This video took a long time to create. By the time I finished it, I realized, for the fifth time, that I could totally rewrite the script. Once again, I see that I could have communicated the more important points differently.
Probably could have made it shorter too.
There's a serious need to broaden the scope of what arborists think about. A huge section of modern arboriculture is built around treating normal ecology like a problem.
The exact things Big Arb tree care often tries to “protect trees from” are the same things ecologists and high-level arborists recognize as signs of ecological function. The very reasons we keep old trees around in the first place are what indoctrinated arborists think are problems.
Psy-opping the public that insects are the enemies of trees, that fertilization will solve all your tree’s problems, and that your trees need us. Entrapping consumers into pointless subscriptions.
The first thing most arborists learn about insects is how they're a problem. The first thing clients learn about insects is how they're a problem. So it's not exactly surprising that the public's understanding of insects is terrible when the people educating them were themselves indoctrinated by companies and an industry whose business models depends on insects being viewed as enemies.
What’s especially bizarre is that I can’t think of many other fields where the “experts” can become this culturally narrow-minded about the very thing they supposedly study. Imagine spending your entire career around living systems and coming away viewing every ecological interaction as a money-making opportunity. Finding ways to exploit trees and our ecosystems.
No aura.
To be clear, some treatments absolutely matter. Some interventions are useful and justified. But there’s also a massive proportion of this industry that operates simply because it can. Indentured to their equipment, overhead, and mutated cultural beliefs.
Hardly achieving what they claim to, and trading their communities' biodiversity for money in the process.
At this point, I’m publishing this video because I’m a bit sick of working on it and thinking about it. I have many other shorter article/video ideas that sound interesting. But I can’t touch those ideas until this is off my plate.
If I were to redo this, I think I’d emphasize my experience with how easy it has been to interact with the public through the lens of nature having rights.
Some people need to be shown how to care, and what to care about.