AROUND THE GARDEN

As reported in yesterday’s New York Times, the forests of the world, which act as a sponge for carbon emissions, are in deep trouble. Rising temperatures, drought, massive wildfires, illegal rain forest clearing, newly rampant insects – all of these factors have had devastating effects on our planet’s trees. Why do we care?

“Scientists have figured out — with the precise numbers deduced only recently — that forests have been absorbing more than a quarter of the carbon dioxide that people are putting into the air by burning fossil fuels and other activities. It is an amount so large that trees are effectively absorbing the emissions from all the world’s cars and trucks.” (Entire story here.)

Connecticut is, truly, a blessed isle in the midst of the New York-Boston corridor: according to U.S. Forest Service data, we have a lot of tree cover. At 49.3% coverage, we have more urban tree canopy cover per capita than any state except New Hampshire.

In 2009, almost 88% of Connecticut’s population lived in urban areas, but only a little over 36% of the state’s land was classed as urban. Over all, the percentage of tree cover in the state has been declining for the past few years, having risen steadily for the better part of the 20^th century.

Today, one should expect tree cover to shrink at a greater rate: threats abound. Although we don’t often have forest fires, our area is susceptible to damaging temperature swings, clear cutting for urban sprawl, an awful array of fungi – exacerbated by increasing heat and humidity – and an ever growing number of alien insect pests. (The photo above was taken at the Wadsworth/Kerste deBoer Arboretum in 2010.)

Quite possibly, the Next Big Thing will be mass hysteria about keeping utility lines safe from Evil Killer Trees. If we allow the electric utilities to become more aggressive about tree removal – which seems to be the thrust of recent testimony by CL&P executives – we will reduce our quality of life drastically.

Even as we require more and more electricity, produced by the burning of fossil fuels, we need more and more trees to absorb those massive amounts of carbon being released.

It’s been only a couple of years since many of us watched in horror as massive new power poles were installed through many utility easements. These monstrous pylons were installed to support greater capacity wires to supply electricity to Fairfield County. Presumably the hedge fund traders of Greenwich need a lot of servers in their home offices.

The shocking (!) fact was reported locally that these wires were being installed underground in Fairfield County, while the rest of the state had the opportunity to admire – for all time, apparently – those stunning protrusions of metal and wire.

Now, I am a realist, and I am aware that a great many powerful people reside in Fairfield County. But how is it that the rest of us didn’t rise up as one snarling Rottweiler, and bite the hands of the politicians who signed this agreement?

If our current crop of elected officials colludes with CL&P to make the leap from merely hacking branches to actually clear-cutting along utility lines, we really are going to be in the soup. It is quite bad enough that CL&P – and all the other utilities – are permitted to spray herbicides and growth retardants on fields throughout their easements.

To quote again from the U.S. Forest Service data, the 2009 value of Connecticut’s forest canopy in air pollution removal per year was $127,600,000. We cannot sit idle while our desperately-needed shade trees are sacrificed to the gods of electricity.

“Bury the wires” should be the rallying cry – because we’re not going to give up our electronics, are we? And we shouldn’t give up on our trees either.