Re: planting trees from warmer climes
Guy i know has been doing this. initially plants em in half whisky barrels on a dolly, wheels em out in spring, back in in winter, fora couple years, progressively going to longer winter exposure (got to be careful here, rootball in half barrel will freeze faster than the ground) then drops em in a hole by a southfacing stone wall. He does this staggered so every year he is planting another. Gives him time to build out the stone wall ... he has other plans for that wall ...
Also when he wheels em out, he puts them in the spot they are going to go in in the ground. Then he digs the hole, knocks the barrel staves apart, roughens up the rootball, sprays with root stimulator, plops in the hole which he lined with appropriate soil, and waters profusely.
Like he says, you win some, you lose some, some get rained out, but you dress for all of them. As you guessed, he was a relief pitcher.
Re: "Call me cynical, but maybe the more important thing to focus on would be to ensure an organised enough civilisation still exists that would be able to plant trees en masse, sourcing them from other parts of the world in reaction to changes playing out on the ground?"
I have been called cynical myself. In fact, i am cynical enough to wonder what an effort by an "organised enough civilisation that would be able to plant trees en masse, sourcing them from other parts of the world," might look like. Especially a civilization that had allowed matters to deteriorate to that point to begin with, or its successor after ecocidal collapse. I do seem to recall that China is now thus attempting to halt encroaching desert, and there are similar, but smaller scale efforts in Africa. And I see the efforts of the CCC (USA, depression years) and the vast monocultures they planted over strip mined land, and i see the same type of efforts by "reclamation" after strip mining today and the words of Aldo Leopold about living in a "world of wounds" echo in my head. I suppose this "reclamation," is better than the tailing piles by forsaken places like Shamokin. (PA, you can look at satpics, not nearly as bad as some others, but an old, beaten, coal town. "Rode long, whipped hard, and put away wet.")
Re: "By and large, I expect the biosphere will take care of itself (notwithstanding a lot of extinctions). It's our capabilities and ourselves that are really threatened."
I will quote Kingsnorth here: "And what really keeps me awake at night is the possibility that this civilisation could survive having destroyed 90% of the rest of life on Earth."
In these contexts, see Ellul on technology traps. But that is a discussion for another day and another thread.
I dress some wounds as best I can. But I have to pass so, so, many by.
See, i don't plant trees to save the world. I gave up hope of doing that long ago. I plant them to save my soul. One might insert an "l" in the word "save" if one were cynical enough.
sidd