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When I first heard of this scheme the big question I had was "where are you going to find the room to plant them?" and it seems like that's still a big problem

When I first heard of this scheme the big question I had was "where are you going to find the room to plant them?" and it seems like that's still a big problem they're struggling with. > But many 2BT projects are planting on private land — and in places like Southern Ontario, there’s not enough of that land to go around, experts told The House. I heard them discussing this issue on the radio and they went on to describe in more depth how they were giving farmers tax breaks to plant forests. Canada is a big country, but the reality is that all the space is already being used. Either it's used by agriculture to export food all around the world, for cities (we have a housing crisis), or it's already forest. And logging companies that chop down trees were already obligated to replant the forest, well before this 2B trees promise. So we're left with replacing farming and pasture land with forest. There's not a lot of good opportunities for that.

randomdata 3y ago
> how they were giving farmers tax breaks to plant forests. An interesting choice. It's pretty clear that Ontario's housing problem is directly related to its farmland problem. Southern Ontario farmland values have risen 900% since the United States changed its farm subsidy policies in the 2000s, which allowed farming in Canada to be much more viable. Farmland being 900% more expensive means that urban areas can't sprawl cheaply like they once were able to, placing much more pressure on existing urban boundaries, thereby seeing the cost of urban housing rise. If this successfully takes even more farmland out of the equitation, farmers will just pay even more[1] for the remaining farmland, and then urban areas will have to pay even more to sprawl, putting even more pressure on existing urban boundaries, making urban housing even more expensive. [1] Supply managed diary and poultry producers are effectively given a blank cheque from the government. There is no end to how much they can spend.
- voisin 3y ago
  > Supply managed diary and poultry producers are effectively given a blank cheque from the government. There is no end to how much they can spend. Can you elaborate on this? It seems the dairy farmers I grew up with in Southwestern Ontario were living just above poverty.
  - randomdata 3y ago
    What kind of elaboration are you looking for? > It seems the dairy farmers I grew up with in Southwestern Ontario were living just above poverty. Sure. Such is the life of owing a business. I mean, why take for yourself personally when you can buy another farm instead? While not dairy or poultry, I operate a grain farm in Southern Ontario – along with involvement in tech – and I also live in near poverty. Not because I have to, but because the money is better spent on growing and improving the business. That's the name of the farming game. If you wanted to live a comfortable personal life, you'd get a regular day job instead. That's a perfectly reasonable choice – nay, the most reasonable choice – but once you catch the farming bug...
graemep 3y ago
Your comment suggests lots of ways the target can be achieved: > Either it's used by agriculture to export food all around the world Simple. Produce and export less food. People will clear mature forest elsewhere to meet make up for that food, but that is someone else's problem as far as this scheme is concerned. > And logging companies that chop down trees were already obligated to replant the forest Take that obligation away from them, and plant the trees on the freed up land under this scheme instead. This is what happens with most tree planting and carbon offset schemes. As others have said the most important thing is to preserve existing ecosystems, but there is no money in not doing things.
voisin 3y ago
> Canada is a big country, but the reality is that all the space is already being used There are vast suburbs where developers planted a single tree on the front lawn and moved on. Allow any landowner in the country to get as many trees as they want for free along with instructions on how to maximize the likelihood of success. Allow every farmer to install windbreaks of free trees. Plant trees up and down the rural roads to prevent blowing snow whiteout conditions, etc etc etc. Nearly every farm in the country could stand to lose a perimeter of 20 ft for trees.
- Bluestrike2 3y ago
  Sadly, there are plenty housing plans where the developers didn't bother to plant that even those lone trees. They're all easy targets for mass tree planting, and with people actually living on and tending to the property, the survival rate for the new trees go way up compared to planting massive numbers of saplings en masse. What's kind of surreal is that people aren't doing already planting them on their own. Even if we completely ignore any potential long-term climate benefits from urban/suburban trees, planting trees around your house is basically just a big bundle of benefits with some relatively minor maintenance costs (dealing with leaves if you so choose, pruning, etc.). They increase property values and personal satisfaction, provide shade that makes activities outside more pleasant and can decrease your HVAC bills by shading your house, help control water runoff, decrease urban heat island effects[0], and more. Street trees (closely lining the street) are even better because they can serve as traffic calming measures. When big tree branches overhang a road, they force drivers to slow down and pay more attention to their surroundings while simultaneously reducing driver frustration.[1] There's also growing evidence showing improvements to pedestrian safety.[2] Stick a sidewalk on the other side of the trees, and besides being more pleasant to walk under, those same trees will do a great job of shielding pedestrians from any errant automobiles. Beyond that, street trees can decrease noise and increase the aesthetic quality of a neighborhood. If you look at old historic housing areas in cities and towns across North America that were built before the rise of the automobile, you'll generally find lots of mature trees that contribute to the "charming " atmosphere (or whatever adjective people want to use to describe them). At least seven or eight of my parents' neighbors have cut down their mature trees in recent years (most being least 25+ years old). I'll give them every benefit of the doubt and assume that there was a problem with the trees (disease or severe damage, etc.) even if I couldn't notice anything from afar, but I every time I go past those houses now, I so desperately want to ask: "ok fine, maybe it had to go but why the fuck aren't you replacing that tree?" Do people honestly think it looks better? Do they like mowing the grass under the hot sun without a tree in sight to give them even a modicum of shade? Those parts of the neighborhood now clearly look like something is missing. 0. https://www.epa.gov/heatislands/using-trees-and-vegetation-reduce-heat-islands https://www.epa.gov/heatislands/using-trees-and-vegetation-r... 1. https://depts.washington.edu/hhwb/Thm_SafeStreets.html https://depts.washington.edu/hhwb/Thm_SafeStreets.html 2. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0001457522002536 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00014...
fasa99 3y ago
Farmers can generally be tree friendly in certain circumstances - if a road with some traffic passes through or by the farm, isolate it with tree wall (many suburban houses do this) - trees near major erosion sources / streams Putting trees on the "edge" of productive farmland, versus down the middle of some field, is much less problematic for the farmer. Generally a farmer is more than happy to reduce erosion, if not for environmental reasons than for keeping their soil where it is

randomdata 3y ago

> how they were giving farmers tax breaks to plant forests. An interesting choice. It's pretty clear that Ontario's housing problem is directly related to its farmland problem. Southern Ontario farmland values have risen 900% since the United States changed its farm subsidy policies in the 2000s, which allowed farming in Canada to be much more viable. Farmland being 900% more expensive means that urban areas can't sprawl cheaply like they once were able to, placing much more pressure on existing urban boundaries, thereby seeing the cost of urban housing rise. If this successfully takes even more farmland out of the equitation, farmers will just pay even more[1] for the remaining farmland, and then urban areas will have to pay even more to sprawl, putting even more pressure on existing urban boundaries, making urban housing even more expensive. [1] Supply managed diary and poultry producers are effectively given a blank cheque from the government. There is no end to how much they can spend.

voisin 3y ago
> Supply managed diary and poultry producers are effectively given a blank cheque from the government. There is no end to how much they can spend. Can you elaborate on this? It seems the dairy farmers I grew up with in Southwestern Ontario were living just above poverty.
- randomdata 3y ago
  What kind of elaboration are you looking for? > It seems the dairy farmers I grew up with in Southwestern Ontario were living just above poverty. Sure. Such is the life of owing a business. I mean, why take for yourself personally when you can buy another farm instead? While not dairy or poultry, I operate a grain farm in Southern Ontario – along with involvement in tech – and I also live in near poverty. Not because I have to, but because the money is better spent on growing and improving the business. That's the name of the farming game. If you wanted to live a comfortable personal life, you'd get a regular day job instead. That's a perfectly reasonable choice – nay, the most reasonable choice – but once you catch the farming bug...

graemep 3y ago

Your comment suggests lots of ways the target can be achieved: > Either it's used by agriculture to export food all around the world Simple. Produce and export less food. People will clear mature forest elsewhere to meet make up for that food, but that is someone else's problem as far as this scheme is concerned. > And logging companies that chop down trees were already obligated to replant the forest Take that obligation away from them, and plant the trees on the freed up land under this scheme instead. This is what happens with most tree planting and carbon offset schemes. As others have said the most important thing is to preserve existing ecosystems, but there is no money in not doing things.

voisin 3y ago

> Canada is a big country, but the reality is that all the space is already being used There are vast suburbs where developers planted a single tree on the front lawn and moved on. Allow any landowner in the country to get as many trees as they want for free along with instructions on how to maximize the likelihood of success. Allow every farmer to install windbreaks of free trees. Plant trees up and down the rural roads to prevent blowing snow whiteout conditions, etc etc etc. Nearly every farm in the country could stand to lose a perimeter of 20 ft for trees.

Bluestrike2 3y ago
Sadly, there are plenty housing plans where the developers didn't bother to plant that even those lone trees. They're all easy targets for mass tree planting, and with people actually living on and tending to the property, the survival rate for the new trees go way up compared to planting massive numbers of saplings en masse. What's kind of surreal is that people aren't doing already planting them on their own. Even if we completely ignore any potential long-term climate benefits from urban/suburban trees, planting trees around your house is basically just a big bundle of benefits with some relatively minor maintenance costs (dealing with leaves if you so choose, pruning, etc.). They increase property values and personal satisfaction, provide shade that makes activities outside more pleasant and can decrease your HVAC bills by shading your house, help control water runoff, decrease urban heat island effects[0], and more. Street trees (closely lining the street) are even better because they can serve as traffic calming measures. When big tree branches overhang a road, they force drivers to slow down and pay more attention to their surroundings while simultaneously reducing driver frustration.[1] There's also growing evidence showing improvements to pedestrian safety.[2] Stick a sidewalk on the other side of the trees, and besides being more pleasant to walk under, those same trees will do a great job of shielding pedestrians from any errant automobiles. Beyond that, street trees can decrease noise and increase the aesthetic quality of a neighborhood. If you look at old historic housing areas in cities and towns across North America that were built before the rise of the automobile, you'll generally find lots of mature trees that contribute to the "charming " atmosphere (or whatever adjective people want to use to describe them). At least seven or eight of my parents' neighbors have cut down their mature trees in recent years (most being least 25+ years old). I'll give them every benefit of the doubt and assume that there was a problem with the trees (disease or severe damage, etc.) even if I couldn't notice anything from afar, but I every time I go past those houses now, I so desperately want to ask: "ok fine, maybe it had to go but why the fuck aren't you replacing that tree?" Do people honestly think it looks better? Do they like mowing the grass under the hot sun without a tree in sight to give them even a modicum of shade? Those parts of the neighborhood now clearly look like something is missing. 0. https://www.epa.gov/heatislands/using-trees-and-vegetation-reduce-heat-islands https://www.epa.gov/heatislands/using-trees-and-vegetation-r... 1. https://depts.washington.edu/hhwb/Thm_SafeStreets.html https://depts.washington.edu/hhwb/Thm_SafeStreets.html 2. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0001457522002536 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00014...

fasa99 3y ago

Farmers can generally be tree friendly in certain circumstances - if a road with some traffic passes through or by the farm, isolate it with tree wall (many suburban houses do this) - trees near major erosion sources / streams Putting trees on the "edge" of productive farmland, versus down the middle of some field, is much less problematic for the farmer. Generally a farmer is more than happy to reduce erosion, if not for environmental reasons than for keeping their soil where it is