You can’t change an industry if you aren’t consistent about communicating a different way of thinking. I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. Our industry has a deeply established business model. A property has trees, somebody identifies a problem or an opportunity, and a tree company gets paid to perform work. Sometimes that work is necessary. Sometimes it’s beneficial. Sometimes the best thing for the property, the customer, and the trees is to do less. But how do we get more people to recognize the value of the trees they’re already paying to maintain? How do we help property owners understand that a tree isn’t simply an obstacle, a liability, or a future removal job? And how do we help professionals develop business models that reward knowledge, stewardship, preservation, and long-term value? Those are big questions. They also require consistent communication. I recently watched a lecture about removing obstacles that prevent consistency. One of the exercises challenged me to identify the identity behind my own inconsistency. When I fail to publish something, what am I telling myself? “I’m not good enough to be visible to the world.” That belief encourages me to keep preparing, keep researching, and keep trying to acquire more proof of work before I share my ideas. But I’ve spent more than 20 years learning things the hard way. I’ve worked in tree care, experienced the demands of storm recovery, and learned to approach problems through the lenses of safety, training, and operational discipline. I don’t need to wait until I know everything to share something useful. The identity I’m choosing to practice is: “I already have something of value to offer the world...” My new standard is simple: - Publish useful content consistently. - Share lessons from actual experience. - Explain concepts that help people understand the value of trees. - Participate in conversations that challenge conventional thinking. - Turn observations into educational material instead of letting them disappear into another camera roll or notebook. -

I spoke at the New Zealand arboriculture conference on Thursday, this is what I said.

Hey so I figure most people in here are watching the global order decline. I think talking about food security is a good idea, El Niño is meant to cause all sorts of havoc on an already fragile system. I also think talking about the global fuel situation would be good too. Crude extraction looks okay but refining capacity is fuuuucked up and fuel reserves are nearly gone. What do yall see

Please see the first draft of the full information pack that describes Sempervirens, a system to account for natural value in a capitalist world and beyond, and how we, the green industries, can build it. It is lengthy and technical, for anyone brave enough to tackle the whole thing I salute you, but also I encourage you to feed it into your AI and ask it questions so it's more manageable. All feedback is welcome, blunt and direct feedback is most useful.

There are lots of suggestions about legal protection for trees being the way forward. My position is it’s part of the solution but cannot be relied upon. Our economy is a story of infinite growth and our planet is finite, so my position is that we will continue to lose trees to feed the economy until we account for the economic value of the natural world. This is happening in New Zealand, we removed general tree protection in 2012 and have lost massive amounts of canopy since then. Now, the government is doubling down and going after our most special protection - notable trees. To me, the problem is financial, interested to hear your thoughts.