There is a play by one of my favorite writers, Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka, I would like to tell you about, "The Swamp Dwellers." "The Swamp Dwellers" are about a blind beggar who attempts to buy a piece of swampland because he believes that the swamps will provide him with a better livelihood.
However, the villagers in that swamp believe that deep in the forests of the swamp lies a deity whose job is to protect them from all misfortune.
There is another swamp that protects us from misfortune.
And holds the promise of humanity's survival.
Those are the peatlands of the Congo Basin.
The peatlands of the Congo Basin are a lush, vast, expanse of weeds, shrubs and trees that absorb carbon from the atmosphere.
They span 145,000 kilometers.
The peat formations began 10,000 years ago, when man moved from hunter-gatherer to farmer. Nature, I guess, figured, "I better start protecting myself." A couple of years ago, scientists discovered that these tropical peatlands are probably the largest carbon sink in the world.
They store 30 billion tons of carbon.
If they did not exist, we would have probably already stepped beyond the threshold of 1.5 degrees of warming.