Terence Blacker: Planting trees is a facile option
A sapling stuck into a pot is presented as a private little planet saver
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Independent Minds
It has taken some time but at last Britain has come up with a symbol to represent our commitment to the environment and concern for the planet. Our version of the polar bear on a melting ice cap is to be... the tree.
It is now National Tree Week and it would be churlish to deny that a tree, with its roots in the past, its varied and changing beauty, its ecological benefits to wildlife and to the atmosphere, is as good a symbol as one could hope to find.
The BBC has entered into the new spirit of tree-worship by supporting a speed-planting campaign. Over the next few days, 300,000 saplings are to be given away, at a cost of £96,000 to the corporation. Then, between 11 and 12 o'clock on 5 December, an hour to be known as "Tree o'clock", we will be encouraged to plant trees as fast as possible with a view to breaking the current speed-planting campaign in the Guinness Book of Records.
It is a marketing campaign and perhaps should not be judged too harshly. The cost to the BBC is comparatively small – less than an eighth of what its director-general pockets every year. The exercise will, according to a spokesperson, be "furthering people's understanding of wildlife". It will also "inspire and empower individuals to take action that benefits communities".
That, surely, is pushing it a bit. The only real benefit will be to the viewers' sense that they are "doing their bit". The majority of saplings will be thrown away or forgotten. Some will be put in pots and allowed to die. The encouragement to chuck as many young trees into the ground as possible within an hour is encouraging careless planting. The small matter of protecting and keeping trees alive has been ignored.
As with many marketing campaigns, there is more to it than meets the eye. Whenever a developer – usually a supermarket – is involved in a controversial project, it will ensure that it plants a few trees to establish its (fake) green credentials. The equivalent is happening with the BBC's planting race. People are being encouraged to see environmental challenges in terms of easy gestures which will make them feel better. A silver birch sapling stuck into a pot is being presented as a private little planet-saver.
Campaigns like this are the gesture politics of environmentalism. Wasteful and showy, they suggest that if we as individuals play our part, then the problems we face will recede. That lets government off the hook. The emphasis is on small, sentimental, domestic activism rather than serious policy-making.
The Woodland Trust has rightly pointed out that a huge increase in the woodland across Britain, one of the least wooded countries in Europe, would benefit wildlife and the landscape, as well reducing the risk of flooding and locking up carbon. The equivalent of 30,000 pitches of new woodland needs to be planted every year, according to a recent report by the Forestry Commission.
Achieving environmental targets will not involve celebrities or the Guinness Book of Records. It might even be politically difficult or unpopular. The plant-a-tree-and-save-the-planet option is altogether easier.
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Comments
On my return to the UK I reported on this to an export in the field of forestry and he nodded sagely before commenting that in much of the world when all else is lost a tree-planting exercise is conducted to give the impression that something is being done and is in effect a sticking plaster on an open wound. In reality forestry and the cultivation of trees in general is a long-term affair which needs careful planning and skilful management if the desired benefit would be achieved.
Upon reading this piece that vision of Elbasan comes hurtling back as do the comments on how to cultivate trees effectively and purposefully.
When starting a thousand mile journey it is important to take the first step. For many people especially children the act of planting a tree will also plant the idea of action toward bettering the environment within their minds. There are so many negative voices crying it's hopeless, climate change is a conspricy, it's a myth. It's good to do something positive, to work as a a family, to do something concrete together.
Even if you don't believe in climate change, our countryside is denuded of trees, especially in the North of England. A word of warning, choose your tree carefully too many people plant forest trees, trees that can grow over 200 ft high, in small gardens or near roads and houses.
However spectical you maybe about mainstream science or government initiatives I've never understood why anyone would rail against the benefits of green policies; Energy sources secure from relying on others, clean waste disposal and no stinking holes in the ground dripping poison into the water supply, fast trains run on electricity, already Eurostar has captured the bulk of the London to Paris journeys. I don't know why anyone would not want to insulate houses so they needed little heating in winter, why anyone wouldn't want food delivered fresh from local suppliers, why anyone would want wider motorways filled with more traffic, why anyone would want to buy clothes so flimsy they only lasted a month?
In fact green policies are not radical at all, they are traditional, conservative, British and modern, they preserve our countryside and culture and simultenously point us toward a future free from the enslavement of battery-hen office working and cattle-truck commuting. Whereas the alternative is radical, US dominated and old fashioned. Pointing us toward a divided society, enormous oversized aggressive motors weighing two tons and able to go at 150mph clogging the roads in order to take (increasingly obese) toddlers a few miles. The alternative means abandoned town centres and mega out of town supermarkets, it means mad experiences on overcrowded planes, more ill health and social division, more wars as we fight for oil, water, minerals and metals. The US dream is a nightmare, why wouldn't we stand up for the UK, it's traditions and it's countryside?
Not a short term strategy but I am always delighted to see more and more trees being planted anyway.
Lets be positive and realise that this can't be a bad think in the long run.
For whatever reason they are being planted the more trees the better I say.
ps Its not being fully grown that counts - its in the process of growing that trees sequester most carbon.
Tree planting by human beings results in boring forests of one or two species and is done to accelerate the growing and harvesting process of timber or a crop like rubber, cocoa, palm oil or edible fruit. Growing saplings in a nursery usually involves the use of fossil fuel products like fertiliser, plastic pots and plastic transparent supports and fuel to transport the saplings - all of which release CO2 when burnt or broken down as hydrocarbons always end up as CO2 and H2O.
So sapling planting is the least "green" way to reafforest the planet: the greenest is to let nature do it by herself.
The BBC should be ashamed of itself wasting licence payers money to delude people into feeling they're doing their bit for the environment.
Nature is wonderful: all the native woods in this country planted themselves and involved no human intervention: no fossil fuels were used to create them. Left alone pretty much any piece of lowland Britain will end up a forest in 100 years.
so they are a fantastic symbol to stick in peoples heads (metaphorically).
I am currently in the middle of a million plus North American city. There is a single holly tree
outside and in the space of a week the highert animal forms that have used it comprise
2 species of squirrel, some bluetits, sparrows, crows and some woodpeckers. Thats
just the characters I can see. Trees are a useful and tangible CO2 fixer too,
all we have to do is bury them as modern pre-coal once they die and we have removed
CO2 from the atmosphere. none of the biofuel debate attempts that feat.