made?   Will trying to correct only create new unforeseen problems as has tended to happen with our interventions.  Even with the best science available to us - how would we not just screw it up more?  The article mentioned that in early attempts already made some succeeded and some failed.  In Diana Beresford-Kroger's autobiography she mentions her current project of bringing all rare nearly extinct trees to her property in CA to try to preserve them.   Her journey to find them has been remarkable and some last living species she found not in their tradition areas but where someone had transplanted the plant elsewhere, and it has survived therefore pests or blight. 

I lay meditating upon this and what came to me was a great surprise but did align with the notion of living in reciprocal relationship with plants and animals.   I thought about how Native people ask plants permission to harvest them and in other ways try to tune into them and listen to what they have to say.  It occurred to me that before these sorts of interventions could happen only if someone with the right skills first tuned in and asked if the plant or animal wanted to be moved.   Then if the answer to that was yes, a relationship of empowering service to the plant would need to take place.   The human moving it would literally have to listen to its guidance - its yes or its no about the location into which it would be relocated.

I realize for some this will be seen an idea way to airy fairy.   But for those that have followed the most recent science showing how plants and trees communicate with each other, and the great complexity of qualities that makes friendly habitat...it is not farfetched to say that a plant knows what it needs.

But what I am particularly struck by here is that this is a profound form of aligning with life this is - of coming into relationship with plants and animals in a way that respects their nature and their intelligence.   This is not a new concept for indigenous people but for western science this is an anthropomorphic approach to things.  Given the glaring failures of western science and the centuries of stewardship of Earth by Indigenous people we would do well to respect such approaches.

But beyond that it points powerfully to the way we need to conduct ourselves to start to stop and repair climate change.   We must align with life's longing for life itself.  Joanna Macy has always said Earth is on our side.  Earth also is fighting for survival.   But the Creator most certainly has programed everything to support life.  This is in fact the only way to be in reciprocal relationship with Earth - is to be in alignment with life itself.  To just serve life.  This is the only road map we need for how to fight for the life on this planet - is to align with life.