Justice, Peace, Integrity<br /> of Creation
Justice, Peace, Integrity<br /> of Creation
Justice, Peace, Integrity<br /> of Creation
Justice, Peace, Integrity<br /> of Creation
Justice, Peace, Integrity<br /> of Creation

The war and the mushrooms

Kelebeklerblog 02.12.2021 Miguel Martinez Translated by: Jpic-jp.org

The geo-engineering or other top-level interventions by states will no way make the difference. The fight against climate change passes first through our everyday life, even our "not to do", for example our not damaging the soil. After all, there is already a device capable of addressing the CO2 emissions issue; indeed, it solved it eons ago, completely transforming the atmosphere in which we live: it is the mycorrhizal fungal network.

As even off-road owners know by now, a dangerous climate change is underway, closely linked to CO2 emissions into the atmosphere.

Until Covid sent them all back to exchange messages on WhatsApp, a few million young people protested on the world streets shouting, "Do something!" Do not blame anyone, as our species is like this: the last demonstration for the climate I attended, it was raining, it was a Black Friday, and while a dozen activists mega-phoned in Piazza della Repubblica (Rome), a few thousand boys who had skipped the class rooms entered the Apple store to see the latest model of smartphones. With Good intentions undoubtedly; in fact Hell, being paved with them, enjoys state-of-the-art infrastructure.

"Doing something" means making war, war means immense amounts of public money poured into private pockets under minimal control conditions ("what are you messing around with, it's an emergency!"). The most enthusiastic statists, passionate about revolutionary novelties, have always been the big capitalists.

Actually, there is series of proposals concerning geo-engineering, with solutions as creative as the bomb on Hiroshima. For example, since white reflects, we should make the world whiter by cutting down all the woods in the snowy areas, or we could fill the fields with genetically modified wheat made into albino. Another proposal tells about literally obscuring the sky, filling the atmosphere with sulfur dioxide particles fired by cannons or launched from military aircraft. Projects far from being realized for now, but which reveal a mental attitude that is immediately recognizable.

Now, there is already a device capable of addressing the issue of CO2 emissions: indeed, it solved it eons ago, completely transforming the atmosphere in which we live. Called mycorrhizal fungal network, it has been in operation for half a billion years, absorbing as much CO2 every year as the United States produces and it costs nothing. A nice article by Toby Kiers and Merlin Sheldrake on The Guardian talks about it.

I confess one thing: even if at school they taught me that mushrooms are a separate kingdom, nevertheless when I hear ‘nature’ I think of a small tree with all green leaves. With, maybe, some small colored mushrooms underneath. On the contrary, mushrooms are not plants and they are not even green, and they live almost totally underground, so we totally ignore them. I'm not sure I'll remember tomorrow the term mycorrhizal fungal network, which indicates the intimate association between fungi (mykos in Greek) and the roots of plants, on which practically everything depends.

So, I was open mouthed when I learned that in the upper ten centimeters of the ground, this network is as long as half our galaxy. That it incessantly absorbs carbon, feeding the entire life system of the only planet in the universe where we know (for now) there is life.

Our planet seems very large. But, life depends on the soil, and the soil is a very thin crust, and we know almost nothing about it. Except that the same techno system that aims to bomb the sky is poisoning it with pesticides, fertilizers and fungicides, it is cementing it; it is eliminating the innumerable varieties of plants that interact with the fungal network. If the mycorrhizal fungal network is blown, everything that grows on it is doomed to end badly, including super-productive GMOs or strictly identical toy soldiers planted as forests by the millions.

Most of the world's soils are now profoundly degraded; and the release of 0.1 per cent of stored carbon from European soil is equivalent to the one hundred million cars’ emissions.

At that point, we understand that it is absurd to bomb the sky and annihilate the Siberian forests, or on the contrary to plant a trillion trees, as someone proposes; it is also absurd to think of tackling the issue starting from the reduction of car emissions alone. The whole logic of this type of war is absurd.

It occurs to me of one day when in the countryside near Syracuse there was a shepherd who was making ricotta, as long as complex an affair. To a city man who was badly trying to help him, the pastor suggested, "lassa u munnu com’è", leave the world as it is.

See, La guerra e i funghi | Kelebek Blog (kelebeklerblog.com)

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