[Image description: an image from the movie Dazed and Confused with text that reads “‘This summer is too hot’. Me: ‘Have you ever planted trees?’ ‘No.’ Me: ‘Be a lot cooler if you did’”
I think most of us have a hard time finding anywhere to plant.
If you’re not a landowner, you’ll have to volunteer somewhere, but I’ve looked it up before and there aren’t that many opportunities in my country. The organization in charge of national forests has their own staff for it.
Ironically the best way to get into it here is to join a specific local fuel station chain’s “donate a cent per liter and we match, every 25 cents is a tree” community, which occasionally reaches out to members to help plant all the trees they’ve received donations for. So the easiest way to get to plant trees is to… buy fossil fuels???
That’s a very valid point, and I’ll freely acknowledge that I am privileged enough to have the space to grow and plant trees.
Keep looking for those opportunities, though! I won’t pretend to know the governance of your country, but if there are public spaces in your area there must be people who administer them, and they may be open to planting more trees if the public is behind it.
To be fair, public spaces in my country already have loads of trees in most places. In my city, there’s a park that doesn’t get mowed because they’re letting it grow into a grove. The trees are also very tall and healthy. It’s goddamn beautiful. Incidentally it’s also part of my commute whenever I walk (which depends on how early I manage to wake up, really)
That’s what I love about these sapling trees, man. I get older, they stay the same age.
Oh, god damn. Took me far too long to get it, then I laughed my arse off.
a single person planting trees would be cool but it wouldn’t be cooler, you need a lot of trees
Because of the shadow maybe. But it’s practically impossible to offset the human carbon footprint with trees.
They help significantly to combat the heat island effect in cities and provide shade and cooler microclimates for people to shelter in when it’s hot.
Just try going to a shady tree-lined path vs. a paved treeless path on a sunny day and you’ll be pretty clear on the meaning of this meme.
So yes we can’t stop global warming with trees alone but we can mitigate the local effects of it all while providing habitat for birds and shade for people and lots of other benefits besides.
This article has a pretty good review if you want to take a look at some of the benefits! https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/17/12/4371
And here’s a more plain-language website about urban trees: https://www.climatecentral.org/climate-matters/the-power-of-urban-trees-2023
I have two potential routes for one specific part of my journey home from work. One is shaded, the other is not.
The difference in temperature I perceive is MASSIVE. Maybe the difference in air temperature isn’t, but a couple of degrees difference in ambient temp + not having the sun actively microwave me adds up.
