EDITORIAL - Here we go again about trees in cities

Cities are not for trees. Cities do not provide the right environment for them. While many cities in the world do have trees, their presence is essentially for aesthetic purposes. No matter how much care trees are given in the cities where they are located, they will eventually all fall into ill health. Trees and the polluted environment of cities just do not go together.

Trees need to belong in their own environment, in the forests and open areas out and away from the cities. If anyone needs to care for the trees with some fair degree of expected success, it should be in the non-city environments. Just because the world needs a healthy amount of tree cover for it to survive doesn’t mean the trees need to be in cities.

If our forests and other open spaces that provide a wholesome habitat for trees can be protected, the world’s need for trees can be assured, even if cities are bereft of them. And yet there are some people who just cannot see things this way. To them, saving a few dozen threatened and decaying trees in the cities matter. In reality it does not, and all their efforts, plus the noise they make, will be all for naught.

If these bleeding hearts truly cared for trees, they should form the vanguard for an honest-to-goodness campaign to protect the forests. It is the forests that need real protection because they are the ones that are being raped daily by illegal loggers and slash-and-burn farmers. It is in the places where the sheer number of trees can still make a difference where the real battle for the environment should be waged.

Hugging a few trees in the cities is pure and simple hypocrisy. It is just for show. Especially if the tree-huggers first call for a press conference and then invite the media to cover their tree-hugging antics. Real lovers of the environment do their thing quietly. They go about protecting Mother Nature in their own quiet but effective ways, without the media ever hearing a word of it.

Anybody who tries to block the cutting of a few trees in the cities should be arrested for peddling lies. A few trees in the cities will never be able to save the environment. It is protecting those that are healthy and alive in the forests that will. Instead of making noise in the cities, self-appointed tree lovers should go up to the mountains and plant more trees. And they should use their passion to confront illegal loggers.