The Year of the Tree

By Marilynn Stark

I. PREMISE:

                    If we are to progress holistically as a highly technological culture, we must seek a restitution for the planet-wide ecological damage already done.  This is unlikely to occur unless we unify all the peoples of the Earth to a nobler cause, a cause which lives in our hearts as nature's citizens, but which cannot now readily see its political counterpart, its actuation.  The essential imbalance of man which is bringing about the ever-progressing dissolution of our ecological balance as a planet, is the inability of political man to answer to the technologically-directed scientific acumen.  

                    We must therefore work to seek a bridging in this split between practical know-how in the scientific realm, and political readiness and ability to exert this vital know-how.  For only if such a bridging between the scientific thinker and the political sphere occurs, will we be enabled to unify and accomplish, or even endeavor to accomplish, a meaningful and significant change in our technological evolution in the direction of cleanliness and order;

                    Worldwide accord on scientific acumen with political righteousness, acting on right duty, will advance the cause of mankind to remain ecologically viable;

II. IDEA:

                    To couple the scientific development of a man-made "polymer" of cellulose for the purpose of producing paper with the political event answerable to the 'Greenhouse Effect' : that there should be declared and honored upon the completion of the invention of artificial paper a 'Year of the Tree,' whereupon all the respective nations of the Earth will preserve existing forests with legislative call for 'forever wild' tracts, and whereupon each nation shall plant trees, forests, so as to remunerate the atmosphere's oxygen by transpiration, so as to ecologically work against the CO2 buildup in the upper atmosphere known as the 'Greenhouse Effect';

III. CHARTER:

                    To establish among the international political and scientific communities of several nations a 'Charter of The Year of the Tree' in order to found this political movement of strict scientific import as according to the terms of association and enterprise most agreeable and conducive to success in endeavor, and pleasant in its generosity towards those nations who need financial backing;

PRELIMINARY WORK:

                    In the terms of the charter, parallel to the seeking of the scientific development of man-made paper built from an artificial likeness of the cellulose polymer, there must be seedlings of trees planted from seeds in nurseries for future transposition everywhere, which seedlings will be planted during the year when actual production of the artificial paper begins.  

Marilynn Lea Stark / 12 April, 1989 [2nd Draft] Biology Library / Fairchild / Columbia University / 116th & Broadway / New York / N.Y. 10027

© 1989 by Marilynn Lea Stark   All Rights Reserved.

The Year of the Tree is under the specific copyright of Marilynn Stark in the United States Copyright Office in Washington, D.C.