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Comment by Havoc | Hacker News Reader

Quite confused by this. Trees and parks are obviously beneficial in numerous real ways.

...but if you ask someone that is really struggling I doubt their answer as to what they need is "more trees outside my door".

From my admittedly ignorant and priviledged position the answer is more likely to be "I can't apply to jobs if i don't have internet".

With people that have their back against the wall you have to address the showstopper issues. That's not to say they don't deserve trees, but given finite resources, prioritize.

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I’ve done volunteer work (tangentially) with one of the organizations that got a grant in Chicago. They are very much grassroots, very much from an extremely disadvantaged area, and are routinely praised by their constituents.

Turns out that poor people have diverse needs and desires, some of which is access to clean green spaces.

More like tree roots.

Part of the problem that things like this fix is "catastrophic paralysis" where you get stuck trying to find the single most advantageous thing you can do, which often ends up being subsumed into converting money into political blathering.

Whereas if you spend $400m to plant trees, you get trees (or, sadly, you get trees that die instantly because you didn't manage the project at all to verify that the trees will do something, and instead burnt it on a tree planting company that doesn't care if they survive).

>Turns out that poor people have diverse needs and desires, some of which is access to clean green spaces.

Indeed. As I said I'm not denying said needs, but simply suggesting prioritizing more existential ones.

Trees are more existential than it seems.

In urban areas, poor people are the most likely to lack air conditioning. Trees provide shade, preventing absorbent materials below like concrete and asphalt from absorbing heat and baking; and they also evaporate water, cooling the air.

As the climate continues to change, a lot of places will become more susceptible to heat-related death. Trees are a fairly uncontroversial way to mitigate at least some of that; some estimates have the cooling effect as high as 12 C. https://www.newscientist.com/article/2298675-trees-cool-the-...

fixing fixable problems is always a good thing. planting trees is one of those things that doesn't tend to start a culture war.

poor people have a lot of existential needs, but providing food, housing, or health care tends to draw out the people who think that's a bad thing.

I think it's good to solve small problems too. The $400M has the chance bring a little happiness to a lot of people. Cooling due to the shade of trees is a big benefit. Trees improve the charm of the neighborhood and could also contribute to feelings of well being.

Ehh you're right, but they don't really have to address showstopper issues. There isn't a lot of upside value in "human issue ranking" as a scrutiny tactic to a donation. Charitable donations aren't public negotiations like they are if you're talking about gov/public funds. Just take the money on offer and build some lovely green spaces.

As someone that lives in an underserved community... the most impactful thing any billionaire could do is to just give the people living in these communities money directly.

Trees are one of those things we know have some impact on quality of life, whether they're mental health benefits from spending time in nature, or temperature impacts in urban areas (poorer neighborhoods have less vegetation, and therefore locally get hotter due to so called "heat islands")... but obviously people here don't care about trees because they're much further down on the hierarchy of needs than the wealthy. When you're worried about making rent you don't have time for trees.

So someone like Bezos sees a high-profile pat-on-the-back environmental project... which conveniently fulfills the "I know what you need better than you do" mentality that the wealthy generally hold over the poor... and tada! poor people get trees.

> people here don't care about trees because they're much further down on the hierarchy of needs

Agreed - that's precisely my point

Tree cover has a pretty big impact on people's lives, especially in hot climates.

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