Green Taxi

While searching Google for images of Los Angeles, I stumbled across this news story about Los Angeles voting to discontinue the use of palm trees to line its streets going forward.  While iconic, apparently they are not exactly environmentally friendly.

Public works analysis of satellite imagery shows that only 17% of Los Angeles is covered by a tree canopy. The average American city has 28% shade coverage.  This apparently is a major contributing factor to the heat index of Los Angeles that leads the nation for big cities.

I am very tied to these palm trees.  They put me at ease when I walk the streets of Santa Monica.  Millions of postcards have been sold showing palm tree lined streets to help give Los Angeles an eternal image.  In my mind, it is difficult to justify a Los Angeles without them.  However, if it helps cool and clean the city, then that is what must be done. 

“As to reducing air pollution, according to studies supervised by the US Forest Service, palm trees make poor street trees owing to low carbon and ozone absorption—a direct consequence of the low leaf area per plant. In contrast, coast live oak takes up 17 times more ozone, and 14 times more carbon than palm.”

While I agree that the city needs more shade and ozone absorption, I wish they would look first at using rooftops as a location to improve the green and canopy cover of LA.  Why replace one tree with another, when we could replace the blacktop roof with a tree?  I do not know the logistics of having a tree on the roofs of buildings, but I know grass is being grown on many rooftops these days.  Grass absorbs carbon and sunlight and helps cool the city and buildings.  It seems to me that some sort of city ordinance or subsidy for grass rooftops would do wonders to this cities image.

Fortunately, from my understanding, the city will not be removing the palm trees, they will simply stop replacing them with new palms, instead opting for oaks and sycamores.  Hopefully, with palm trees long life span, the transition is slow, natural, and at a pace that does not shock the community.

*image source: Wikimedia

No related posts.