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Comment by wiseowise | Hacker News Reader

Finally. There should be major repercussions for destroying trees, especially within the cities that look increasingly like concrete blocks.

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Living in Queens NYC I can see the large disparity between the greenery prevalent in the tax photos present on 1940s.nyc. After my grandparents passed we sold the house that had three nice shade trees, patio, a garden, grass along the side and a front lawn. Only the front lawn remains. The rest was entombed in concrete. Houses around the area suffer the same fate - yards completely devoid of green life and instead concrete. When it rains water pours down driveways into the gutter leaving the combined sewer system to deal with water that should be in the earth.

Most cities already have strict rules for removing existing trees. Usually anything over 6 inch diameter at shoulder level is off limits without getting specific approval.

And they were able to do that without declaring trees to have equal rights with people???

We make cities look like concrete blocks in order to have dense housing and protect the little forest land we have left.

...and a consequence of living in dense concrete "jungles" is increased energy consumption to cool ourselves, further increasing average global temperatures. What might the consequences be of living amongst trees (and plants in general) and spending much more of our time meeting our basic needs by moving around on the earth under our own power?

Living in dense cities requires LESS energy consumption than spread out over rural areas.

And those people in those rural areas spend LESS time moving under their own power because the places they need to get to are so far away they have to drive cars to get there.

No and no. Rural != suburban

>We make cities look like concrete blocks in order to have dense housing and protect the little forest land we have left.

Akshually we don't. We used to do that but not anymore. Unless you have obscene cash to buy offsets and credits and whatnot you can't get approved for anything even remotely close to an old school 1970s concrete jungle site plan.

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