61 Trees: the Game

fir round, paint-chips

18” x 21” x 12”

2009

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This gameboard is drilled into the fir round, in the form of Chinese Checkers.
The 61 “game pieces” (shaped like trees) are cut from paint chips, and are playable.

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61 refers to a study by arboreal ecologist Dr. Nalini Nadkarni, in which she and her graduate students surveyed the trees on Earth.  As of New Year’s morning of 2008, they calculated 61 trees per person on this planet. 

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How many are enough?  No one knows; it is a gambling game we play with our planet. 

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The contemporary game-theorist’s classic challenge, Prisoner’s Dilemma, has been applied to model the politics of global climate change.  These theoretical mathematicians doubt that we have a “winning strategy”.