In addition to being relatively easy to create and offering significant climate benefits, miniforests deserve to be widely replicated for other reasons. Climate change policy is highly vulnerable to suspicions that elites are stealing our fun, while others like to get more gas, start their engines, and drive bigger cars. And eating meat, mini forest is pure fun. Everyone who participated in the tree planting had a great time. People waited in line to plant a tree, then went back in line to plant another tree.
Mini Forest designer Ethan Bryson knows something about the deep satisfaction we get from living among greenery. He told the assembled audience that when he was in architecture school, he would spend long hours at his computer, longing for screensavers depicting lush pastoral landscapes. “I realized I didn’t want to sit in front of a computer,” he recalls. “I wanted to be in the woods.” He now brings screen-free forest fun to other city dwellers every day.
We seem to be mired in an ongoing debate about whether optimism on climate change is okay. Hannah Ritchie’s new book, It’s not the end of the world, It drew praise from Bill Gates, but skepticism and frustration from critics.be
guardian Reviewers found the “obviously bright tone” to be “upsetting.” But these debates about what impact we should have on the climate crisis may be missing the point. Perhaps we don’t need hope or pessimism, we need joy.
