Green
is Good
“…Don’t
it always seem to go
that
you don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone
They
paved paradise and put up a parking lot…”
Joni
Mitchell (from Big Yellow Taxi, c.1970)
I’m working
on a story for my writing group about my mother’s next-door neighbor, who
suddenly took leave of his senses and cut down all the trees on his property,
which included a large lot that abutted my parent’s house and ran beside
their driveway. He cut them down, sawed them up and hauled them away. Then he
sprayed what had been undergrowth with Round Up and killed every living sprig
of anything green on his two-acre lot. If you can imagine the world after Armageddon,
that’s how it looked—a wasteland. He did it because his wife nagged him once
too many times about hickory nuts on the ground. Can you imagine a domestic
dispute ending up in an environmental nightmare? Well, yes, I’m sure you can.
This is just one example.
I live
in an old neighborhood called Forest Park. It is filled with old pine and hardwood
trees and mature boxwood hedges and holly shrubs. For the last couple of years,
this has been the hottest real estate market in Birmingham. Gentrification has
crept through all of Birmingham’s old neighborhoods to the point that I couldn’t
afford to buy this house now if I were in the market. So “flippers” snap them up
for cash before they are listed, give them an inexpensive re-do, and sell them
for twice what they paid. The very first thing they do is to drag out by the
roots all the mature landscaping and pile it on the curb. Then they cut down
the trees and replace them with spindly little twigs that will take twenty
years to even resemble trees. As you might imagine, I watch, sad and mystified.
When I
ask myself why, all I can figure is that they want to start with a clean slate—as
though this were a new neighborhood. It’s the opposite ethic to what existed
just a few years ago when people wanted a property with trees and lots of
privacy. Now we just cut down the trees and put up a taller wall. For me, it
seems like a total disregard for the rights of anything besides humans—forget
the birds and bees, the squirrels and chipmunks and racoons that live here too.
They don’t count, apparently.
Cutting
down the trees to build parking lots has been going on for a long time, but we’ve
now hit critical mass. It doesn’t matter that Wal Mart and other big-box stores
plant a few small trees on tiny islands in their vast parking lots—those won’t last
long or give much shade. What we need is a change of heart. We need to find an
effective way to help people understand that we share the earth with other
species—not all of them human. And that they have a right to life too.
I remember the surveying maps
my father made—he circled and labeled every tree on the property. It was like
naming your children. Builders took great care to cut down as few trees as
possible when they built a new house—now they just clear cut the land. It feels
like a lapse of morality and total disregard for our obligation to steward the
earth. And all for the sake of ease and money.
I hope
the popularity-tide turns soon—back in the direction of green trees and privacy
by hedgerow and holly. I hope it happens while we can still breathe the air. I
wish birds could vote, too.
In
the Spirit,
Jane
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