Then add seed
Add light and water
Wait
Take tree from pot
Shake off soil
Weigh tree
Weigh soil
Invisible to visible
Air to wood
Light to dark
Death to life
Photosynthesis is the miracle of life. Light and air and water transforming to sugar and then to wood. Water molecules split by light release oxygen and hydrogen which combines with carbon dioxide to form sugar. Imagine a world where we could grow our own homes from Carbon dioxide. Just paint the ground with photosynthetic paint and wait for the house to grow. Wouldn’t that be miraculous and wonderful? Almost as marvellous as a forest! We do take a lot for granted and are often blind to the obvious.
When the experiment described in the poem was undertaken by early experimenters they found that the soil volume remained the same. They therefore concluded, almost rightly, that the tree that grew in the pot was somehow made of air. The carbon that ultimately formed the wood in fact came from carbon dioxide. Carbon, invisible and odourless in carbon dioxide gas, transformed to wood with the energy of light. Light trapped in darkness as the lifeless becomes living matter. And it can all be reversed.
When we burn fossil fuels we release the fossilised light energy trapped for eons, reversing photosynthesis and releasing carbon dioxide. And we burn so much so quickly that the world has no time to adjust. The solution to global warming and climate change is really quite simple. We must slow down the rate that we are releasing carbon dioxide and we must increase the rate it is absorbed. In other words we need to drive less and plant more trees. But we all have to do it. The problem is many of us don’t want to do it. We are addicted to energy and a soft life and rarely worry much about tomorrow or the fate of our children. We need an international carbon tax and we need to understand that sacrifice is necessary. But will a democratic society vote for hardship and sacrifice? Not likely, and definitely not when a sizable portion of a self-interested and gullible population has been persuaded to be sceptical by greedy and evil people! And so we continue to rapidly transform darkness to light as we rush headlong to the inevitable consequence of life to death.
