Love Tom Wessels! He is the man!! Very knowledgeable love his videos on forest ecology

Great knowledgeable, thoughtful teacher that I’m fortunate to live near and participate in forest walks with. I’m loving him being on this show focusing on these themes.

Tom Wessels....great teacher, incredibly knowledgeable and practical philosopher!

@thegreatstory

2 жыл бұрын

Agreed!

I'm glad *Mr. Wessels* that you had the beautiful woods to heal in & continue going to as a child ... Thank You so much for sharing your personal endeavors with us...it means more than you might know to some of us to hear this candor

“We try to fix particular little things without understanding the system, and that gets us into trouble. So, that's the myth of control, that we can control things when in a complex system, we really can't-there's feedback loops, there's bifurcation events, things we can't anticipate, and we can actually end up creating more havoc or problems by not understanding that.” Tom Wessels

@thegreatstory

2 жыл бұрын

Well said!

Sustainability is all about having a right relationship with Nature realizing that we are a part of Nature and Nature is a part of us. All meaningful change bubbles up from the bottom. Focus on the community level (but I would add to start at an even lower level, with yourself, then spiral outwards from there). This guy has his head screwed on correctly. He is awake. He is firm in his convictions but humble and open in his demeanor. I instantly liked him.

@thegreatstory

2 жыл бұрын

Fully and totally agree!

I am an environmental biologist and the director of an environmental nonprofit. We plant lots of native trees. I feel great sadness and grief by what I see. That is exactly how I describe it to people. However, I will keep forging ahead and I will never give up. I believe in leading by action with the hope that others will follow. Thank you for posting this video.

@thegreatstory

2 жыл бұрын

You're most welcome!

@mischevious

2 жыл бұрын

Focus on your soil biology in particular the Mycorrhiza please. Healthy soil is key to a healthy ecosystem, and soil fungi are key to moisture retention and nutrient transfer. And get some ruminants into the system! Their saliva, dung and urea contains the enzymatic keys to life itself! And if your native trees are failing or no longer producing seed, functionally extinct, then you need to start choosing non-native species that can withstand prevailing conditions. The conservation biologists appear to be reluctant to join this fight, preferring to beat their heads against brick wall by clinging to a reality that no longer exists. The climate is changing, costing us countless species across the life spectrum every day now, we can no longer preserve what was. Look to those species you might normally call “invasive’ non-native species that are already present and doing better than the natives. There is no such thing as an invasive species in nature, only life and the nature of life is transitory. In other words that’s nature doing her job, let her! Let her show you the way.

@joycee5493

2 жыл бұрын

@@mischevious …. Thanks for your post. We do not plant non-native trees or cultivars. Non-native trees are essentially sterile for our environment. They have either a minimal ecological role or no ecological role at all. Contrary to popular opinion native trees actually do better in the area that they’re supposed to be in provided they are planted at the correct site with the correct sun, moisture and soil conditions. On the other hand many cultivars and exotic trees have a very short life spans and are often dead in 20 to 25 years. Our survival rate among the trees we have planted so far is 95% after two years. Non-native trees are a bio chemically different than native trees and are often toxic, non-palatable for non-recognizable as a food source by native insects and their larvae. Thus, in an area with reduced native trees, that all important food source of insect larvae is not available for birds and their young. You should read Doug Tallamy’s’s books and you will have a different view of natives versus non-natives. It has nothing to do with how well natives or non-natives are doing in an area, but t has everything to do with passing energy up the food chain. We do focus on fungi. We happen to plant in areas that generally have good soil but I also inoculate the soil with a mycorrhizal spore mix. That has been beneficial when we have planted American beech trees which can be a little tricky, so I’d like to give them a little extra advantage. Actually, once you get native trees and shrubs in, the soil biology will take care of itself. We also focus on plant communities in some areas. For example, we just did a riparian zone planting in a local state park. The surrounding dominant community is silver maple, American Sycamore and box elder… Walnut trees, pignut Hickory’s and assorted oaks are also found in this community. So our planting focused on planting those of the aforementioned dominance plant community along with wet tolerant trees such as Ironwood, River birch, sweet gum etc. we also put in some meadow sweet shrub and hazel alder as an understory In the spring, black Willow, elderberry and red twig dogwood will be going on the river bank itself. I do a lot of research before my restorations. As I said I have a degree in environmental biology and I’ve had extensive classes on soil‘s, ecology, habitat and plant communities etc. I also have a treeplanting certification so I’m very fussy about how we plant our trees and how well the hole is prepared. We make our holes very wide and not too deep. We also spend a lot of time making sure the roots are nicely separated and ungirdled. We then mulch and make sure post planting watering is done. We also plant late in the fall just before we go into our cold, rainy season. The trees are going dormant and losing their leaves at this time, so they require less water and fewer nutrients. It’s a lot less stressful for the tree and the tree is ready to go in early spring as the ground begins to warm up. They have a chance to send out some new routes and are well prepared for the hot, stressful dry season known as summer. Most tree plantings fail because of poor planting technique and lack of regular watering afterwards. Newly planted trees need watering. Read Doug Tallamy’s books! I’m not sure who you’re referring to regarding conservationists banging their head against the wall. My guess is their plantings failed because the trees were not watered and managed properly post planting. Another problem is that some of them are still using those yellow plastic tubes. They have gone out of favor with most restorationists who know what they’re doing. Those tubes cause very high mortality and they also caused the trees to be weak. We plant slightly larger trees which then get caged for deer protection and within two years we are able to prune them up high enough to put an aerated black mesh hard plastic tube on them to prevent antler rubbing. Popping tiny little seedlings into the ground and putting a yellow tube over them is a big waste of money, if the once and done approach is taken

@mischevious

2 жыл бұрын

@@joycee5493 Nearly of California’s native trees are already functionally extinct, no longer produce seed unless they’re watered regularly and can’t withstand new high or low extreme temperatures. While the non natives like Eucalyptus are thriving. And here’s something special for you; Nothing should be able to grow well under a Eucalyptus right? Toxic oil suppresses everything. Or at least it used to. Now either the Eucalyptus is adapting to be a host or everything else is adapting to overcome that problem because directly under and in the shade of the Eucs, is the only place I can get anything to stay alive in summer now. I’ve got succulents, native Sages and flowering annuals, Crocus and Narcissus all doing beautifully under the Eucalyptus. Maybe you’re correct today. But spontaneous adaptation to overcome a deadly threat happens all the time in nature. And that book you just wrote full of old information that NO LONGER APPLIES IN THE FACE OF A RAPIDLY CHANGING CLIMATE may well be dead wrong by tomorrow. There’s nothing more invasive than the human ego, especially when it comes to nature.

@joycee5493

2 жыл бұрын

@@mischevious Climate change will mean different things for different regions. I live in SE PA. Our precipitation and average temperature have increased. With the exception of sugar maple and ash trees (due to invasive emerald ash borer)our native trees are thriving… as long as invasive vines are kept out of their canopy. Doug Tallamy’s books do apply more to the NE, as he is an entomologist who teaches at the University of Delaware. Are there no native trees adapted to your hot, dry Mediterranean climate that are doing well? That is sad to hear if it is true. On the east coast, we expect southern trees to begin migrating northward. Callery pear tree varieties are a big invasive problem… they are spreading into regions that used to be too cold for them.

WOW! So fortunate to have listened to this discussion

@thegreatstory

2 жыл бұрын

Thanks, Linda!

Great interview, nice work......love Tom's work also, have been watching his vids for years now and it was his name that brought me to your channel. I checked out your playlists and I'll be going through those I'm sure, thanks for the vid.

@thegreatstory

2 жыл бұрын

Thanks, Roy. All the PD conversations are here: postdoom.com/conversations/ and the best resources are here: postdoom.com/resources/ We also have bi-weekly Zoom conversations: postdoom.com/discussions/

Tom, I was watching this video and thinking about the plight of the North Atlantic Right Whale, and the linear philosophy of the fishing industry. Wow… I would love to hear a discussion by you of the sustainability of the lobster industry, in particular, and how the current philosophy they hold is failing for them. I know that it is a bit out of your terrestrial background, yet you mentioned that the myths can apply to numerous scenarios in our present lives.

Thank you Mr Wessels.

Remember this conversation took place before covid19. Id like to hear an update from Tom.

We are continuous with Nature and the closer we get to Nature, the closer we are to one another.

@thegreatstory

3 жыл бұрын

Amen!

That desert trail...you can't picture life there as being in the landscape as you see it now. Odds are it wasn't a desert 35,000 years ago.

Tom Wessels is the Tom Bombadil of our time

What saddens me after listening to all these post doom beautiful (as they are also rich in knowledge) conversations is that probably only industrialized developed countries have the luxury of having time for those. And even there, it's probably middle or upper-middle classes while here, in Asia, the middle-class folks work long hours daily to make a living for tomorrow. Can't talk for Africa but it's probably imaginable how worse it gets there. Even myself, one might think, I'm white, however, I'm from a nonprivileged country, with 2 educational degrees and years of working experience, having no kids and properties to pay off but still don't have the luxury to volunteer (write free articles & books, give free talks, etc.) on a daily basis, not even on a weekly or sometimes monthly basis. The majority coming to my occasional free talks are merely those who can 'afford time'.

@thegreatstory

3 жыл бұрын

Yes, so true! Thanks for voicing this so well!

William Irwin Thompson called it the 'sociology of knowledge '.

Fantastic

@thegreatstory

2 жыл бұрын

Thanks!

@vidaripollen

2 жыл бұрын

@@thegreatstory sounds like pagan attitudes r important. Nature reverence etc.

Sooo true, thankful for a wise one in our ranks.

I really like your thoughts on these matters and agree with to a point where the biosphere is in its life cycle. It has been thru some pretty harsh and amazing events and come out in time to a living and sustaining environment at many different times /events of great change to find its ultimate goal again of life. Yes there was enormous loss and changes but it always comes back to life of some sort. Yes earth wont last forever but that just leads to the next step, from are view big but just another event in the life cycle of the solar system and the universal system and so on. Mans pride, ego and greed are the hardest things to work thru.

This was a wonderful talk, Wessels is a very important thinker and extremely entertaining to listen to (and watch, in the woods!). I’m confused about the nature of entropy as it concerns complex sociocultural systems-if entropy is complexity and concentration, it would suggest that capitalist concentration of wealth and “progress” represents anti-entropy…entropy is how much information it takes to describe a system, and fewer companies, fewer differences, etc seems to require less overall information, more organization, and higher concentrations of resources. Basically my question is: is decentralizing power structures and socioeconomic systems actually anti-entropic? I’m very much in agreement with the arguments Wessels makes, but I’m just confused about the relationship or meaning of entropy in this context. I guess the deeper question is what is complexity, in this context. Is Google a force for more complexity because of all the information it requires and all the people and algorithms required to make it work, etc…or is it a force for less complexity, because it simplifies the relationships people have with the world, with their own brains, etc… Thanks for publishing this.

@thegreatstory

2 жыл бұрын

I honestly have no idea, Avana. Speaking personally (though not really in response to your question here)... My sense of both the near-term and longer-term future is well presented in my two 30-minute "Collapse In a Nutshell: Understanding Our Predicament" videos at the top of this page: postdoom.com/resources/ ... as well as in these three short essays, 8-minute video clip, and 37-minute Radio Ecoshock interview: (1) "Overshoot: Where We Stand Now": (guest post I wrote for Dave Pollard's blog, "How to Save the World": howtosavetheworld.ca/2021/09/21/overshoot-where-we-stand-now-guest-post-by-michael-dowd/ (2) "Time's Up: It's the End of the World, and We Know It" - Salt Lake City Weekly cover article - by Jim Catano (features me and several colleagues): www.cityweekly.net/utah/times-up/Content?oid=17298723 (3) "Climate Change and the Mitigation Myth" - by Mark Brimblecombe: markbrimblecombeblog.wordpress.com/2021/01/18/climate-change-and-the-mitigation-myth/ VIDEO: Finally, this 8-min clip from HBO's "The Newsroom" (EPA Segments) is a classic (the most accurate portrayal on American TV of what most climate scientists know, but don't say): www.dropbox.com/s/orq3tops40gftzo/The%20Newsroom%20%202013%20Environmental%20Protection%20Agency%20report%28EPA%29%3A%20Richard%20Westbrook%20scenes_1920x1080_MOV.mov?dl=0 RADIO ECOSHOCK INTERVIEW (37-min: 12-22-2021): www.ecoshock.org/2021/12/breakdown-post-doom-the-new-arctic.html (Scroll down to see info Alex Smith includes on my post-doom project.) WEEKLY "POST DOOM, NO GLOOM, VIA ZOOM" CALLS (Join us!): postdoom.com/discussions/

@AvanaVana

2 жыл бұрын

@@thegreatstory Thank you for your response and for the resources-I will definitely be checking them out!

Great to have systems theorists at your interviews.

@thegreatstory

3 жыл бұрын

Amen, systems science teacher, Earth girl! :-)

I own and operate a non-exploitative urban apiary in Baltimore that is centered around relocating and rehabilitating honey bees...I DO NOT keep bees for honey production but make income from my labor so the bees in my care can live, thrive, and consume from nature. My operation is completely unique from the beekeeping community which is a sad state of affairs...it is a lonely path to be on... Thanks for this interview

@thegreatstory

2 жыл бұрын

Wow...thank you for your great work!

Love and light religion developed through these understandings years ago.

To me, the depressing part is not humans disappearing (humans are generally pretty awful), but our destroying everyone else - trees, plants, oceans, and all animals. For me, that is the horribly depressing part of all of this. So much needless suffering and destruction of beautiful souls all because of greed and human chauvinism. That is the tragedy.

I think the issue often is specialization of scientific fields. If experts are too specialized they lose the ability to view any problem from 50,000 feet. How many environmental problems affect only one field of environmental science? The answer: none.

@thegreatstory

3 жыл бұрын

Great point! Still, I do see ecology (including global systems science) as "queen of the sciences."

If the natural purpose of ignorance is to help us feel confident in our environment, is it not then a function of ignorance in our modern age to reflect only a cheap plastic consumable in the mirror? A love of confidence is a lesson of Irony unlearned. Speaking of right relationships, science will someday be religions trusty microscope, but for now it's only the convenienced ax of Irony (and if you need to see my educated credentials before you'll take me seriously, I can show you only the source of your disappointment). I'm not saying that religion today isn't just as plagued by what afflicts us, what I am saying is that I appreciate the ways this conversation appeals to the soul of my convictions. Thanks for sharing!

@thegreatstory

3 жыл бұрын

It's quite rare in my experience to both agree and disagree with someone in the same paragraph as much as I do your comment. Fascinating!! I invite you, if you're so led, to watch one or more of these three videos and then schedule and have a Zoom conversation, record it, and only if we both agree, post it to KZread (and I'm happy to edit out whatever you want): (1) "EcoTheism: Ecology as the Heart of Theology": kzread.info/dash/bejne/g5ig0LSRmr3RmLg.html (2) "The Big Picture: Clarity, Compassion, and Love-in-Action": kzread.info/dash/bejne/YqmczNapetnVmMY.html and (3) Sustainability 101: Indigenuity Is Not Optional: kzread.info/dash/bejne/lHeO09Kdf7Ceo8o.html / You game?

I'm fortunate enough to have been brought up in the forests of western Canada.....those forests are gone (Google earth) shows the patch work of huge clear cutting...all the areas left are all mapped out to be clear cut...it's going on in everything fisheries, mining,agriculture its full on and it ant going to stop until the systems running it all collapses in other words until the cupboards are bare...but ya the oceans are to warm now and here in the middle of no were you can't even go out and get a moose they just are not out there any more so no more game for hunters and gathering...it's the oceans that's what's going a finish this paradise...to warm now.

Ahh the interface of "nature and culture". That is my focus how our contemporary aggregate presence is in part expressed within the coastal northeast marine ecosystems.

These are the people that we need in the federal government. But no, we continue with out of touch choices.

Michael have you interviewed Guy McPherson?

@thegreatstory

3 жыл бұрын

I've invited him (repeatedly). He politely refused, saying that several of my other guests "defamed" him at some point in the last decade. I didn't bother to ask for details.

@finishedarticle7953

3 жыл бұрын

@@thegreatstory Such a fragile ego, yet such narcissism!

@thegreatstory

3 жыл бұрын

@@finishedarticle7953 I can't imagine what it would have been like to be the first respected scientist saying that, on evidential grounds, the extinction of Homo colossus was immanent and the extinction of Homo sapiens (and most other species) was likely or possibly even inevitable. Talk about putting a target on your back! :-) Remembering this helps me cut Guy some slack.

@finishedarticle7953

3 жыл бұрын

@@thegreatstory Michael - I've just watched a very special BBC documentary on trees that I think Connie will love - "Judi Dench My Passion for Trees." Its on KZread but I cant include the link.

I dont follow why TW believes that egocoentrism and separation from Nature is a recent problem or that in the past humans [pre industrial] were less out of touch with the environment. He cites Black Elk Speaks, the autobiography of a Sioux medicine man. But the Sioux were warlike, and american indian tribes did make limited war on each other, but it was not nearly at the scale or intensity of modern nations for obvious reasons. Going back to the ancient Greeks, they referred to hubris, which was similar to Christian sin, its the tragic lack of humility that stems from the separation of a human from the sacred. It isnt avoidable, thats why its tragic. Or as the Old Testament prophets say, the human flaws are plain.

@MichaelMastin

4 ай бұрын

Not to mention, forest fires were deliberately caused by humans for millenia past.

If the average lifespan were doubled, would we see our place differently? As

As an OG, we have lived our lives during the advent of plastic. Our grandparents never produced the trash that is crushing us. We were taught things that are no longer relevant i.e., penmanship. Children can't even read cursive. Arithmetic and spelling are automatically corrected. Our grandkids will never know reality without the internet. (Do I seem old or odd?)

Mr Natural from the Fabulous Furious Freak Brother comics

@thegreatstory

2 жыл бұрын

Not familiar with that, but if you've not already seen it, my latest two-part video series, "Collapse in a Nutshell: Understanding Our Predicament" has garnered 125,000 views in 12 days (a first for me): kzread.info/dash/bejne/l2p6xbCgf6u_n9I.html / Please join us, if you're so led: postdoom.com/discussions/ I also recommend the "post-doom" conversations and resources found here: postdoom.com

Wessels is a national treasure. His kind and thoughtful guidance of forests and biology is just priceless.

Where there are conditions for life, the "Life Carriers" of the Universe will seed life and nurture it. The Urantia Book.

Yesh..modernist were thinking they could known and control in a very simplistic way, projecting dominance, often concentrating, being "linear"... And today, ecologists...keep doing the same! Love tom vessels and his work, but he tends to end up going the same way he criticizes. We are part of nature, we are nature, we are complex, impossible to control our selfs and much less nature as a whole. So, any effort to go back, restore, preserve, etc, is just the same attemp to control. "This system as to go" is a very common way of thinking to modernist and religious of all times. We are not in control, we never were, and never will be, and even the levels of "concentration" "linear simplistic" ways that sometimes humanity undergo is also part of the complexity, the self controlling complexity of nature we are part of.

The bio is going. 60% animals GONE GONE AND GONE. Bees butterflies bats bugs frogs ,, 100 degs in Siberia , ice going away,, on and one

@thegreatstory

3 жыл бұрын

Yes, surely grief-worthy.

I have a copy of *Silent Spring*

would like to seem Tom Wessels have a long conversation with Yanis Varouvakis of Greece, who is the Winston Churchill of the democratic left in Europe, with the dialogue especially focused on the axis of giving up - as Wessels' has apparently done, or not, on effective national level action. There are some very good, sincere local activists in West Virginia, for example, who have been preaching, with intensity, this local path to change for a long time. Yet I think it is fair to say the WVA economic/political establishment - the close junction between economic and political actors (Senator Joe Manchin, Governor Jim Justice, to cite two examples {who has switched parties)} have plugged into the national perspective of the Republican Right, where there are not many ecological stars. WVA the state has gone from a FDR New Deal mainstay to one where the poor bear all the burden for their own failures...essentially a Darwinian view of life. Manchin has a mixed record with the LCV, terrible on climate energy, much better on land conservation... Manchin, has, because he is in the Senate, had a very unfair and disproportionate influence in limiting ecological and economic progressive ideas...and the state of WVA, it seems to me, has completely overridden whatever good has happened at the local level to become a Trump-drunk state in overall political direction. Would also like to see Wessels comment on the work of Curtis W. Marean, esp. this video, "How Coastal Life Shaped the Evolution of Our Species" with ends with a rather chilling finding about early "human nature" reminding us that we tend, in the grand ecological balance of things, forget it is based on bigger creatures eating little ones, with perhaps the ironic conclusion that the very little ones - viruses - have the last say over the biggest ones. kzread.info/dash/bejne/f2eiucyBgK3Xgag.html The pace and style are quiet academic, in contrast to the findings, which are controversial yet shed light on an America heading toward a civil war, and the path Weimar Germany headed down in 1933. I'm not surprised at the conclusion: the tendency of our best ecological minds seems to be to curve away from national politics, especially the shaping of a political economy to match their ecological views. The nation state and its national politics is still the shaper, for better or worse, now for the worse, of the contours of cultural/economic life. The nation looked at the possibility of Vermont (ahem, Tom Wessels) based Bernie Sanders leadership, or Joe Biden, and went for the "big hug," not the big tough policy fights a Sanders course would have indicated. So here we are, hugged by Biden but still mugged by the Right.

Try and be kind...EVERYONE has a secret pain!

I would love to know even what he’s forgot over a life time…..

Love Tom he is a jem. His narrated woods walks are priceless.

@thegreatstory

2 жыл бұрын

I'll bet!!

George Carlin made note of the fact that when we are born we do not come IN to the World. We come OUT of it. Contrary to most christian theology.

@thegreatstory

2 жыл бұрын

I've been saying that exact phase for decades...in many of my public presentations, "We didn't come into the world, we grew out of it in the same way an apple grows out of an apple tree. We're organically related to everything."

Stephen Pinker has made a FORTUNE by telling people what they want to hear. He is the "devil" incarnate.

@thegreatstory

2 жыл бұрын

Nah. Pinker is just a normal (rather brilliant, actually) personal with an ecocidal worldview.

What system do you think works? Communism, Socialism, Capitalism or something else?

I watched 26 minutes. The word capitalism was never mentioned a single time. Capitalism is ecocide. Name...the problem.

Seems human fertility is going to crash mid-century.

The way I see it, total global economic collapse is our only hope.

The senior gentleman claims "all the problems we are facing are from technology" - yet things like racism, xenophobia, domestic abuse and violence have nothing to do with technology.

@thegreatstory

3 жыл бұрын

Yes, they do, actually. Fire and farming, for example, which (among other things) make complex civilizations (rife with racism, xenophobia, domestic abuse, and violence) even possible.

@timearchitecture

3 жыл бұрын

Those things would go away simply by not paying attention to or thinking about them. Those problems come from people who focus on little things and not the big picture.

@timearchitecture

3 жыл бұрын

Dropping a politically correct comment but your user name is pervert. Doublespeak fuck.

@timearchitecture

3 жыл бұрын

Racism wouldn't exist if technology didn't teach it to people btw.

@kylesanders9598

3 жыл бұрын

The root cause, technology, is only exacerbated by globalism. There is nothing worse for the environment than Capitalism and its need for the free movement of cheap goods, cheap labor, and hyper consumers. Saving the environment requires nationalist and authoritarian measures. Which is why it will never happen. Our neo-liberal institutions are more interested in "racism, xenophobia, blah, blah, buzzword". I hardly hear about environmental issues unless it's chaperoned by a contrived social justice issue.

I'm slightly inebriated because this shit stresses me out but I need to learn and understand it, can you knock it off with the jump cuts, they are jarring. thanks maybe. star wipes only, with a whoosh sound effect so i know its coming. the more you know.

@thegreatstory

2 жыл бұрын

Thanks for the tip. I'll pass it on to my wife, the video editor.