Stop clear-cutting New York City

New York City is tearing down parks. East River Park is gone. Wagner Park and Elizabeth Street Garden are next. At this critical moment, scientists widely agree the most meaningful way we can pull more carbon out of the atmosphere to mitigate the worst effects of climate change is through our natural landscape. They call this asset our Green Infrastructure. But this infrastructure is being degraded.

According to Global Forest Watch, over the last two decades, the U.S. has lost 44.3 million hectares of tree cover, a 16% decrease since 2000 and a loss of 17.2 billion tons of CO2. That’s not to mention how much more we’re heating up due to the loss of shade.

In cities, mature trees are very efficient at carbon capture. But government policy, especially in New York, shows officials are not particularly concerned about this matter. It will take decades before tree replanting makes up for the carbon capture loss caused by cutting mature trees. Officials need to better balance essential improvements and climate issues.

This is evident in the destruction of the 53-acre East River Park. Nearly 1,000 fully grown trees are being cut down in the belief that doing so along with land improvements will make the area more resilient to rising tides — itself the product of climate change. The park hosts the equivalent of several acres of forest. According to the U.S. Forest Service, one acre of forest stores 75 tons of CO2.

Ignore for the moment how much more vulnerable the area will be to flooding during the many years of reconstruction and how much hotter this neighborhood will get during summers for decades to come. The argument for destroying this 80-year-old park and raising the land 8 feet: it will prevent the community from flooding.

The 3.5-acre Wagner Park, and its 48 mature trees, is next on the chopping block. The Battery Park City Authority wants to destroy this remarkable space at the tip of Manhattan to raise it up. BPCA is ignoring that the park was designed as a flood basin and never flooded when Sandy came roaring through.

This piecemeal approach to keeping tidal surges out of Lower Manhattan is comparable to stacking sandbags in front of a beach home in hopes of keeping high water from reaching the house. Nothing less than a perimeter barrier along its coastline will keep Lower Manhattan dry. The historic water city of Venice learned this truth the hard way.

The city also wants to destroy the one-acre Elizabeth Street

Garden and dozens of mature trees to build affordable housing. Yet, the city turns down vacant alternative sites that offer even more apartment capacity.

Notice a trend?

This lack of foresight is evident across the entire region and country. To cut maintenance costs, local parks departments are cutting down trees and replacing grass playfields with artificial turf: two actions that directly facilitate flooding during storms and raise temperatures by a factor of two during the hottest months.

Some towns are now realizing the value of Green Infrastructure. But most, including the affluent town of Scarsdale, permit clear-cutting.

Now think bigger.

There are many practical reasons why the Syracuse site of Micron Technology’s new chip plant is appropriate. It’s a critical industry and a welcome economic stimulus. But it will lead to the widespread destruction of natural landscape. The suburban-rural site is equivalent to 40 football fields and will bring additional development in response to greater wealth and residential demands.

The loss of carbon capture should’ve been a factor in site selection. The runner-up site near Austin was cropland.

The same concerns surround the siting of massive Amazon warehouses as well as solar panel farms around the country that are gobbling up huge swaths of forests. And down south, Atlanta is tearing down 85 acres of forest for a public safety training facility.

All of this speaks of the need for a national policy that transcends state lines in acknowledging carbon impact and consideration of alternative schemes that best serve the nation’s economic and environmental interests. Major development unleashed by the CHIPS, Infrastructure, and Inflation Reduction Acts is fueling that need.

Thinking about development in this manner is comparable to household recycling. One family’s contribution may seem insignificant. But multiply such gains across the state and across the country — then we’re talking about a serious reduction in waste and carbon. To ignore the natural, cost-free Green Infrastructure right in front of us in confronting an existential crisis is reckless.