Tree planting in tropical forests

Hello to you the reader.

Please I would like to ask for your help. If you think you can help in any way please ask me to be your friend. I am doing this blog, as I want to raise awareness for deforestation around the world.

I am working on two or three projects at the moment, but the one I have the most success with is in Tafi Atome, in Ghana. We wife and I spent 3 months in the village there, and I grew 4000 trees and planted them in the forest. We now send money for three locals to keep growing more trees. I am heading back out there in 7 weeks. I would like support in anyway that you think you can. Something I am desperate for is help with making a web site for example. If you can be of any help in anyway you can think of then please do. If we are going to help our fellow species on this planet then we all need to help each other. And to be honest visa versa...If you have something that maybe I can help with then ask me.

Money is useful too...I am asking for three kinds of sponsors. The first is to sponsor 1/2 acre at £25 per half acre per year, that will be to get the landowner to fallow the land to allow it to revert back to forest. The second form of sponsorship is to sponsor a worker, that is £15 pounds per month. The last method is the one I really like and that is to pack your bags get a visa and head our to Ghana and plant trees. You can do this for one day one week one month. It is entirely up to you. I have decided that anyone who takes me up on this idea will get a free shovel. (SMILE)

Please don't be put off because I have requested your money. I am not doing this for any other reason than to try and help our planet. If you can help in anyway, please get in touch.

A couple of years ago I flew from England to New Zealand because I was worried about my Dad using the chainsaw all by himself. I flew 26,000 miles and cut down about 60 trees. I feel I have done my little bit too.

Well, that is what I think anyway. I have flown around the world enough now to realise the problem of carbon in the atmosphere is only part of the problem. It is amazing, but at 40,000 feet you can really tell there just aren't very many forests left.

A number of years ago, the big debate was all about deforestation. Now, it seems the goalposts have been shifted. Now it is all about carbon offsetting. What a crock of %$^$. It is true that we have taken millions of years worth of stored carbon and thrown it into the atmosphere. Which is the apparent cause of the global warming problem. The problem is in the short term actually, loss of diversity. We are losing species. Global warming is an issue I agree. But that has to do with our extravagant lifestyles, not to do with anything else. But simply because of the way our society has evolved. The media are hugely responsible for this. The consumer driven way of life has created the problem.

I like advances in technology, I fervently believe we need to advance, because after all our time on this planet is not infinite. We need to advance if we want our species not to become extinct. So to that end this consumer society in which we live has furthered our technological advances, but I am talking exclusively about the short term. We do not necessarily need to back pedal, but what we do need is to start addressing some of the areas where we can help.

I liked hearing that Richard Branson was giving a prize to a good idea for helping solve the problem. One of my ideas is to use young people from all over the world to go to egypt and build another pyramid. Out of plastic, after all isn't plastic made of long carbon chains. I mean surely this would in effect act as a carbon sink? A bit of a silly idea, but even silly ideas when the intention is good, is worthy of discussion.

To expand on this idea for instance, say you set rules at the work camp where all the young people would stay, you could set rules. Ie...no tellies, board games, yes, talent shows, yes, etc. In that way you could actually argue that by taking a young person away from New York for example and plonking them in Egypt for 6 months, you have managed to save x amount of wasted energy, even if they did fly there. I mean the whole thing could easily be worked out by the huge number of clever people we have at our disposal. Do you get me?

But what is really annoying me, is that now it is apparently all about reducing emmissions. And yet, you take a train from London King's cross and half the train is first class, you go to currys and you can buy a telly that is absolutely massive. I mean come on solar panels and wind turbines are not helping to reduce emmissions, because we just keep coming up with more ways of wasting the energy we have acquired. If we are really going to get serious, the class system needs to go. You could get a lot more people on a plane for example if you ripped out first and business class. Flying is not comfortable, and I often crave some extra space myself, but if we are going to really make a difference, then I am afraid, we are all in this together.

Deforestation, and lack of diversity I belive is a far more pressing issue in the absolute immediate short term, than global warming, yes, global warming may cause sea level rise, it may cause disruption and suffering to millions of humans, but don't we have that already. In the meantime we are causing the reverse of one of the fundamental laws of the universe and that is covered under the subject of ENTROPY.

Is there anybody out there who would like to go to Ghana for three weeks and plant fruit trees on school campuses. If you do, then contact me via email or this blog for more details. My first blog was a bit zany, I was just having some fun. I will try and be a bit more serious tommorrow. Well, maybe. All the best to you all. Mr Paul

Hello, My name is Paul Brierton. But my friends just call me Paul. This is my small effort to try and help save the planet. Well, truth be known I have been working hard at it for quite a long time. I have planted trees all over the world.

This blog is my attempt to try and rouse some support for my latest effort. Shall I start at the beginning.

Well in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form, and void; and darkness was on the face of the deep. And the spririt of God was hovering over the face of the waters. Then God said "Let there be light"; and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good; and God divided the light from the darkness.

My wife has just told me that that is probably too far back, to be relevant for this venture. OK. Lets speed it up a bit then. Does anybody know about thermodynamics?

Basically it goes that energy cannot be created nor destroyed. Just shifted from one type of energy to another. So this light that God created is from our sun. It shone one day toward earth, and landed on a plant. The plant then turned that energy into chemical energy. And then along came a little slug, who ate a leaf of the plant, this energy is then transformed again. It becomes kinetic energy, although a very very slow form. This slug then gets eaten by a blackbird.

Along comes a hunter who shoots the blackbird, and then bakes the blackbird in a pie. The pie is set before the king. The king who is about to get on an aeroplane, is very happy, as blackbird pie is his favourite. He eats it down just in time to board his plane, bound for Nairobi.

Upon arrival in Nairobi. The king meets his friends and goes on safari. It is his first time to Kenya and he is very happy. However along the way the Landrover in which they are travelling gets a flat tyre. The king who is no stranger to changing flat tyres on Landrovers offers to assist the ranger who is escorting them. But just as they are nearly finished, a cheetah attacks and eats the poor old king. Now this kinetic energy is inside the worlds's fastest land animal. Now we are talking. This is real kinetic energy.

But, the cheetah, full from his latest meal, decides to lie down and have a sleep. During which the cheetah suffers a massive heart attack and dies. It just so happens that this is a very remote part of Kenya and there are no other animals for miles around. Over the days and weeks the cheetah's body rots back into the ground. The sunlight that orignally landed on the plant was eaten by the slug who was eaten by the blackbird, and then eaten by the king, and then eaten by the cheetah, is now back into chemical energy. It was just at this time that there was a storm, and the wind began to blow. The sky was full of Kapok seeds, and it just so happened that one of these seeds landed on the ground where the cheetah had died. The rain begins to fall, and the seed germinates. The kapok seedling begins to grow, it gets bigger and bigger and bigger. It too begins to drop seeds.

One day, a pillow maker comes along. He collects the kapok seeds that are lying on the ground. He makes a very soft and fluffy pillow. Well you will never guess, but my pillow, just happens to be the one that was made by the pillowmaker. So now everytime I lie down and go to sleep, I think about the sunlight that once upon a time shone down and landed on that plant. I thank God for the light, but I also thank God for the slug, for the blackbird, for the king, for the cheetah, and for the kapok plant. I also thank God for my lovely soft pillow.

Now I guess that when most people think about saving the planet they don't really think about their pillows. I hope that this story shows you just how important all the plants are because without them, we would have nothing to collect all that energy from our sun. And we would have no pillows to rest our weary heads after a long hard day.