The CO2 genocide
To humans, trees are
largely immobile beings, swaying only when the wind ruffles their leaves. The
slow growth of the years are, after all, barely noticeable from day to day, and
the most activity occurs when an unfortunate snaps, felling all in its path.
Even to the botanist, this is the most interesting time, as formerly dormant
shrubs can now aspire to the skies.
But to the trees
themselves, life is a constant, vicious struggle for, well, usually light. We
focus on the tropics, because that is where Priscilla lives. On a yearly basis,
Priscilla needs to grow as rapidly as possible to make sure none of her
neighbors crowd her out, while not dying of thirst, trying to stop those
freeloading lianas from climbing on her, and helping out her poor light-starved
babies when she can by passing them nutrients through Danny.
Danny, you see, is her
resident fungi. Unlike some of those damn animals, Danny actually does work in
exchange for the food he takes. Okay, fine, those damn animals come in handy when
it’s time to spread her seeds, but she puts so
much work into making it worth it it’s not really work for them. Danny,
however, is a helpful organism, so he carries around nutrients and chemicals
for her and only skims a little from her.
Of course, the
conversation isn’t always that interesting.
“Stop growing!”
“You stop growing!”
“You stop growing first!”
Priscilla tuned them out
in favor of plotting how best to allow her poor baby to grow. She surveyed the
trees closest to her baby, trying to figure out which one she could kill so her
baby could get light. Not Mira, of course—they were practically sisters, and
besides, she was too hard to overshade. Maybe Tam. Or Dora. Or Carmen, but only
as a last resort.
“You killed my baby!”
“You killed my baby!”
A sudden pulse of fear
stopped the argument.
“Who did that?”
“Who was that?”
“What’s going on?”
“Is my baby going to die?”
“Your baby is going to
die anyways!”
“Mira? What’s wrong? Was
that you?”
Everyone hated Mira. She
was impossible to grow over, and seemed to be unlimited by nutrients. However,
Mira was also relatively generous (and could probably overshade them if she tried),
so they all pretended to like her.
“Humans,” Mira said, with
a little quaver.
That got everyone’s
attention. Even Priscilla stopped thinking about whether or not she could plant
a parasite on Dora. They had taken a long time to identify the latest threat,
and that had represented the work of many tree species around the world and
quite a few birds. Nothing like the threat of being wiped out to make people
talk to each other.
“I’ve figured out what
all of the CO2 stuff is. It’s not us. It’s humans. They’re cutting CO2 emissions!”
Tam let out a whimper and
sprouted a bunch of buds. Even Priscilla could feel herself geared up to grow.
If humans had figured out a way to take in oxygen without giving out carbon
dioxide...
She wanted to grow. She
wanted to grow a lot.
“But I heard the humans
weren’t bad!” Dora protested. “I heard they were planting trees!”
Priscilla spun on her. “You
naïve idiot! Where were they planting
trees?” Just in case, she sent a fertilizer care package to her baby. Danny
rumbled in approval, curled a filament around a worm, and turned it into a
protein melt that he soaked up.
“They want to kill all the
tropical trees!” Tam squeaked. “They’re going to cut my baby down!”
“They’re going to cut you down,” Carmen snarled. “Remember the
Diospyros? Remember how many they cut down?”
All of them shuddered out
some buds at the memory. The distress signal radiating out had been so strong,
Priscilla had grown a bunch of branches within a month that all broke off in
the next storm.
“We have to tell the
Diospyros,” Priscilla said. “Coordinate a counter before they starve and freeze
us all to death.”
Unfortunately, the wood wide web are not always perfectly reliable.
“Kill the Diospyros!”
“Tell the Diospyros!”
“KILL THE DIOSPYROS!”
“KILL THE DIOSPYROS!”
Well, Priscilla
reflected, that was a pretty good plan too.
