Not Quite a Greeny

I never have thought of myself as a greeny (but then again, I've never seen a complete definition of what a greeny is. Nonetheless, I find myself sympathizing more and more with the "green" side of various topics nowadays. Why is that?

First of all, I should state that I live in the country. My wife and I bought property in a rural area. We moved from the city. We moved to a rural area not to bring the city with us, but to leave it behind. All to often, we are frustrated with people who move nearby and then they talk to the town trustees about getting paved roads, and they want street lights. If they had their way, there'd be sidewalks out here. There'd be stop signs on every corner, cross walks, and lots of city ordinances telling us what we can and cannot do.

We notice people moving from the city that get out here and the first thing they want is to cut down trees. It's wooded in our area. Why would you move here if you don't want trees on your property? This is the woods. Why not buy property where there aren't trees?

Every time we've had any kind of work done on our property, it seems like people almost jump with glee at the chance to break out a chainsaw and cut down trees. Why is that?

I read today that NASA has published that the ratio between human beings on earth and trees, is approximately 1 in 66. So, there are 66 trees for every human being, but consider that there are lots of areas with lots of human beings, where the ratio isn't nearly that. The 1/66 ratio is for the entire earth.
Even at that, it is pointed out that 1/66 isn't enough of a ratio to be adequate for production of oxygen. I have to agree. Although I'm not a card carrying "greeny", at the same time, I have to stress the importance of trees in keeping human beings alive, and the fact that even more than climate change (which trees would play a part in preventing), we should be concerned about not having enough trees, and especially so knowing that so many are being cut down every day so that the land can be "developed".

All too often, hundreds of trees are downed at a time, and the developer plants baby trees after the development is complete, acting as if these few baby trees make up for what was lost. The trees that were gone might be 50 to 100 years old, and certainly produce more oxygen than the few baby trees planted afterwards. It can't be justified.

My wife and I are building on our property. We have cut down a few trees, but we've planted many more than we've downed. I think that in reality, we've only maybe killed one tree. We found a place that was relatively open and that's where we built our current house. We didn't pick a place and cut down trees. We found a clear spot and built there. It costed maybe one tree.

I'm not saying that my wife and I are better than anyone else, and I'm trying not to be arrogant about it, but I am saying that we practice what we preach. We have tried to avoid cutting down trees. We have built around what was here, but in anticipation of the need for more trees, we started planting in our pasture years ago. Some of those trees are now big enough to provide decent shade in the summer.

I would hope that as housing developments continue, that there'd be an effort to build around trees, rather than to doze the land and build, and then re-planting afterwards. That replanting takes decades to return to the production of oxygen that existed before the development. We can't keep cutting down trees and lowering the ratio as far as oxygen producing trees and human beings. We've got to start being a little more careful about how we develop, rather than just going for a quick fix to the problem of urban sprawl.