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Comment by snewk | Hacker News Reader

i acknowledge that city ordinances can be a huge headache, but consider that trees serve more than just aesthetic purpose. They provide shade, filter particulate matter, and increase air quality for a much larger area than just 'your own property'.

This is especially important in the urban core of cities where greenery can be scarce, and mature trees even more so.

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This is a perfect example of a positive externality.

We tend to try to make the producers of negative externalities pay for the problems they create for the rest of us, but we rarely pay the producers of positive externalities for the benefits we all get from them.

It's interesting that cities never put their money where their mouths are. If we really valued trees, we, the non-tree owners, would pay people based on the size and benefits of their trees.

If you are worried about the environment there are far more effective approaches we could use, like increasing density to reduce transport emissions.

Yeah, but apparently building out public transport pits you against the petroleum industry (which has held sway in the US over a century).

This isn't an either-or, it's a case where special interests have shot down the more efficient approaches, so we're left with what we have.

The right way to do it is not by restricting cutting down trees, but by encouraging planting more. I bet a $100/year property tax deduction per tree would have the city absolutely packed full of every kind of tree you can imagine.

Old, large trees are not easily replaced. A 100 year tree is not the same as 3 or 4 trees that were just planted.

Consider that you can just girdle the tree to kill it, and then the city will then force you to take it down.

Ok, give everyone a tax break determined by the number of trees on their property.

But then you lose control, and that's a lot more valuable than money.

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