Chopping down old trees is a truly dumb idea

Clearing our majestic friends for a parking lot is nonsense

The other weekend, I showed my teen and almost-teen how much I love them by standing in line for over an hour at Hot Topic to buy three pairs of socks. Fortunately, I was armed with a Frappuccino and it helped break the monotony of looking at kids hunched over their phones. The socks are great, you'll be pleased to hear. But the experience made me realize how easy it is for us bipeds to slip into idiotic and unreasonable behaviour whereby we sacrifice precious resources for decidedly underwhelming outcomes. Naturally, that made me think of trees. And cars.

You've no doubt heard the story of the luxury car dealership wanting to cut down majestic, mature trees off Hunt Club Road not far from the airport to build a parking lot. And of course, knowing how this city operates, you can bet it'll happen, despite all the opposition we can muster. Then there's the other trees and green spaces we're similarly going to massacre near the site of the new Civic hospital campus to build an aboveground parking garage.

I want to scream in bold letters. Really? REALLY?!? We're seriously considering cutting down mature trees to make more space for the temporary storage of private metal boxes? What is this, 1951?

I can justify the eternity I spent at the Rideau Centre to enter a den of teenage fashion because I was spending time with my kids. Also, this caramel ribbon crunch stuff is powerful. But trees, once cut down, can't be brought back like a cranky mother's mood after a generous

Trees, once cut down, can't be brought back . ... They are gone, and so are their benefits.

injection of sugary whipped cream. They are gone, and so are their benefits to the environment, to the mental health of humans and more generally our collective well-being.

Green spaces aren't just valuable because of the colour. They help with air pollution, capture CO2, provide shade and a pleasant environment for humans and they absorb noise. They also give wildlife a habitat worthy of the name. And yes, you want bunnies and raccoons and various critters in the city. Biodiversity is a good thing.

Maybe you're thinking, meh, there are lots of trees, what's a couple dozen here and there? The urban canopy, is what.

As I wrote in these pages a while back, the urban canopy is the proportion of a city that would be shaded if the sun were directly overhead. A good proportion is 40 per cent or more. The capital region overall has just a little over that.

You may think that's good, but it's not really, because our tree coverage is very unevenly distributed. Some neighbourhoods are leafy and others are concrete deserts. A few years ago, the National Capital Commission produced a report showing the amount of tree canopy in the region broken down by neighbourhood, if you want to see how your area did.

In the suburbs like bottom-of-the-pile Barrhaven, the tree canopy situation is awful, as developers bulldoze nature to cram in as many houses as possible before planting a few twigs on their way to the bank. Saplings are cute, but they don't give shade to humans or habitat to critters. Or, come to think of it, much happiness. There is a strong and demonstrated relationship between significant tree coverage and positive mental health outcomes such as less psychological distress. We can't ignore that.

Good tree coverage also brings cooler temperatures, as much as five degrees Celsius cooler during the day. Areas that are nothing but asphalt, with or without parked cars on it, have the opposite effect. They are worse than useless in keeping us cooler in the summer and are unredeemable climate-change villains.

I know it's easy to slip into idiocy. I've got the socks to prove it. But come on, folks. Leave the trees alone.