Is “Plant A Tree” The Worst Environmental Advice Given?
Generally, the suggestion that we avoid invasive species is good advice. However, the essential message of an author, from Florida, is:
Wait! Don’t rush to mitigate rainfall, or wind, or accelerate carbon sequestration and mitigate climate change. Let’s move slower and be cautious. Your solution might be too aggressive.
Really? You are writing from Florida and planting trees that grow too aggressively is your primary concern?
This month’s climate disaster if Florida, September’s was Pakistan flooding, In August, a mega-heatwave ran from China to the US. In July, Britain’s heat wave included the hottest day on record, while other parts of Europe, were scorched and had wildfires.
Trees provide more than two dozen services to communities, including reducing the kinetic energy of wind and rain, helping the rain get absorbed by the land, reducing wind (although trees appear to have little effect during a hurricane), filtering water for municipalities, cleaning air pollution and supporting the fungi that reduce pollution in the soil.
While Paola’s advice to be mindful of invasive species and whenever possible restore local types of vegetation is good, and one should be mindful of the urgency of action. The message, “Plant more trees” is being sent out (via this and other platforms) with the hope that people react as quickly as possible to something tangible they can do. Each tree is a sign of hope and part of a collective action to improve the world.
Most trees need to be 7 to 10 years old to provide meaningful canopy to cool our cities, and fast growing trees may be good short-term solutions. They may be invasive and aggressive in one area, but have seedlings that sprout more inconsistently and survive shorter periods in another region. Or, they may create cooling canopy, support carbon reduction and also assist with other parts of your local agenda, such as growing food or bulk that can be made into biodegradable plastic bags.
Recent weather events suggest that “2030 Climate Crisis” is already here — and if we start today, we are already late if we want to have sufficient tree canopy for our cities by 2030, given the time it takes for a tree to grow. Planting a rapidly growing tree is not the ecological crime Paola suggests, rather not planting more trees is the crime.
Join me on planting or protecting another tree each Friday, as part of Fridays for the Future (#FFF).
Why does SymSoil care? We focus on solutions to environmental issues, with a focus on soil biology. Trees and plants feed, and are fed by, the soil microbiome. Healthy soil influences water, carbon sequestration and human health. SymSoil holds a patent on the first scalable approach to manufacturing Soil Food Web products as an alternative to agrochemicals. SymSoil is a supporter of 100KTrees4Humanity, an urban tree planting project focused on action that moves us towards solutions to climate change with equity and inclusion.
