I am totally tripping balls right now, but anyways...

I read the link and although I agree trees are grand and marvelous creatures, very complicated organisms upon whose existence we survive. Our species came down from the trees, and we and the trees live off each other's waste gases (oxygen and carbon dioxide), so in a deep sense we are connected.

But I'm afraid they are no more conscious than a bacterium, because they lack a real nervous system by which consciousness could conceivably arise.

We animals are uniquely endowed with the special ability to think, and we ought to cherish that, and be proud that we are owners of intricate, complex and beautiful neural systems which allow us to contemplate our own existence.

“We are a way for the Cosmos to know itself.” —Carl Sagan