A Short Story about Soil, Fungus, the Earth and our Future Chance of Survival as a Species

Where Do Leaves Go ?

Leaves fall and seem to disappear only to reappear next year as new leaves. but did you know where the leaves go ? It might seem amazing but worms come up and suck them down. Earthworms are a vital part of nature. They are the literally the mouths of the earth. When worms take leaves into the ground and swallow leaves, they begin a process with many players to break them down and release their rich nutrients back into the soil. Bacteria inside the worm get a go at accessing the nutrients but once the worm poos out the soil, it's the turn of the fungus

Nature's Hammer

Only fungus and nothing else in the whole of the soil ecosystem, can break down tough cellulose which contains the great proportion of the leaves goodness. We see toadstools on the surface in the woods and on the grass. This is merely the reproductive stage of a fungi. It exists to blow spores into the wind so fungus will populate another place. Under the ground immense networks form the basis of the soil's recycling process. Without it, we'd be metres deep in dead, soggy leaves. The fungus network offers a whole range of options for the other living organisms in the soil to access the nutrients within it.

The Great Stomach of the Earth

Bacteria can then start releasing the nutrients back down to their raw ingredients through a whole host of different processes which they use to extract energy from what was dead leaf material and when it's finished you end up with rich, dark, living soil. When a tree wakes up in the spring and begins to grow new leaves a fungal network which lives in symbiosis with the tree accesses the soil nutrients for the tree and passes it up through it's fine rootlet system. Before long, the tree is producing new leaves by sucking in carbon dioxide from the air, using sunlight to power a process of photosynthesis with the green chlorophyll in it's newly formed leaves making sugar, releasing oxygen back into the atmosphere and using the carbon to grow.

Trees are Carbon Sequesters.

When people talk about carbon sequestration they mean capturing huge quantities of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere which have been put there by human activities. Power stations should really be fitted with carbon capture technology but it's expensive, technically difficult and humans are so short sighted we don't put enough emphasis on cleaning up our mess. If we don't change our behaviour, eventually like bacteria in a petri dish, we will pollute ourselves out of existence. Carbon dioxide makes up a tiny fraction of our atmosphere. As it increases, plants can grow faster. Trees can absorb it to make their wood. Food will grow more easily but so will weeds. In a natural feedback loop; a function of Gaia, plants and ocean algae absorb the excess carbon dioxide. If we cut down all the forests for timber and growing food, then the trees can't act as natural sequesters. They can store tons of carbon dioxide and absorb water. Their roots bind the soil. When you cut down the trees, soil erosion by wind and water is rapidly accelerated.

We know all of These Things

but we still fail to act. There are way too many of us stripping the world of it's natural resources. Mainly because our system of money which puts a value on all natural resources is so tipped heavily in favour of a few to the detriment of the rest that between huge corporations and legions of hungry consumers, like locusts we are stripping the earth bare and polluting it everywhere. The air and the oceans have no boundaries. If we pollute our city water supply, it eventually reaches the oceans. When we burn coal and gas in our power stations, the pollution reaches far distant forests.

The Good News

As economies develop and mature, education and affluence means populations will stabilise. There will be a huge drop off in the number of children born per family within the next twenty to thirty years. That will begin to reverse a trend of ever expanding population. It will be a natural eleventh hour respite for the planet. At the same time, we will be in the middle of a green revolution. burning fossil fuels will stop and sequestration technology ( including trees) will begin to mop up the carbon dioxide. We will have much to do. The plastic and toxic elements in the oceans are a huge challenge which we are nowhere near ready to solve. Our over dependence on the bounty of the ocean is close to exhaustion. Our polluted waterways and fresh water supplies are at saturation levels. We will need clever solutions to many of the problems our recent generations caused with scant knowledge of their true effect. The oil industry will recede into memory. We will rethink our relationship with oil based products. Petrochemical fertilisers will be replaced and synthesised. We will need to rebalance the environment. Of the many thousands of species we have lost through our own hand, we will begin to replace with our expanded knowledge of DNA using museum samples. This may sound far fetched but it is necessary. We will learn to capture energy and store it efficiently. We may soon unleash the power of the stars for unlimited energy, without the heavy radiation. This will also need to be dealt with.

A Chapter in a Long Journey

We will get there. We will be helped by Artificial Intelligence, which won't be artificial anymore. We will co-create new forms of consciousness which will assist in the re-shaping of our future in much better, more efficient and collaborative ways with more equitable distribution of resources. BlockChain is a first glimpse. Smart Contracts will eventually become intelligent administration of all things. Trustless and accountable, unbiased and unassailable. We will enter a new age of abundance. One fuelled by our repair and advancement of Earth. We will eventually pay off our debt to Gaia. We will produce an eternal shield which will protect Earth from massive extinction events by inbound objects. We will have fully matured and we will have played our part in the history of the planet. Soon after that, we will be living and exploring space. We will have journeyed far and begun to colonise the solar system.

The Future is Bright

Our future is unimaginably bright. We just can't see it quite yet. If we could, we would sit back and relax. We cannot afford to do that for there is much work to be done my friends. When you wonder what you should do with the rest of your life, just pick something from what we've just discussed. There is so much to do, to learn, to activate. All the while, our true heroes will be working tirelessly, ceaselessly and with quiet, unassuming dignity beneath our very feet as they have done for countless millions of years. The insects who tidy up, the protozoa and the bacteria who recycle all of the nutrients. The mycelium hammers and of course the humble earthworms, sucking down leaves one by one. Remember this. We started out in life as a worm.

We are Still Just Worms

We are really still just a worm with appendages (and a brain). It can be seen in our genesis as beings. When a small ball of cells has accumulated enough mass soon after conception, the cells flatten out into a sheet. Using a simple inbuilt compass reading, some cells go south and some north. A rudimentary tube is formed. A worm of sorts. This is the beginning of a human and all other complex organisms. The first things to be conceived. A mouth and an anus. Our two most important parts. Poetically it's these two functions needs which we must solve collectively, most urgently and without hesitation, for food consumption and their attendant waste products have to be in balance like they are in the soil. We have diverged from nature's grand plan temporarily and we must understand it more fully so that we can initiate steps back to return to equilibrium.

The End