With all trees on the planet wiped out, previously forested ecosystems “would become only a source of emission of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, rather than a sink,” says Paolo D'Odorico, a professor of environmental science at the University of California, Berkeley. Barring an unimaginable catastrophe, however, there’s no scenario under which we would fell every tree on the planet. Surviving communities, Lowman believes, would likely be those that have retained traditional knowledge about how to live in treeless environments, such as Australia’s Aboriginals.

Removing trees means losing huge amounts of land to the ocean,” says Thomas Crowther, a global systems ecologist at ETH Zurich in Switzerland and lead author of the 2015 Nature study. He explores the expansiveness of video games, and the joy of escapism, as well as the ways in which it limits us.

Sexton’s voice and his work feel entirely fresh and entirely assured: what he is doing may be new, but he is completely in control. Then we go to a marvellous illustration of an imagination full of all of Granddad’s stories and ideas. On a global scale, trees combat warming caused by climate change by storing carbon in their trunks and removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. The cool intellect must work not only against cool intellect on the other side, but against the muddy heathen mysticisms which deny intellect altogether.

We meet the narrator’s mother in hospital, where the narrator feels, “I’ve been here so long I think I hear my children passing the door. In Sexton’s work, the virtual worlds of Super Mario interbleed with the poet’s real life and it’s landscape of loss, providing escapism and a sense of teleology - a goal at the end of each level (that each poem is strikingly named after), at the end of the game - towards which one can battle the ghosts of grief; platforming through the ever-shifting environments of mourning. They keep soil in place that would otherwise wash away in rain, and their root structures help microbial communities thrive.is a beautifully illustrated poem about a girl's relationship with her grandfather, encompassing both her joy as she spends time with him, and her sadness at his eventual passing.

Apologies for the spill of emotions that pour from this review - know that you as author and illustrator have created something so, so meaningful and beautiful. This one got me a little teary -- it's very sweet and even in the sadness, celebrates the joy of good memories.I lost both my great-grandmother and my grandmother in the past year and it was sort of difficult to read this book, but it reminded me that even in their passing I still have all of my memories with them. Trees’ services to this planet range from carbon storage and soil conservation to water cycle regulation.