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Comment by londons_explore | Hacker News Reader

The claim is "Billions are saved on cooling costs because the trees keep the environment cooler due to (presumably) shade and evaporative-cooling".

Since the vast majority of buildings in London do not have AC, the savings are more theoretical than real.

There are also the thousands of people employed full time in the autumn to pick up leaves, and the people employed all winter to unblock drains blocked with tree detritus, and the springtime cutting of every tree and the associated road blockages and slowdowns... Those are very real costs.

Add to that the misery that tree pollen causes ~half the population... Having a headache, painful eyes, and blocked nose from april to july has got to hit productivity pretty badly!

I'd say the benefits on purely economic grounds aren't as clearcut as this article suggests.

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Since the vast majority of buildings in London do not have AC, the savings are more theoretical than real.

And if the trees weren't there, how many buildings that currently don't have AC would need it?

Not necessarily so theoretical a saving.

Regarding pollen, it is not just trees, but also grasses and flowers.

Plus anti-histamine tablets are super-effective and cost literally a couple of pence per tablet from generics so you could spend perhaps £5 (1) to have enough hay fever tablets to last the entire summer and beyond (and probably free on the NHS if you can't afford £5) so I don't think it is quite such misery.

1 - https://smile.amazon.co.uk/240-Loratadine-Allergy-Relief-Tab...

Take a chemical to block some effects of one's immune system... Sounds like a good way to avoid hayfeaver but get more serious infections instead...

They're not super effective. I wish they were. I literally live in a different part of the world from where I've been born because I suffer from hayfever for half of the year there.

> There are also the thousands of people employed full time in the autumn to pick up leaves Don't they do any other maintenance work for the city?

And even if trees are not there won't grass/dust/pollen from plant flowers cause the allergy problem.

They do other maintenance work in the other seasons, but during the autumn, they form teams of people who brush leaves into piles, bag them, and then stick them in a garbage truck. I constantly wonder why they can't use a big vacuum cleaner to pick up leaves, but I guess it works out cheaper to do it by hand.

It's true other plants make pollen, but trees form by far the majority of the pollen issue [1]. Different types of tree produce pollen in different months, making a pretty consistent problem. Grasses on the other hand nearly all make pollen the same week. There aren't many other plants in London...

[1]: https://www.avogel.co.uk/health/hayfever/pollen-forecast/lon...

>There are also the thousands of people employed full time in the autumn to pick up leaves, and the people employed all winter to unblock drains blocked with tree detritus...

So grow pines and other evergreens they don't drop their leaves all at once like deciduous trees do in the fall.

Look on the bright side- leaf cleanup and tree pruning is ongoing economic activity that can't be outsourced. Mining coal or natural gas and manufacturing A/C units, on the other hand, definitely will be.

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