Climate change and extreme weather that is accompanying it, is stressing and overwhelming our infrastructure that was set up to protect our lives and meet our needs for water, for safety, for economy? look at what?s happening right now here in Zambia e.g. power outages and around the world, the infrastructure we have counted on we can no longer trust to protect us. It is scary, it?s scary for me, is it for you?

When you think about the magnitude of what we need to do to protect our cities and ourselves and our families. It?s an overwhelming fact that when things get that big we look for someone to help us someone else certainly not ourselves, maybe it?s them (other people) or a superhero or some magic bullet technology. Well, I have got good news for you, we have superheroes right here amongst us, with amazing powers, with designs, with engineering that can actually retrofit cities and land to save us. Who are these superheroes?  THEY ARE TREES! And PEOPLE. And I am not kidding and I am not just a liberal tree hugger, well I am but I could never admit that before I just resisted but I am going to tell you today, I love TREES. Really I could not say that before because I didn?t want to get labelled, haha.

I have spent part of my life witnessing the incredible power and healing that comes from a practical partnership between trees and people and it is so moving. Trees aren?t just pretty and people were not just consumers. Let me introduce you to a great example Eudora Russell, a retired school teacher who instead of choosing just to play cards enrolled and got trained as a citizen forester at Tree People. When she got the skills she really started to dream about what her city could be. She imagined Martin Luther King Boulevard being a beautiful massive monument to Dr. King. She went to the mayor of her town five years ago and shared her dream with him who said, ?WOW! that would be great! But its going to take atleast five years and millions of dollars and with the current recession, it?s not going to happen?. She then made a mistake (a good one) of sharing her dream with Andy Lipkis, Founder of Tree People. He said, ?Let?s take the beauty of your dream and the power of community and let?s do it in a day.? Tree People hired another extraordinary volunteer, Fred Anderson, whose day job was Hotel Concierge. Together Fred and Eudora organised the community, raised money, put the plan together and trained a thousand volunteers in advance.

On Dr. King?s birthday, in 1990 three thousand volunteers lined all 7 miles of king boulevard, within three hours all 52 blocks were planted. Today the trees are over 40 feet tall. You can see that green line through south Los Angeles from space.

Eudora does not seem radical but she is, so is an acorn from a native oak tree. It would be a mistake to underestimate its power in spite its tiny size. It has within it the DNA knowledge that there are often throughout history long term floods and it?s programmed to survive it. When it sprouts it sends down its roots up to 9 feet deep before a leaf emerges on the ground. Forester?s call that root a ?Radical? because it has the ability to break rock and dig and move through extremely hard soil until it finds water then a leaf pops out and then it begins to spend its water as it evapo-transpires and lives and grows so this seedling grows into a beautiful big tree. Imagine a tree 100 feet in diameter. Imagine all of us seating in its shade on a hot day were its 20 degrees cooler. It has created an incredibly safe environment for us and the eco-system. It has in fact transformed the eco-system as it?s grown because when that root went down it started interacting with soil chemicals and microscopic organisms, as it dropped leaves and twigs those become mulch and humus and then soil. It creates a home for as many as 300 species of craters that all dig and drill and create underneath it a sponge like tank that?s also a water treatment plant, every bit of water that flows through it comes in contaminated goes out clean and recharges the aquafer. The oak tree is an engineering model we should be bio mimicking to make our cities sustainable.

It?s time to act, there is no one to blame we need to atleast deploy these oak trees (sponges) in flood prone areas to protect cities from flooding, we can do it! Let?s do it! I challenge you and invite you to listen to our superhero partners, the trees and answer the call. Be radical, Plant sponges! Take care of these trees, together we can do it. Let?s heal the nature of our countries.