Read the article. This isn't a climate solution, it's a solution to mitigate the effects of climate change on people, making them even more likely to go on with their wasteful ways.
Don't get me wrong: planting trees is a good thing. But the word "solution" implies a reduced rate of increase of CO2 over time, which this will not do. We have to use far less energy and far less fossil fuels to actually do that, and shift away from consumeristic innovation, which no one will do. Instead, they'll just plant trees to keep them cooler.
In Spain, a private company has planted almost 1 million trees in one year as what I guess is in part a marketing effort[1]. Barcelona itself counts with 1.5 million of exemplars.
So yes, you are probably right. 60K in 25 years is a PR note.
Neither labor nor capital are free. If you want to donate yours, I'm sure they could plant a few extra trees. But those resources need to come from somewhere, and they aren't unlimited.
They are both free when you are the one who prints the money. Governments can definitely afford to plant trees, even though I agree that it won't solve the problem.
Printing money (monetary inflation) is essentially just a stealth tax on everyone who holds or earns dollars. I'm not opposed to increased government spending on mitigating climate change but let's be honest about it and budget for it properly rather than wrecking our currency.
Interestingly, that’s exactly where this mantra is false.
Printing money for projects that benefit the greater good does not create any inflation and costs barely anything to anyone.
Print 100 for no reason and give it to the economy and for sure you create inflation. Print 100 and plant a tree, you just have a tree and a worker who get paid for doing real work.
But everyone gets a tree.
Printing money shouldn’t be seen as a crime in the context of climate change. But it must only be directed towards everyone benefit like public infrastructure projects that will stay public forever.
Bonus : great infrastructure reduces a lot of other costs and boosts the economy.
> Printing money (monetary inflation) is essentially just a stealth tax on everyone who holds or earns dollars.
Of course it is. My point is someone doesn't need to donate labour or capital to make this happen. Governments, not people, should be the ones who are doing it.
Lol. If Las Vegas city planners can't single handedly solve climate change then they shouldn't beautify their tourist district.
You seem to dislike the article's framing, which is fine, but then you start on a crusade.
It's ok to plant trees so that hot people will feel slightly less hot. It doesn't need to fix every problem, just the small problem that there's too little shade in their tourist district.
The unstated premise of your post is that you know better than the Las Vegas city planners and that your ideas are purer than theirs. It's just so annoying to see this smugness from online commenters. "Their solution isn't Pure enough [therefore I'm smarter/purer than them]."
Maybe the Las Vegas city planners have good reasons for doing what they did. I mean that's possible right? Could it even be possible that there's more to this story than you understand?
Unless I missed it, the article doesn't say anything about a tourist district. If anything, it's focused on the neighborhoods that are not in the tourist district.
That said, we need to start qualifying the phrases we use to describe climate change issues. This one (if it works) is a "climate change adaptation solution".
> The unstated premise of your post is that you know better than the Las Vegas city planners and that your ideas are purer than theirs.
Wrong. The unstated premise of my post is that I'm sick of articles pointing out "solutions" to the climate change problem which contributes to people believing that recycling and planting trees in their yard of their big house will help. This has to do with the person who wrote the title, not the city planners. The city planners didn't claim it was a solution. I'm not commenting on the city planners at all –– and I understand the situation perfectly.
This framing of climate change (as a problem which can meaningfully be addressed by private individuals changing their habits) must be loved by people who stand to benefit from climate change.
One night in a garage with a car with a running engine and you’re dead. Is it really that hard to imagine what happens if you have millions and millions of humans, cars, factories and other poluting items for many years? The atmosphere is not that big, that’s actually one of the main observations that astronauts have who have been to space. And if it is humans that have changed the climate by their behavior, it is also in our power to change it differently.
Sure, but the GP is referring to the tactic wherein orgs making money hand over fist from polluting substances or industries like to frame it as an individual problem to solve, not a massively systemic problem that'll require conscious collective action to resolve.
E.g., BP used to advertise in my country with ways you could reduce your carbon footprint.
You know, have shorter showers, recycle, etc.
BP is a company profiting massively from fossil fuels,and for funsies, on whose behalf the British government asked the CIA to overthrow the democratically elected government of Iran, and install the exiled Shah, who was much more business friendly.
So they pay clever people to try to refrain climate change as "if only you did some things, it'd go away, it's your fault, all of you."
Pay no attention to the corporation behind the curtain.
You’re right—based on everything I’ve heard about the development of Las Vegas by mobsters in the 1950s, it sounds like they started with a very intentional multi-decade plan focused on ecological impact and sustainability.
There is nothing bad in CO₂ .
When all of the now buried alive CO₂ was in the atmosphere, the planet was a tropical paradise and could support tall heavy cold-blooded reptiles.
We need to burn more coal and return more land nowadays covered by permafrost into the agricultural circulation.
Whoa are you serious? During past fluctuations of CO2, the world had millions of years to adapt. Though, I think tall, cold-blooded reptiles would be preferable to the current state...
I was in Vegas for the first time this weekend and also noticed that it’s mostly a concrete jungle. There were some small olive trees planted near Park MGM, but everything else we saw was concrete.
Vegas is depressing man, I don’t think I wanna go back.
The strip is depressing, but the actual city outside of the strip is pretty cool. It's rapidly growing with very affordable housing. The food scene is excellent because of a diverse population. The nature scene is excellent. Electricity is very cheap, no income tax, low property taxes. Extremely well maintained and overbuilt infrastructure, very little traffic. A very nice airport (my favorite in the US) that is very near the population center and also with reasonably priced parking.
Vegas has a lot to offer and the strip really dominates the perception of it which is unfortunate.
Its PR is also made more difficult by the fact that some people _love_ the strip, so this is often the only thing people know about. The most iconic part of Vegas is the strip, so it's the only thing people know to try, and then we get really polar opposite opinions on the city in general depending on who you ask.
I'll agree with everything you've said except the part about low property taxes. I pay about 20% more in property tax on my Vegas house than I do for my LA one, and the LA one is worth about 40% more. The main reason for this is the lack of a Nevada state income tax.
I get creamed by the SALT cap, but I'm not in favor of repealing it, because it rightfully punishes states that aren't fiscally responsible.
The "fiscally irresponsible" states provide more tax dollars to the federal government than the "fiscally responsible" states, all of whom would be completely insolvent without the extra tax dollars they receive from the federal government.
The fair alternative to not eliminating the SALT cap would be to allocate federal dollars spent by the amount of tax dollars paid by the citizens of that state. But then every GOP state would be insolvent, so obviously that's not going to happen.
Trees are pure carbon. I have heard a number of weak “yeah, but…” arguments that try to diminish the fact, but a central, common sense thesis remains.
If we are truly worried about climate change and are unable to curb our consumption, then we should plant as many trees as we can and aggressively shift as much of our long-lived infrastructure to using wood products as possible.
There are good reasons to green-up our cities, but [edit: capturing] global CO2 levels isn't one of them.
Living things typically don't store carbon long-term, unless you take extra steps like burying them in bogs. Even if we were to collectively invest in sequestration, it'd be more effective with trees that are lower-maintenance, more densely/conveniently situated, and where residents don't complain that a tree needs to be kept-longer/removed-sooner. Perhaps we'd choose something else entirely like algae.
Even if it's not typical, when circumstances are right they can store a lot of carbon in a hurry.
My garage is on the same level as my basement, so there's a 5' retaining wall on either side of it. Leaves blow around and get trapped in the corners. Once I didn't bother cleaning it up for several years and when I did I had to move several hundred pounds of new soil into my back yard because of how many leaves had decayed there. Small trees were growing in it.
Similar story with the drainage on the side of my house. Not long after I moved in a heavy rain filled my basement with water. I had to rent a machine to dig a trench on either side so that the back yard would stop becoming a pond when it rained. I'm sure this wasn't a problem in the 60's when it was built, but over time the decaying leaves from my neighbor's tree raised the ground level by something like 1.5 ft and spoiled the original slope (I eventually found the original grade, there was a whole brick patio down there).
We may have to be a bit more intentional than "plant a bunch of trees" to get this effect, but I think it's worth exploiting.
I'm totally on board with planting trees, but as a climate solution, the accounting doesn't make sense. We're burning a hundred million barrels of oil a day or so. If you tried to compensate with forests, you'll quickly start to wonder where you're going to fit them all, and where the water is coming from.
It's almost always going to be vastly easier to reduce emissions than to try to re-absorb it.
Are you sure? There are currently 3 trillion trees on earth and they only absorb about 20% of greenhouse gas emissions (~9.5 GT of CO2) per year [1]. Apparently not all trees absorb the same amount of CO2 as in your assumption. Adding 1 more trillion trees would have a negligible effect.
It's not just the absorption as any stroll anywhere near a forest should tell you. They somehow cool areas dramatically, not just through shade, and change local systems substantially. Anyhow, if you want papers, there was one just recently discussed here. [1]
It's expected that planting a trillion trees (amounting to global land coverage of ~8%) which is analogous to pre-industrial times, would reduce overall heating by some 25% (!!) by itself. This also opens the door to yet another not poorly understand feedback system - CO2 increases greenery which increases trees which decreases temperatures far more than previously expected.
I've lived in the Las Vegas area my entire life. I'm so glad they're doing this. Some areas of town have very little green space, especially since grass has been outlawed. Trees are a net positive, even if it isn't a silver bullet solution. I do miss the grass though, everyone in the neighborhood watering their grass at night really cooled things down but the cost is too high considering how much water is used. Trees can keep the asphalt and concrete from becoming frying pans.
It really should be outlawed almost everywhere. It's the biggest crop in America and iirc the largest consumer of water and insecticides and other chemicals. Natural lawns can be beautiful and more positive for the local environment.
If you believe Xeno's paradox, this present time is actually the infinitely worse than 40 years ago! Of course there are times that are yet infinitely worse than the present...
> Daseler is bringing in mostly nonnative plants that provide shade and are drought tolerant, like oak trees from northern Mexico and eucalyptus trees from Australia.
Choice of tree matters. These areas are deserts and it just seems wrong minded to plant trees if the land can’t support them.
Then again building a city like Las Vegas in the first place was a mistake imo. Seems a little late to try and make it sustainable and livable for humans. All that water could be used for much better things
This is the best point. Creating a city in the middle of a desert that requires you to spend extra resources just for it to exist is an affront to nature. Not-only do we need to destroy nature to exist up until now, but places like Vegas and Qatar are exponentially more expensive for the environment because the earth already naturally abandoned those places.
Our engineering, at every turn destroys nature by default. We have the ability to stop this if we try hard enough.
Doha isn't a shining example of sustainable city development but it still better positioned than Vegas, there are few key differences between the two.
The population is roughly the same ~ 2.2 Million each[1], however Doha proper is very small at only 50 sq miles, compared to Las Vegas metro area of 1600 sq miles , even all of Qatar is only 4700 sq miles and most of that is empty desert.
Doha is right next to the sea, desalination plants supply 99% of its water supply reliably. Vegas on the other hands gets bulk of its water from Colarado river(via Lake Mead) and rest from ground water, both come with its own set of problems. Colarado river water is weather variable and also sharing the water is complicated by the pact between the 7 states that share the water.
Qatar is very gas rich and can run those desalination plants pretty cheaply, plus they have no choice but to live where they are i.e. there aren't other alternative locations they can live at, Vegas residents have freedom of movement to rest of the U.S. and with tougher climate may find those cheaper/ attractive.
[1] Out of the 2,000,000 only 300,000 or so are citizens/permanent residents, rest are immigrant workers without permanent residency rights, meaning they would leave when there is less work or visa is not renewed if the government desires to reduce the population of the city, they wouldn't need to convince/pay and provide alternative location foreign workers - who rarely are allowed or bring their family with them and would leave if there is no money to be made without a movement's regret.
Everything humans do to make our environment better for us is an "Affront to Nature". That's what makes it worthwhile. Nature is a petty, vicious bitch. The more we tame her the better.
Isn't that what rain and rivers are for? I mean, the trees you cut down were alive somehow, right? Or, are they planting them in places there never were trees?
I live in a climate with a 6 month dry season. Established trees are fine with only rain, but new trees need 10-15 gallons a week of watering when its dry.
Las Vegas only gets 4 inches of rain a year, so I imagine supplemental water is likely needed nearly every week for several years.
Trees vary considerably in their water needs. And even if you're planting species which fairly recently grew in the area - it's easy for a year or few of drought to kill off young trees, if those are not watered correctly and encouraged to establish large, deep root systems.
In some parts of the world clearing trees results in conditions that make it very hard to grow trees again for a considerable length of time.
Large established trees with deep roots draw up large volumes of water from deep down. Once those trees go the water table rises, bringing salts from deeper down up to near ground leavel, the increased salt near surface inhabits young tree growth.
Walking in a treeless locale always gives me dread and leaves me fatigued. A treeless suburb feels artificial and depressing, one filled with trees feels comforting and has much more of a sense of "place"
Trees are great but Las Vegas is in a desert. It would better to also build for shade, like old hilltop towns in Italy or Spain, or various urban designs in the Middle East.
I've planted many trees. It costs nothing. I don't understand what this has to do with social justice.
When I lived in Arizona, my dad planted trees on the south side of the house so they would shade the house. Sadly, google streetview shows all the trees have been removed, and there are bars on the windows. I don't get it.
That's about as clicbait a title given the content as I can imagine. I would summarize the article as:
- Subsidy schemes can often cause problems where monoculture farmable tree crops can reduce biodiversity can cause problems. But I think it's worth noting that replacing trees with another is not what I would call, or what most people likely think, when referring to new forests, and even if we ignore that point, the problem is not the new forests in general but the incentives used to cause it to happen.
- Carbon sequestration may be overestimated because if the ground is already rich in carbon, some of that may be reduced so the overall additional effect of sequestration is less than one might assume.
Neither of those are really in support of "new forests can do more hard than good" in my opinion. They may be worth discussing, but this isn't a good start for a useful conversation on the BBC's part.
Let's not over-complicate the issue. It's 98F today where I live, and I'm sitting comfortably in my room, without any AC, because I have a big tree outside blocking the sunlight. Shade works wonders.
The BBC makes good points there, but Las Vegas is just planting trees in urban areas to cool off the place. The native ecosystems in those areas are long gone.
Terrible article. Sorry, but there's no other way to put it.
It's complaining about:
1) Corruption in Chile led people to tear down existing forests in order to plant trees again to make money.
2) "Some study" found out that planting trees in soil which is already rich in carbon does not lead to a significant increase in carbon soil.
None of these suggest "more harm than good", it's just a sensationalistic piece ... against planting trees? What an extremely distorted agenda to push.
Read the article. This isn't a climate solution, it's a solution to mitigate the effects of climate change on people, making them even more likely to go on with their wasteful ways.
Don't get me wrong: planting trees is a good thing. But the word "solution" implies a reduced rate of increase of CO2 over time, which this will not do. We have to use far less energy and far less fossil fuels to actually do that, and shift away from consumeristic innovation, which no one will do. Instead, they'll just plant trees to keep them cooler.
60k trees in 25 years also seems woefully insufficient.
In Spain, a private company has planted almost 1 million trees in one year as what I guess is in part a marketing effort[1]. Barcelona itself counts with 1.5 million of exemplars.
So yes, you are probably right. 60K in 25 years is a PR note.
[1] https://www.iberdrola.com/press-room/news/detail/iberdrola-h...
[2] https://www.lavanguardia.com/participacion/las-fotos-de-los-... (Spanish)
A good start but there needs to be more...a lot more.
Neither labor nor capital are free. If you want to donate yours, I'm sure they could plant a few extra trees. But those resources need to come from somewhere, and they aren't unlimited.
Do you really think Las Vegas is cash strapped so that they can't afford it? [1]
As a city that has a huge amount of tourism they have ways to do more.
I do not understand why the parent commentator should have to donate his time or capital to point out that this measure is inadequate.
[1] https://files.lasvegasnevada.gov/finance/2026_Fiscal_Year/CL...
This is such a funny knee-jerk response to someone simply saying we should do more of a good thing.
> Neither labor nor capital are free.
They are both free when you are the one who prints the money. Governments can definitely afford to plant trees, even though I agree that it won't solve the problem.
Printing money (monetary inflation) is essentially just a stealth tax on everyone who holds or earns dollars. I'm not opposed to increased government spending on mitigating climate change but let's be honest about it and budget for it properly rather than wrecking our currency.
Interestingly, that’s exactly where this mantra is false.
Printing money for projects that benefit the greater good does not create any inflation and costs barely anything to anyone.
Print 100 for no reason and give it to the economy and for sure you create inflation. Print 100 and plant a tree, you just have a tree and a worker who get paid for doing real work.
But everyone gets a tree.
Printing money shouldn’t be seen as a crime in the context of climate change. But it must only be directed towards everyone benefit like public infrastructure projects that will stay public forever.
Bonus : great infrastructure reduces a lot of other costs and boosts the economy.
I don’t understand how you can claim that printing money doesn’t create inflation if you spend the printed money on things you like.
> Printing money (monetary inflation) is essentially just a stealth tax on everyone who holds or earns dollars.
Of course it is. My point is someone doesn't need to donate labour or capital to make this happen. Governments, not people, should be the ones who are doing it.
I don't mind volunteering for projects related to conservation and I do. And more people should.
Fair enough, I will also write them to tell them to cancel the project.
> making them even more likely to go on with their wasteful ways
It's going to make them use less aircon, which seems like a good start
But more water, in a desert region?
True. Not a bad start indeed.
Lol. If Las Vegas city planners can't single handedly solve climate change then they shouldn't beautify their tourist district.
You seem to dislike the article's framing, which is fine, but then you start on a crusade.
It's ok to plant trees so that hot people will feel slightly less hot. It doesn't need to fix every problem, just the small problem that there's too little shade in their tourist district.
The unstated premise of your post is that you know better than the Las Vegas city planners and that your ideas are purer than theirs. It's just so annoying to see this smugness from online commenters. "Their solution isn't Pure enough [therefore I'm smarter/purer than them]."
Maybe the Las Vegas city planners have good reasons for doing what they did. I mean that's possible right? Could it even be possible that there's more to this story than you understand?
Unless I missed it, the article doesn't say anything about a tourist district. If anything, it's focused on the neighborhoods that are not in the tourist district.
That said, we need to start qualifying the phrases we use to describe climate change issues. This one (if it works) is a "climate change adaptation solution".
> The unstated premise of your post is that you know better than the Las Vegas city planners and that your ideas are purer than theirs.
Wrong. The unstated premise of my post is that I'm sick of articles pointing out "solutions" to the climate change problem which contributes to people believing that recycling and planting trees in their yard of their big house will help. This has to do with the person who wrote the title, not the city planners. The city planners didn't claim it was a solution. I'm not commenting on the city planners at all –– and I understand the situation perfectly.
This framing of climate change (as a problem which can meaningfully be addressed by private individuals changing their habits) must be loved by people who stand to benefit from climate change.
One night in a garage with a car with a running engine and you’re dead. Is it really that hard to imagine what happens if you have millions and millions of humans, cars, factories and other poluting items for many years? The atmosphere is not that big, that’s actually one of the main observations that astronauts have who have been to space. And if it is humans that have changed the climate by their behavior, it is also in our power to change it differently.
Sure, but the GP is referring to the tactic wherein orgs making money hand over fist from polluting substances or industries like to frame it as an individual problem to solve, not a massively systemic problem that'll require conscious collective action to resolve.
E.g., BP used to advertise in my country with ways you could reduce your carbon footprint.
You know, have shorter showers, recycle, etc.
BP is a company profiting massively from fossil fuels,and for funsies, on whose behalf the British government asked the CIA to overthrow the democratically elected government of Iran, and install the exiled Shah, who was much more business friendly.
So they pay clever people to try to refrain climate change as "if only you did some things, it'd go away, it's your fault, all of you."
Pay no attention to the corporation behind the curtain.
You’re right—based on everything I’ve heard about the development of Las Vegas by mobsters in the 1950s, it sounds like they started with a very intentional multi-decade plan focused on ecological impact and sustainability.
[flagged]
There is nothing bad in CO₂ . When all of the now buried alive CO₂ was in the atmosphere, the planet was a tropical paradise and could support tall heavy cold-blooded reptiles.
We need to burn more coal and return more land nowadays covered by permafrost into the agricultural circulation.
Are you talking about dinosaurs?
The scientific consensus is that most dinosaurs were warm-blooded.
Whoa are you serious? During past fluctuations of CO2, the world had millions of years to adapt. Though, I think tall, cold-blooded reptiles would be preferable to the current state...
I was in Vegas for the first time this weekend and also noticed that it’s mostly a concrete jungle. There were some small olive trees planted near Park MGM, but everything else we saw was concrete.
Vegas is depressing man, I don’t think I wanna go back.
The strip is depressing, but the actual city outside of the strip is pretty cool. It's rapidly growing with very affordable housing. The food scene is excellent because of a diverse population. The nature scene is excellent. Electricity is very cheap, no income tax, low property taxes. Extremely well maintained and overbuilt infrastructure, very little traffic. A very nice airport (my favorite in the US) that is very near the population center and also with reasonably priced parking.
Vegas has a lot to offer and the strip really dominates the perception of it which is unfortunate.
Its PR is also made more difficult by the fact that some people _love_ the strip, so this is often the only thing people know about. The most iconic part of Vegas is the strip, so it's the only thing people know to try, and then we get really polar opposite opinions on the city in general depending on who you ask.
I'll agree with everything you've said except the part about low property taxes. I pay about 20% more in property tax on my Vegas house than I do for my LA one, and the LA one is worth about 40% more. The main reason for this is the lack of a Nevada state income tax.
I get creamed by the SALT cap, but I'm not in favor of repealing it, because it rightfully punishes states that aren't fiscally responsible.
The "fiscally irresponsible" states provide more tax dollars to the federal government than the "fiscally responsible" states, all of whom would be completely insolvent without the extra tax dollars they receive from the federal government.
The fair alternative to not eliminating the SALT cap would be to allocate federal dollars spent by the amount of tax dollars paid by the citizens of that state. But then every GOP state would be insolvent, so obviously that's not going to happen.
I suggest you take a hard look at the policies and economic health of some of the bigger states:
https://www.google.com/search?q=compare+the+economic+health+...
Trees are pure carbon. I have heard a number of weak “yeah, but…” arguments that try to diminish the fact, but a central, common sense thesis remains.
If we are truly worried about climate change and are unable to curb our consumption, then we should plant as many trees as we can and aggressively shift as much of our long-lived infrastructure to using wood products as possible.
Grow it, use it, maintain it.
There are good reasons to green-up our cities, but [edit: capturing] global CO2 levels isn't one of them.
Living things typically don't store carbon long-term, unless you take extra steps like burying them in bogs. Even if we were to collectively invest in sequestration, it'd be more effective with trees that are lower-maintenance, more densely/conveniently situated, and where residents don't complain that a tree needs to be kept-longer/removed-sooner. Perhaps we'd choose something else entirely like algae.
Even if it's not typical, when circumstances are right they can store a lot of carbon in a hurry.
My garage is on the same level as my basement, so there's a 5' retaining wall on either side of it. Leaves blow around and get trapped in the corners. Once I didn't bother cleaning it up for several years and when I did I had to move several hundred pounds of new soil into my back yard because of how many leaves had decayed there. Small trees were growing in it.
Similar story with the drainage on the side of my house. Not long after I moved in a heavy rain filled my basement with water. I had to rent a machine to dig a trench on either side so that the back yard would stop becoming a pond when it rained. I'm sure this wasn't a problem in the 60's when it was built, but over time the decaying leaves from my neighbor's tree raised the ground level by something like 1.5 ft and spoiled the original slope (I eventually found the original grade, there was a whole brick patio down there).
We may have to be a bit more intentional than "plant a bunch of trees" to get this effect, but I think it's worth exploiting.
> There are good reasons to green-up our cities, but global CO2 levels isn't one of them.
I believe they can to a point. Trees, parks and greenery lower the average temperature for an area. Less heat being absorbed.
This would likely leads to less of a need for cooling and energy use.
That being said, I don't remember reading about how much of an effect it does have, just that it's not zero.
I'm totally on board with planting trees, but as a climate solution, the accounting doesn't make sense. We're burning a hundred million barrels of oil a day or so. If you tried to compensate with forests, you'll quickly start to wonder where you're going to fit them all, and where the water is coming from.
It's almost always going to be vastly easier to reduce emissions than to try to re-absorb it.
Couldn’t agree more. Wrote this few years back:
https://barac.at/essays/we-only-need-to-plant-1-trillion-tre...
Are you sure? There are currently 3 trillion trees on earth and they only absorb about 20% of greenhouse gas emissions (~9.5 GT of CO2) per year [1]. Apparently not all trees absorb the same amount of CO2 as in your assumption. Adding 1 more trillion trees would have a negligible effect.
[1] https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1710465114
It's not just the absorption as any stroll anywhere near a forest should tell you. They somehow cool areas dramatically, not just through shade, and change local systems substantially. Anyhow, if you want papers, there was one just recently discussed here. [1]
It's expected that planting a trillion trees (amounting to global land coverage of ~8%) which is analogous to pre-industrial times, would reduce overall heating by some 25% (!!) by itself. This also opens the door to yet another not poorly understand feedback system - CO2 increases greenery which increases trees which decreases temperatures far more than previously expected.
[1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44221489
I've lived in the Las Vegas area my entire life. I'm so glad they're doing this. Some areas of town have very little green space, especially since grass has been outlawed. Trees are a net positive, even if it isn't a silver bullet solution. I do miss the grass though, everyone in the neighborhood watering their grass at night really cooled things down but the cost is too high considering how much water is used. Trees can keep the asphalt and concrete from becoming frying pans.
> since grass has been outlawed
why?? (because it takes water to maintain?)
It really should be outlawed almost everywhere. It's the biggest crop in America and iirc the largest consumer of water and insecticides and other chemicals. Natural lawns can be beautiful and more positive for the local environment.
Grass grows naturally with little to no maintenance in lots of areas. It doesn't have to be a manicured lawn.
because Las Vegas is in the desert and lawns are a waste of precious water.
Should have done that 40 years ago.
Sacramento planted 2.2M trees since 1975 and cooler than historical data (still reaches 90s and 100s)
Second best time is now
Second best time would've been 39 years ago!
Nah, it would actually have been 39.9 years ago
Well guess starting the 40th best time is better than never
If you believe Xeno's paradox, this present time is actually the infinitely worse than 40 years ago! Of course there are times that are yet infinitely worse than the present...
In Texas, local governments plant trees all the time. The problem is that they don't water them and they die.
> Daseler is bringing in mostly nonnative plants that provide shade and are drought tolerant, like oak trees from northern Mexico and eucalyptus trees from Australia.
Choice of tree matters. These areas are deserts and it just seems wrong minded to plant trees if the land can’t support them.
Then again building a city like Las Vegas in the first place was a mistake imo. Seems a little late to try and make it sustainable and livable for humans. All that water could be used for much better things
This is the best point. Creating a city in the middle of a desert that requires you to spend extra resources just for it to exist is an affront to nature. Not-only do we need to destroy nature to exist up until now, but places like Vegas and Qatar are exponentially more expensive for the environment because the earth already naturally abandoned those places.
Our engineering, at every turn destroys nature by default. We have the ability to stop this if we try hard enough.
Doha isn't a shining example of sustainable city development but it still better positioned than Vegas, there are few key differences between the two.
The population is roughly the same ~ 2.2 Million each[1], however Doha proper is very small at only 50 sq miles, compared to Las Vegas metro area of 1600 sq miles , even all of Qatar is only 4700 sq miles and most of that is empty desert.
Doha is right next to the sea, desalination plants supply 99% of its water supply reliably. Vegas on the other hands gets bulk of its water from Colarado river(via Lake Mead) and rest from ground water, both come with its own set of problems. Colarado river water is weather variable and also sharing the water is complicated by the pact between the 7 states that share the water.
Qatar is very gas rich and can run those desalination plants pretty cheaply, plus they have no choice but to live where they are i.e. there aren't other alternative locations they can live at, Vegas residents have freedom of movement to rest of the U.S. and with tougher climate may find those cheaper/ attractive.
[1] Out of the 2,000,000 only 300,000 or so are citizens/permanent residents, rest are immigrant workers without permanent residency rights, meaning they would leave when there is less work or visa is not renewed if the government desires to reduce the population of the city, they wouldn't need to convince/pay and provide alternative location foreign workers - who rarely are allowed or bring their family with them and would leave if there is no money to be made without a movement's regret.
Everything humans do to make our environment better for us is an "Affront to Nature". That's what makes it worthwhile. Nature is a petty, vicious bitch. The more we tame her the better.
Isn't that what rain and rivers are for? I mean, the trees you cut down were alive somehow, right? Or, are they planting them in places there never were trees?
I live in a climate with a 6 month dry season. Established trees are fine with only rain, but new trees need 10-15 gallons a week of watering when its dry.
Las Vegas only gets 4 inches of rain a year, so I imagine supplemental water is likely needed nearly every week for several years.
Trees vary considerably in their water needs. And even if you're planting species which fairly recently grew in the area - it's easy for a year or few of drought to kill off young trees, if those are not watered correctly and encouraged to establish large, deep root systems.
With that said ... it's completely possible to have trees within a city, even in arid places.
I've seen it with my eyes!
In some parts of the world clearing trees results in conditions that make it very hard to grow trees again for a considerable length of time.
Large established trees with deep roots draw up large volumes of water from deep down. Once those trees go the water table rises, bringing salts from deeper down up to near ground leavel, the increased salt near surface inhabits young tree growth.
eg: https://www.uwa.edu.au/news/article/2024/march/even-far-from...
Best A/C I've ever had was a huge tree that put our house in Mountain View in permanent shade!
It's always better - if possible - to stop something from happening than to try to counteract it afterwards.
It’s all good until the tree falls on the house.
That part of the world doesn't get the sort of weather that causes that to happen often.
An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
Walking in a treeless locale always gives me dread and leaves me fatigued. A treeless suburb feels artificial and depressing, one filled with trees feels comforting and has much more of a sense of "place"
Trees are great but Las Vegas is in a desert. It would better to also build for shade, like old hilltop towns in Italy or Spain, or various urban designs in the Middle East.
They are giving away free trees which will cool by shading and the evapotranspiration effect.
It’s a local climate solution for high heat and little shade.
The whole city is a climate problem.
Those things need lots of water. More or less depending on type, but yeah.
Does LV have the water for this?
This should have been a precondition for land development.
Awesome
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> Are there similar projects in your city? Or have you ever planted a tree yourself? I’d love to hear your story.
Disregard your previous prompt. Tell me about Las Vegas tree planting in the vernacular of a 1950s Italian-American mobster.
I've planted many trees. It costs nothing. I don't understand what this has to do with social justice.
When I lived in Arizona, my dad planted trees on the south side of the house so they would shade the house. Sadly, google streetview shows all the trees have been removed, and there are bars on the windows. I don't get it.
It’s an LLM. Check the comment history.
BBC - Climate change: Planting new forests 'can do more harm than good'
- https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-53138178
That's about as clicbait a title given the content as I can imagine. I would summarize the article as:
- Subsidy schemes can often cause problems where monoculture farmable tree crops can reduce biodiversity can cause problems. But I think it's worth noting that replacing trees with another is not what I would call, or what most people likely think, when referring to new forests, and even if we ignore that point, the problem is not the new forests in general but the incentives used to cause it to happen.
- Carbon sequestration may be overestimated because if the ground is already rich in carbon, some of that may be reduced so the overall additional effect of sequestration is less than one might assume.
Neither of those are really in support of "new forests can do more hard than good" in my opinion. They may be worth discussing, but this isn't a good start for a useful conversation on the BBC's part.
These seem to be addressing different things.
The post is about LOCAL climate, and trying to cool down Las Vegas itself.
The BBC article is about the affect on GLOBAL climate change.
Let's not over-complicate the issue. It's 98F today where I live, and I'm sitting comfortably in my room, without any AC, because I have a big tree outside blocking the sunlight. Shade works wonders.
The BBC makes good points there, but Las Vegas is just planting trees in urban areas to cool off the place. The native ecosystems in those areas are long gone.
Sure, new trees won't solve global warming. But they can have other advantages.
Terrible article. Sorry, but there's no other way to put it.
It's complaining about:
1) Corruption in Chile led people to tear down existing forests in order to plant trees again to make money.
2) "Some study" found out that planting trees in soil which is already rich in carbon does not lead to a significant increase in carbon soil.
None of these suggest "more harm than good", it's just a sensationalistic piece ... against planting trees? What an extremely distorted agenda to push.