This is Trump Derangement Syndrome at its finest: Trump is in favor of something, so Democrats are Against It. Kinda like, if you’ll remember, how George W. Bush came out with his amnesty plan after winning the 2004 election, and Democrats had a kneejerk reaction to be against it, even though it was what they wanted. Here’s Margaret Renkl
What’s Better Than Planting a Trillion Trees?
After what seemed like 100 years of impeachments hearings, anything uttered on Capitol Hill now sounds to my ear like the voice of Charlie Brown’s teacher. Nevertheless, a few words from President Trump’s State of the Union address managed to break through the wah-wahs last week: “To protect the environment, days ago, I announced the United States will join the One Trillion Trees Initiative, an ambitious effort to bring together government and the private sector to plant new trees in America and around the world,†he said.
Could it really be true?
You will forgive me for thinking there’s no way it could be true. The whole point of the World Economic Forum’s One Trillion Trees initiative is to reduce carbon in the environment and slow the rate of climate change by growing and preserving a trillion trees, worldwide, by 2050. But instead of addressing climate change, the Trump administration has rolled back or weakened 95 environmental protections already on the books.
After a few paragraphs bashing Trump for killing off silly ‘climate change’ and Too Big Government rules, Margaret talks about Trump being potentially converted, and
Nothing would give me greater joy than a conversion story in which the Republican Party recognizes and addresses the climate calamity that is already here, but redemption is hardly at hand. More likely: The president has concluded that planting trees will allow him to continue his wrecking-ball policies while simultaneously posing as an environmentalist. Call it an arboreal cap-and-trade arrangement in which there are no caps and virtually no trades — the continued pillaging and polluting of the environment in exchange for planting a trillion trees.
Anyhow, she bashes Trump some more, and even says that planting trees is not the solution, protecting forests is the solution! You know, after Warmists have clamored for decades about planting trees, how all the carbon offsets companies promise to plant trees, now planting trees is not the solution. Because Trump.
TEACH even cited the truth:
The president has concluded that planting trees will allow him to continue his wrecking-ball policies while simultaneously posing as an environmentalist. … — the continued pillaging and polluting of the environment in exchange for planting a trillion trees.
It’s just another tRump scam! Since ‘global warming is a hoax’ why else would Crooked Don support planting 1 trillion trees? It’s no cost to him or his supporters (oil, coal, gas industry) AND his minions (e.g., TEACH) can claim Crooked Don is an environmentalist. Never, ever forget that Crooked Don is transparent (except to his wives).
‘It’s no cost to him or his supporters’ — Which is exactly why the AGW crowd doesn’t like it. It doesn’t punish the wealthy*, (* anyone with more stuff or money than me), and it doesn’t implement global socialism or confiscate everyone’s guns.
As the writer carefully explained but TEACH ignored, planting trees is important and useful but only part of the solution.
Reforestation is a crucial goal, but even more crucial is the other goal of the One Trillion Trees initiative: preserving the trees we already have. So far we’re doing a terrible job of it. Here in the United States, we’re losing 36 million trees a year in metropolitan areas alone.
and: Planting a seedling is better than doing nothing, it’s true, but it takes decades for a seedling to replace a tree, and that’s if the seedling survives at all…
In 2012 a study found that US cities were losing an estimated 4 million trees a year.
A 2018 study says that US cities are losing 36 million trees a year.
Both of these studies were done by the SAME two people by comparing aerial photographs of urban areas. The first study compared pics from 2005 to 2010 while the second compared pics from 2009 to 2014. So somewhere in that 9 year total span we increased our city tree destruction by a factor of 8. One, or both, of these studies is very wrong. But, even assuming they are somewhat right and trees are being murdered in large quantities in our cities, the total, global tree cover has increased by 2.24 million square kilometers from 1982 to 2016.
We may be losing trees in cities but more than making up for it globally.
The one trillion trees initiative is meant to preserve and plant a trillion trees; doesn’t mean planting a trillion new trees.
So, President Trump is going along with part of the warmunists’ agenda, but because it isn’t all of it, why he’s a terrible, terrible person.
But, I have to ask: what are the warmunists themselves doing? I planted seven (surviving) trees on my previous property in Pennsylvania, in which the lot, including the house, was only 5,000 ft², just a shade more than one/tenth of an acre. Here on the farm, with roughly two acres of ‘lawn,’ we’ve planted ten trees, and will certainly add more this spring. Have John or Elwood done anything like that?
And, of course, the left want to pack even more people into the concrete jungles, which means cutting down even more trees.
But yet we cut down millions of trees for “biofuels†and for wind farms. Go figure
Planting a billion trees…
Weyerhaeuser: Hold my beer.