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In Portland they recently started cutting trees down to widen the road for extended bus and bike lanes. That spawned a conversation that we've lost a third of o

by oooyay 3y ago

In Portland they recently started cutting trees down to widen the road for extended bus and bike lanes. That spawned a conversation that we've lost a third of our tree cover due to various things and the city hasn't kept up. That week I started burying cones from my Douglas Firs, which aren't nearly as big as the Mountain Ashes you planted, but are fairly large. With any luck I'll have five in my yard.

pstuart 3y ago
The other Portland tree fail was where the city did plant trees they didn't bother to care for them: https://www.wweek.com/news/2023/08/09/trees-planted-by-the-city-in-east-portland-two-years-ago-are-dead-because-the-city-didnt-water-them/ https://www.wweek.com/news/2023/08/09/trees-planted-by-the-c... It would be nice to see more government collaboration where citizens can assist in ways that will actually stick.
- KennyBlanken 3y ago
  It's not a "tree fail" to remove some trees if it means a substantial conversion of passenger car to bus and bike use which reduces CO2 consumption. If the bike lane causes one person to give up their car and commute by bike, that's worth hundreds of trees per year. The same is true for solar. There are a lot of cases where cutting down a few trees for a solar array means a substantial increase in CO2 offset, more than the cut down trees would have provided. I wish uninformed people would stop trying to "gotcha" environmental progress. Believe it or not, the people planning these things are much more educated in the subject than a bunch of software engineers and "entrepreneurs"
  - dudeinjapan 3y ago
    Try telling that to the trees.
  - Tanoc 3y ago
    The planning might be very detailed and considerate, but the execution is often botched. The people doing the surveys and consultations are not the people who end up doing construction. Because of pressure the people doing construction often have a "better to ask for forgiveness than permission" approach to non-structural things like flora. If I had a dollar for the amount of times I've seen mudslides or embankments that eroded away because the workers on site chopped down unnecessary amounts of trees to store equipment closer, I'd be able to buy a movie ticket. Which, y'know, it's only like fourteen dollars. But that's still too many times.
  - oooyay 3y ago
    > If the bike lane causes one person to give up their car and commute by bike, that's worth hundreds of trees per year. Where they did this is by my house, so I think I can speak to this a bit. It was not good planning, not that you can only have one or the other. Trees are also huge fighters of climate change heat casualties. The tree coverage keeps the ground and, specifically, the asphalt cooler: https://www.wweek.com/news/2023/06/07/a-major-investment-in-east-portland-road-safety-will-deprive-a-heat-island-of-570-trees/ https://www.wweek.com/news/2023/06/07/a-major-investment-in-... Without the trees "heat islands" have developed and surprise, surprise they're in places where people have less money to throw at making the city to keep both a priority in their neighborhoods. The lack of tree coverage is also necessitating the purchase of cooling systems which many people can't afford (and yes, in Portland we do have people dying in their homes from high heat) - so the trees being missing necessitates subsidizing AC units for folks, which is a tangible cost now associated with lack of tree coverage vs proper tree coverage. > I wish uninformed people would stop trying to "gotcha" environmental progress. Believe it or not, the people planning these things are much more educated in the subject than a bunch of software engineers and "entrepreneurs" Not to "gotcha" you or anyone else, but it was the city planners themselves who came out with this mea culpa and did a study on the heat islands. Our government is very unique and not very cohesive so it is actually reasonable to investigate whether PBOT and the people who contract tree coverage in the city actually talked.
  - shiroiuma 3y ago
    Instead of chopping down trees to build a bike lane, they should simply take lanes away from the road and make those into protected bike lanes. This has multiple benefits: 1) leave the trees alone, and keep the street looking nice, 2) not waste more space on vehicles, 3) make biking safer, 4) discourage people from using cars by making it more inconvenient for them. The other thing they can do is to restrict parking: replace parking lots with parks (and more trees) and more buildings.
    - bluescrn 3y ago
      Waging war on cars is waging war on the economy. The economy is our life support system. Aggressively pushing bikes as the only future of transport is kind of ableist. Fine for healthy young people, in flat areas, on dry days. But not for the elderly, disabled, or unfit. And public transport options need to be safe and comfortable. That doesn't fit with currently-trendy soft on crime policies.
      - defrost 3y ago
        That's what was said about the horse and buggy. Evolution's an actual thing, you know, both for living forms and for technology. The circulation of resources, goods, and energy is our life support - the economic assumption that growth is unlimited and GDP is a good metric is just a fad of the last century or two.
        dukeyukey 3y ago
        To be fair the last century has seen near-inmmeasurable improvements in the human condition.
      - lozenge 3y ago
        Nobody's trying to ban cars. The elderly, disabled or unfit would actually find it easier to drive with less traffic and bikes having better separation from the road.
      - fhars 3y ago
        Defending cars is waging war on humanity. There, I can play that game, too.
  - stevage 3y ago
    Trees have many benefits besides CO2 sequestration.
jhoechtl 3y ago
> That week I started burying cones Sorry to tell you that this wont work to start a Douglas Fir. The seed is not the cone but they are wing-equiped and sit underneath the bristles in pouches of the cone. As they are tiny it is in indication that they do not like to be burried but instead germinate on top of bare soil.
jwestbury 3y ago
> I started burying cones from my Douglas Firs, which aren't nearly as big as the Mountain Ashes you planted Just want to note, this is definitively not true. Coastal Dougs routinely reach 100m in height, and there's some anecdotal evidence[0] of a Doug which would likely have been the tallest tree ever recorded, if we believe the measurements putting it at 142m in height (and 10m in circumference!). 0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nooksack_Giant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nooksack_Giant
- oooyay 3y ago
  I've learned two things today. First is the seedlings note above, second is this. I'm still learning a lot about these trees. There's many of them at a park by my house and I have four in my yard, but they're probably 40 years old. They're very large to me, but they look nothing like the pictures of those Ashes.
cafard 3y ago
In Washington, DC, there is an organization named Casey Trees, which is dedicated to restoring the tree cover. There are community plantings now and then, and it will kick in $50 toward the cost of any sapling (I assume conditional on type) that you plant.

by oooyay 3y ago

pstuart 3y ago

The other Portland tree fail was where the city did plant trees they didn't bother to care for them: https://www.wweek.com/news/2023/08/09/trees-planted-by-the-city-in-east-portland-two-years-ago-are-dead-because-the-city-didnt-water-them/ https://www.wweek.com/news/2023/08/09/trees-planted-by-the-c... It would be nice to see more government collaboration where citizens can assist in ways that will actually stick.

KennyBlanken 3y ago
It's not a "tree fail" to remove some trees if it means a substantial conversion of passenger car to bus and bike use which reduces CO2 consumption. If the bike lane causes one person to give up their car and commute by bike, that's worth hundreds of trees per year. The same is true for solar. There are a lot of cases where cutting down a few trees for a solar array means a substantial increase in CO2 offset, more than the cut down trees would have provided. I wish uninformed people would stop trying to "gotcha" environmental progress. Believe it or not, the people planning these things are much more educated in the subject than a bunch of software engineers and "entrepreneurs"
- dudeinjapan 3y ago
  Try telling that to the trees.
- Tanoc 3y ago
  The planning might be very detailed and considerate, but the execution is often botched. The people doing the surveys and consultations are not the people who end up doing construction. Because of pressure the people doing construction often have a "better to ask for forgiveness than permission" approach to non-structural things like flora. If I had a dollar for the amount of times I've seen mudslides or embankments that eroded away because the workers on site chopped down unnecessary amounts of trees to store equipment closer, I'd be able to buy a movie ticket. Which, y'know, it's only like fourteen dollars. But that's still too many times.
- oooyay 3y ago
  > If the bike lane causes one person to give up their car and commute by bike, that's worth hundreds of trees per year. Where they did this is by my house, so I think I can speak to this a bit. It was not good planning, not that you can only have one or the other. Trees are also huge fighters of climate change heat casualties. The tree coverage keeps the ground and, specifically, the asphalt cooler: https://www.wweek.com/news/2023/06/07/a-major-investment-in-east-portland-road-safety-will-deprive-a-heat-island-of-570-trees/ https://www.wweek.com/news/2023/06/07/a-major-investment-in-... Without the trees "heat islands" have developed and surprise, surprise they're in places where people have less money to throw at making the city to keep both a priority in their neighborhoods. The lack of tree coverage is also necessitating the purchase of cooling systems which many people can't afford (and yes, in Portland we do have people dying in their homes from high heat) - so the trees being missing necessitates subsidizing AC units for folks, which is a tangible cost now associated with lack of tree coverage vs proper tree coverage. > I wish uninformed people would stop trying to "gotcha" environmental progress. Believe it or not, the people planning these things are much more educated in the subject than a bunch of software engineers and "entrepreneurs" Not to "gotcha" you or anyone else, but it was the city planners themselves who came out with this mea culpa and did a study on the heat islands. Our government is very unique and not very cohesive so it is actually reasonable to investigate whether PBOT and the people who contract tree coverage in the city actually talked.
- shiroiuma 3y ago
  Instead of chopping down trees to build a bike lane, they should simply take lanes away from the road and make those into protected bike lanes. This has multiple benefits: 1) leave the trees alone, and keep the street looking nice, 2) not waste more space on vehicles, 3) make biking safer, 4) discourage people from using cars by making it more inconvenient for them. The other thing they can do is to restrict parking: replace parking lots with parks (and more trees) and more buildings.
  - bluescrn 3y ago
    Waging war on cars is waging war on the economy. The economy is our life support system. Aggressively pushing bikes as the only future of transport is kind of ableist. Fine for healthy young people, in flat areas, on dry days. But not for the elderly, disabled, or unfit. And public transport options need to be safe and comfortable. That doesn't fit with currently-trendy soft on crime policies.
    - defrost 3y ago
      That's what was said about the horse and buggy. Evolution's an actual thing, you know, both for living forms and for technology. The circulation of resources, goods, and energy is our life support - the economic assumption that growth is unlimited and GDP is a good metric is just a fad of the last century or two.
      - dukeyukey 3y ago
        To be fair the last century has seen near-inmmeasurable improvements in the human condition.
    - lozenge 3y ago
      Nobody's trying to ban cars. The elderly, disabled or unfit would actually find it easier to drive with less traffic and bikes having better separation from the road.
    - fhars 3y ago
      Defending cars is waging war on humanity. There, I can play that game, too.
- stevage 3y ago
  Trees have many benefits besides CO2 sequestration.

jhoechtl 3y ago

> That week I started burying cones Sorry to tell you that this wont work to start a Douglas Fir. The seed is not the cone but they are wing-equiped and sit underneath the bristles in pouches of the cone. As they are tiny it is in indication that they do not like to be burried but instead germinate on top of bare soil.

jwestbury 3y ago

> I started burying cones from my Douglas Firs, which aren't nearly as big as the Mountain Ashes you planted Just want to note, this is definitively not true. Coastal Dougs routinely reach 100m in height, and there's some anecdotal evidence[0] of a Doug which would likely have been the tallest tree ever recorded, if we believe the measurements putting it at 142m in height (and 10m in circumference!). 0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nooksack_Giant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nooksack_Giant

oooyay 3y ago
I've learned two things today. First is the seedlings note above, second is this. I'm still learning a lot about these trees. There's many of them at a park by my house and I have four in my yard, but they're probably 40 years old. They're very large to me, but they look nothing like the pictures of those Ashes.

cafard 3y ago

In Washington, DC, there is an organization named Casey Trees, which is dedicated to restoring the tree cover. There are community plantings now and then, and it will kick in $50 toward the cost of any sapling (I assume conditional on type) that you plant.