To the editor:
Re: "Trees great, but what about the damage they do?" Letters, Nov. 16.
So trees are bothersome and cost us money to repair cracked sidewalks and clogged gutters and drains. Well, if humans really had to pay for what trees offer us for free we'd all be broke.
They're called ecosystem services. Besides sequestering carbon to make oxygen so we can breathe, trees provide shade, beauty, soil fertilizer, food, building materials, art and animal habitat - all for free. Humans provide nothing - they just use up common natural capital at a great rate and complain.
Since we started walking on two legs, humans have cut down half of the world's forests, mostly in the last century. And there's a third more carbon dioxide in the air than at the start of the Industrial Revolution. We desperately need trees and their saviour friends so future generations can breathe and not get totally cooked by climate change. Trees don't destroy, humans do. We're lucky trees are immobile or they might follow our example to rise up one day and clearcut us all.
Celia Brauer, Vancouver
