On Friday, February 10, at 5:00 pm, the Brattleboro Literary Festival will feature A Literary Cocktail Hour with UK author and environmentalist Fred Pearce to discuss his book,
A Trillion Trees.The online event is free and open to the public. Register here:
https://bit.ly/LitCocktail27
The term ”trillion trees” has recently entered the public use — shorthand for the policy proposal to literally plant one trillion trees across the planet to solve the climate change problem. While the idea has some serious support, Pearce is not entirely sold. It is not that he is anti-tree; quite the contrary. But some of the large top-down reforestation projects are failing because governments aren’t taking their cue from nature.
Pearce’s new book, “A Trillion Trees: Restoring Our Forests by Trusting in Nature,” is an amazing guide through the most spectacular forests around the world. Along the way, he charts the extraordinary pace of forest destruction, and explores why some are beginning to recover. With vivid, observant reporting, Pearce transports readers to the remote cloud forests of Ecuador, the remains of a forest civilization in Nigeria, a mystifying mountain peak in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, and the boreal forests of western Canada and the United States, where devastating wildfires are linked to suppressing the natural fire cycles of forests and the maintenance practices of Indigenous peoples.
Fred will be in conversation with area filmmaker Lisa Merton.
Fred Pearce is a veteran author and journalist based in the UK who has reported from over eighty countries. A former environmental consultant for the New Scientist, he is a regular writer for Yale Environment 360, and contributing writer for many other publications including the Guardian and Washington Post, as well as the author of numerous books, including A Trillion Trees, When the Rivers Run Dry, Confessions of an EcoSinner and The Land Grabbers.
Lisa Merton has been collaborating with filmmaker Alan Dater at Marlboro Productions since 1988. Their award-winning films focus on the arts, social issues and education, including two on subjects mentioned in Pearce’s book, “Taking Root: The Vision of Wangari Maathai” about the Green Belt Movement of Kenya, and “Burned: Are Trees the New Coal?”
