Tree Speech

According to a report published in Science, the future climate in this region will not be favorable for growing trees. According to the report:

There is a broad consensus among climate models that this region will dry in the 21st century and that the transition to a more arid climate should already be underway. If these models are correct, the levels of aridity of the recent multiyear drought or the Dust Bowl and the 1950s droughts will become the new climatology of the American Southwest within a time frame of years to decades.

This does not bode well for the success of proposed tree ordinance revisions. City Council directed staff to develop an ordinance that would achieve 40% tree canopy cover citywide.

However, city staffers are banking on much of that tree canopy coming from a tree-planting requirement. Preservation requirements alone fall far short. Consequently, predictions of 40% future tree canopy will likely turn out to be a mirage.

My Lorax statuette

I thought I’d pass along a blog post, The Lorax (and his Truffula trees), which includes a 25-minute cartoon of Dr. Seuss’ story The Lorax. It’s from trees, if you please, written by a tree-loving blogger from Brooklyn.

I am the lucky owner of two copies of The Lorax, and a cool Lorax statuette, all gifts from friends and supporters. Before I received them, I was oblivious to this compelling, sad tale of greed and tree destruction. I only wish the protagonist didn’t have “ax” in his name.

I was outraged when I first read how Congress is planning huge tax abatements for homebuilding corporations. Proposed legislation, which may become law this week, pretends to help people threatened by foreclosure by giving away $billions to big corporations. I’m glad to see other blogs, like B and B, sounding the alarm on this…

…one thing I am clear about is that giving out billions of dollars of taxpayers’ money to the housing industry that reaped in mega-profits during those years is profoundly wrong.

One locally notorious corporation, KBHome, is set to reap a windfall from this legislation. KB saw its pre-tax income jump from $154 million in 1998 to $1,374 million in 2006… a nearly 800% increase. Sure, it dropped back to a mere $768 million in 2006 and then to a loss of $1,461 million in 2007. Under the proposed legislation, KBHome will, by my calculations, receive a $565 million gift from taxpayers.

Apart from being enormously unfair, the bill seems to reward those who are most responsible for the problem, and to even exacerbate the root causes of the mortgage crisis. For instance:

• Homebuilders profited enormously from sales of houses enabled by sub-prime mortgages. Why do they need more rewards?
• It is likely that homebuilders helped create the problem by working hand-in-hand with sub-prime lenders to boost sales of their product.
• One of the stated purposes of the bill is to prop up house prices. However, astronomical prices are at the very root of the housing problem. Who can afford the median price of $400,000 or more that houses fetch in many markets?
• Where is the evidence that the “trickle-down” economics of giving billions to homebuilders will in any way help those in danger of foreclosure?

This legislation is corporate welfare at its worst.

Two very different reports point out the value of trees, not only in combating global warming but in helping weak economies. The Giving Trees tells about an Oregon scientist whose research refutes the belief that old forests do not absorb carbon.

Law’s data show that this 90-year-old forest is, in fact, at the peak of its ability to absorb carbon. The uptake of carbon by ponderosa pines increases gradually, then reaches a plateau at some point between 50 years and 90 years. Once this plateau is reached, the trees and the soil will together continue to form a rich bank of stored carbon that cannot be equaled by any newly sprouted stand. During her work in California and the Pacific Northwest, she’s found forests as old as 800 years that continue to absorb more carbon than they release.

Mexico: The Business of Saving Trees is a story of how one woman has created a biosphere…

Pati Ruiz Corzo is the director of the Sierra Gorda Biosphere Reserve, a protected area about the size of Rhode Island that is a five-hour drive north of Mexico City. When she left her teaching job in the city and moved to the region 25 years ago searching for a simpler life, she found the place littered with trash and stripped of much of its natural vegetation. She decided it would be her life’s work to restore the forest and to create new jobs for the people living in the biosphere.

Not only has she has boosted her community’s economy, she has brought water back. How strange that in Texas, folks claim that we have to destroy trees to help the aquifer.

Corzo’s efforts are beginning to transform the once-depleted landscape into a thriving habitat with fertile topsoil, a replenished water table and an abundance of newly planted vegetation. She’s also developing an eco-tourism industry with rustic lodge accommodations and craft shops for local artisans. It’s already a popular destination for birdwatchers. But Margolis also learns that many of the men in the community still head to the United States to find work, as they struggle to support their families off the local land.

Now with carbon trading a hot “commodity,” Corzo sees an opportunity to use her forest to raise money on the carbon market.

In his recent syndicated column, Randy Cohen addresses the ethics of an ax-wielding neighbor. Cohen believes that what we do on our own property, even if legal, affects others and therefore we owe them some consideration, notwithstanding any property rights we can assert.

By removing those trees, your neighbor wrecked more than your view and privacy. Among other things, he diminished the air quality and perhaps worsened water-runoff problems for the entire area, destroyed something of beauty and most likely lowered the value of his own property — amusing but not enough so to justify the act. (This last, affecting only himself, makes him a knucklehead but does not make him unethical.)

Cohen is skeptical that the destruction can be mitigated by planting new trees…a favorite rationalization of local developers, who make the questionable claim that they plant more trees than they destroy.

As for replanting the trees, even if he acquiesced you would not benefit: saplings take years to reach shady adulthood. Nor can his handing you some cash increase the oxygen levels in the neighborhood.

He also believes that, by allowing such destruction to occur…

The law itself can be subject to ethical scrutiny. If it fails to weigh the ecological implications of this ax-wielding on the wider community, it is dubious indeed.

Clearly, many of our local and state laws make a poor accounting of themselves, ethically speaking. Hopefully, our state legislators will consider this when the lobbyists return to Austin next year asking for even more outrageous “grandfathering” statutes and draconian “takings” laws.

Cohen’s final bit of advice is one that, hopefully, everyone will to take to heart…

…your efforts should be expended on toughening local laws. And you’ll have plenty of time to do that, now that you won’t be squandering your weekends on backyard barbecues with the neighbor.