Boo! Scary Stories for Halloween – Climate Mama News

In honor of Halloween, the Green Moms Carnival is looking into “Green Burials.” Hosted by Deanna at The Crunchy Chicken, you will find a lot of interesting, ghoulish, and thought provoking ideas and issues – from the literal “how to” stuff to more esoteric ideas. We are contributing with a nod to the less literal side…As you will read in some of the posts, many people are choosing to move away from wooden coffins to more eco-friendly alternatives, as they try to “die” the way they lived, with thoughtful consideration to taking better care of our natural world and its resources. But not everyone thinks this way. What if you didn’t have an option to be buried in a wooden coffin because all the trees were gone and wooden coffins were a thing of the past? Ghost story, science fiction, read on and find out.

We want to “scare you” this Halloween with a few disturbing facts about our American forests. Did you know that all across the American West, lodge pole pines

photo credit: A. Jennis

are dead and dying by the hundreds of millions? This is a phenomenon that is haunting the Canadian West as well. If you missed our earlier posts on Colorado and the mountain pine beetle, please read them now. The gist of the problem is however that as our climate warms, and more severe weather events like drought, floods and low average snowfall and rain events occur with greater frequency, forest fires, invasive species and natures “pests” like the “mountain pine beetle” are all contributing to the mass murder of wide swaths of our forests. This is a phenomenon that is occurring NOW all around the country. Does this sound like a Halloween Ghost Story? Sadly this story is a true one.

Not only are lodge pole pines dying in record numbers across the American West, but our iconic Aspens have also been succumbing to a disease called SAD (Sudden Aspen Death) which is being exacerbated by conditions caused by a changing climate. And if that wasn’t enough to give you nightmares, the elm tree, a fixture of the east coast in the US is also dying in record numbers, a victim of disease and natures pests, with the primary contributing factor our changing climate. We are also causing  the death of many bristlecone pines, the oldest living things on the planet which have survived for thousands of years. One tree nicknamed Methuselah, is over 4,800 years old. The bristlecones are being threatened by the mountain pine beetle.

It is about time we started make the connections between our actions and the irreparable environmental damage happening in our great country. Through our insatiable appetite for fossil fuels, we are releasing greenhouse gases into our atmosphere and that are causing our climate and our natural habitats to change forever. Let’s open our eyes wide this Halloween and say BOO back to the scary nightmares on the horizon. If we want to have forests where we can take our children and our grandchildren to play in and learn, and wood, for our coffins some day, we need to say NO to “green burials” when it comes to burying our forests. We need to stop “burying” our heads in the sand and we need to make the connections, educate our neighbors and ourselves and stop the destruction that is taking place.

Take one step forward today. Sign our petition and ask our forest service and our president to better educate visitors to our national parks on the connection between our actions and our dead and dying forests; before its too late!

Happy Halloween!! Boo, did we scare you?

This entry was posted in Climate Mama News, Green Moms Carnival, Nature, Take a Stand: Action & Advocacy and tagged , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

4 Responses to Boo! Scary Stories for Halloween – Climate Mama News

  1. Nice tie in to the theme of our carnival and some reality with scary facts indeed!!

    • Harriet says:

      Thanks Karen. Halloween can be scary for all kinds of reasons…fortunately, when November 1st comes, we often aren’t scared anymore, sadly this nightmare isn’t going away.

  2. I am sadden about the plight of our trees. As an avid gardener and lover of all plants, I see how our ecology works together like building blocks. When one block flatters others suffer as well. Those trees are home to many other animals as well. Thanks for spreading this scary message.

    • Harriet says:

      Thanks Anna, the more people that really open there eyes and see the consequences of our actions, hopefully the more that will demand we change what we are doing and work on ways to answer nature’s distress calls.

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