Tree Planting Workshop

I organized a small workshop to which I invited a few peers and someone who had spent the previous summer tree planting in Northern Ontario.

This workshop was designed to provide me with a firsthand account of the tree planting process, particulars and perspective of my expert, as well as multiple perspectives on debate topics relevant to my subject, and the visual language of agricultural tools.

Orthographic Symbology

The first portion of the workshop was designed to source multiple personal interpretations, or understandings, of the visual language of tools. It is my view that our understanding of objects, and our expectations of their form, can affect our choice of new objects with similar intent.

Participants were asked to draw a number of tools using simple shapes and lines from three viewpoints; front, top, side. They were asked to view their drawings as something that could be used a symbol to represent that object, as if on a sign.

Tool List

Hoe, Shovel, Trowel, Hose, Pot, Seed Tray, Watering Can, Rain Barrel, Wheel Barrow, Pruning Shears, Rake, Dibber, Knife, Scythe, Sickle, Pitchfork, Machete, Sprinkler

Interview

The following is a summary of the information he provided, reordered for clarity.

Planting a Tree

1. Identify a good location between the debris left behind from the clear cut
2. “Scrape” the area with foot to clear away sticks, rocks or leaves
3. Pitch shovel into spot, much like thrusting a spear, piercing soil to an adequate depth
4. Twist blade to cut and lift soil with one hand, while reaching into satchel to grab seedling with the other
5. Drop seedling in, trying to avoid J root.
6. Remove shovel blade
7. Pack down soil as you step forward for the next cut.

A day in the life of a tree planter.

1. Wake up 6-6:30AM in your tent
2. Breakfast at a mess tent at the camp
3. Get a ride by bus or van with other planters to the “block”
4. Flag the land you are allotted with nylon ribbon
5. Retrieve bundles of seedlings from boxes, dropped at the block by supervisors
6. Fill your two satchels located on your hips
7. Begin planting in straight rows within the confines of your flags
8. Retrieve more seedlings when your bag is empty
9. Resume planting
10. Repeat until you are picked up.

Pains

• Weather / Temperature
• Terrain
• Bears
• Insects
• Weight of satchel
• Hygiene – foot fungus is common due to wet conditions.
• Injury, blisters
• Loneliness

Gains

• Community
• Being in Nature
• Sense of accomplishment
• Financial rewards
• Fun
• Experience

discussion

Uncle Doug

Uncle Doug is a persona I developed to crowd-source arguments for a large tree planting effort to mitigate the effects of climate change. Some of my design directions involve government funding. I also believe a shifting of the labour force from the tar sands to planting could be beneficial for the climate and for replacing the oil industry jobs with forestry.

I wanted a persona that represented someone who actively resists anything associated with climate change, and environmentalism in general. Someone who would actively resist any government spending on climate change via his vote.

I wanted to find new arguments for subsidized tree planting that did not involve climate change by asking participants to convince Doug that tree planting had other benefits. If we can make this issue politically popular across the parties, there is a greater chance for it to happen. Uncle Doug is based on family and friends who have similar attitudes, and by exposing myself to articles memes and videos that deny climate change.

Doug (45) lives in an oil-producing region that is experiencing a decline. He does not work in the oil industry, but his brother lost his job, struggling to make ends meet for his wife and children. Doug does what he can to help with the kids. He is in the same spot as many others in his community. They have been negatively affected by job losses and exodus after a big oil boom and bust; it feels like they were robbed.

He wants the Government to do something about it. He wants pipelines, he wants the jobs back, and he wants to see his family safe. This pipeline will pipe economic prosperity straight to his community. Politicians, protestors, and indigenous protectors are his enemy. Anything they believe is a lie, and what he believes the truth. He does not believe in human effect on climate change. No amount of scientific data will change his mind, because he is certain that it is a hoax. He believes it is a fabrication designed to make some elites a bunch of money. His preferred political representation is responsive to his perspective, and is resistant to investment in climate action. He is active on social media and trolls comment sections, owning the libs.

Change his mind about taxpayer-funded tree planting.

Transcript

Uncle Doug

I started this discussion by describing Uncle Doug’s persona, and posing the question at hand. The transcript is paraphrased for clarity and length.

How do we convince Uncle Doug that government funding for tree planting is of net benefit for all, if we can’t use climate change or environmentalism as an argument?

J - Appeal to him emotionally, rather than logically, about the beauty of nature.

PP – What if he’s not an emotional person.

MG – What if they are that logical person, but their logic has led them to industry propaganda, so they believe they come from a place of intelligence, they have sources to cite.

J – If there are no trees, there’s no Lumber Industry, Paper Industry

NT – The jobs/economy argument.

MG – Right, and I think this is probably the area that will contain the most effective arguments

PP – Is there a connection between the energy and lumber industry?

J - Definitely in the shipping and machinery.

PP – How much is made in the oil industry annually?

MG – I’ll have to look into that.

KB – There’s a famous story in the Nederlands were tulips were valued so high there was an economic collapse. How did we get to a point, in a place, where a flower was worth more than gold? How do you convince Uncle Doug that trees have more value than oil and mining?

MG – I was looking at it from the other end of the spectrum, if wood becomes cheaper it may allow us to reopen manufacturing in the area, creating a boom in lumber industry as well as a return to manufacturing value added product locally, rather than relying solely on resource extraction and importing goods. Essentially, by making wood so plentiful that we drive down the material costs, lowering the cost of manufacturing locally, which brings with it the environmental benefits from reduced shipping. It may turn out that the industry may just sell it out of the country for lower cost, but that was a direction I was considering.

Yeah, but, yeah, how do we make wood good as gold? Definitely something I need to look into.

J – So the older generation may not care about climate change, the youth do. What about his relatives?

MG - So, he doesn’t believe it, but if his nephew bugs him and bugs him about it, it may change his mind.

J – Right.

KB – So, what do we know about Uncle Doug?

MG – ( I summarize what I read to the others before Koby joined, but expanded a bit by saying: ) Uncle Doug has never been well off, working class, slightly above the median income. Money is a real driver for him, and it’s a big reason behind his support of the Conservative Party of Canada. They’re saying they’re going to take less in taxes for social programs, and foreign aid, leaving him with more in his pocket. What really drives that is the idea that the government is taking his hard earned money out of his pocket to give to someone who hasn’t earned it.

J – Tree planters are a lot less environmentally motivated than they’re perceived to be, a lot of them are hard workers, motivated by money. If he met some planters, it may change his perspective.

Military Role in Climate Action

Considering that climate change is an emergency, and the military can be deployed in emergency, should the military be deployed to plant trees?

J – I think soldiers would make great tree planters. The way tree planting works is organized like the military, moving in convoys and working in units. Army / summer camp.

KB – In Israel, from ’48 to the ‘90s, used foresting strategically as a way to claim land, a horrible strategic thing, the whole population participated. In the Jewish religion there is a tree day, and nationally the entire country plants trees on that day. New immigrants would be put to work tree planting as soon as they arrived. The military service would include planting as part of basic training. It’s customary to have a tree planted in your name when you were born, I have a tree out there somewhere. It was a horrible motive, but an interesting outcome. I think this idea of national participation made tree planting a lifelong concern.

MG – In cub scouts, we did have an annual tree planting day

KB – I think its different here because of the distances, you’re not going to drop kids off in a place with bears.

All - Laughs

MG – Hence the military

NT – It is a great way of training. Heavy packs, survivalist locations, it is very similar, and not just the soldiers, you mentioned earlier about support staff and supply lines gaining experience as well.

J – Yeah, exposure, you get wet, bitten by bugs.

MG – You must have come back stronger

J – Oh yeah, and not just physically, mentally as well.

KB – So what about automation in this area?

Automation vs Human Labour

MG - Right, that was one of the next topics. They have drones that plant seeds, range can be an issue but there are a few companies working on this now. There is also a project from Lockheed Martin to use old bombers to drop seedlings in plastic cones, I saw an article about it a week or two before school started. Exactly the concept I was thinking of, it really pulled the rug out from under me. I do have some concerns about the volume of fuel those planes use.

J – I don’t know that it would be any worse than what we do now, the busses and vans, and even helicopters in some cases of remote locations, plus the generators and equipment in the mess at the camp.

MG – I’ll have to do a cost analysis

J - I would be more concerned about the job losses

MG – That was one of my reasons for working on hand tools, but there is always the possibility that automation will mean we all work less.

J - I think if we’re looking at Uncle Doug, I think it’s better to just have planters do it, with the idea that he respects hard work, but I think maybe its better to just avoid people like him and get the military and drones doing it. Don’t bother convincing him

NT – Right, how much does this even matter to them.

J – Its just the matter of having more political support.

NT – What’s the timeline we’re even talking about, for trees to grow? Are they even going to be alive? Maybe we should just focus on the youth.

PP – Focus on education

MG – Just skip him

NT – Yeah

PP – I think Angelika will very much be pushing for the why. Why is Uncle Doug a factor? Why the oil, is it even going to be around? Why are we using the paper? Why are we using the wood? Are there other ways to expand within those areas that would make tree planting a non-issue

NT – The non-dominant perspective

MG – Right, Doug was my non-dominant perspective as far as tree planting as a way to mitigate the effects of climate change. There’s a difference between the logging company doing it and it being part of a government funded program.

PP – The lumber company as a dominant perpective. Are there other non dominant perspectives

MG – I was going to ask you, Jacob, what was the ratio of men to women in your camp?

J – More men, but not by much, more or less equal

MG – That was not what I expected. Times almost up, I think we can stop for the day.

PP – Did you get what you wanted? What do you want to do?

MG – Yeah, I’m just looking for different ways of thinking, I feel like this helped. I just want to find a way to plant trees better.

PP – So “planting trees better” is the why.

J – I think drones and military is the way to go.

MG – Just get it done, a big push.

J – When we talk about a solution for climate change, we just have to do it.

MG – And wood is a material, we have to replace plastic. It has value. Even if it comes down to the post-apocalyptic world they’re predicting, it’s Canada, it’ll still be cold in the winter after climate change, fuel wood may be a lifesaving resource.

PP – I asked a friend who was in Norway, they have a push to convert to electric cars, I asked him how many he saw and he said like 50%. That’s eventually going to carry over. So is oil even going to be important?

MG – Right, and this is something people like Doug don’t realize. Oil is an important resource, but it’s too valuable to be the thing that gets us to the corner store to pick up a bag of chips. That stuff will have more value if we leave it there. If we have the trees we have a new source of jobs for people from the oil industry.

PP – That’s a huge point, it will have more value if we leave it there.

MG – It’s like helium. It is irretrievable once leaked, and we’re filling up balloons for kids parties. It’s an important and finite resource. We need to rethink how we use our resources.

Koby’s Critique

Automation is not going to change Doug’s view. How can you change your solution, whatever that’s going to be that’s going to come through Doug, from around Doug. I think that that’s an important thing to think about. Not just another way of doing the same thing, because then the industry stays the same, everything stays the same and maybe improves for a few people. Doing something that is somehow going to affect Doug and friends. That’s worth thinking about. When you think about Doug, you already start thinking about the industry. We’re in a great place in the world, lumber in the world, what do we do with lumber. For example policy, in Victoria they’re starting to build high rises out of wood. Is that something that’s going to happen all over, will we need to produce more wood. Your scenario is going to about planting more trees, those trees are situated in a much larger plan for doing something. How can you show that through the object. Right now you’re thinking about trees in this specific place where this is already being done, but where else, how else, who else can do that. So, the military, great, but be careful, if you just take the military and put them in the same piece of land except the people who are making money for that. Is there another way for the military to do that, maybe somewhere else. Maybe get out of this little piece of land in Ontario that is owned by a company that is already being produced and into other locations and contexts. Maybe.

Reflection

The Orthographic Symbology has provided me with some insights into the assumptions and expectations of tools. They are all human operated, and most have not changed much in centuries. I am inspired to create something that breaks with these expectations and assumptions.

My interview with Jacob was full of small aspects of planting that I would not have likely thought of. Particularly around the idea of community, employment and the pains and gains of the activity, as well as the efficiency of the tools and techniques and the sheer volume of trees planted by so few.

I need to look into some things a little deeper, and I think one of the main benefits of this workshop in general were the gaps in my knowledge that were exposed.

My discussions around Uncle Doug helped to define other benefits to the activity of planting trees. Benefits I would not have uncovered due to the obvious benefits that led me to this point, and that Doug denies.

All of the discussions provided me with new perspectives, which was the goal of my workshop. These new perspectives will lead to changes in my principles and values, though my intent remains largely unchanged.

I want to design an object that increases the volume of flora that is propagated.