Wednesday 9 November 2011

Spare That Tree

'Please Don't Burn Me' said the notice tagged on to the tree (in fact, on to a whole row of trees) on Kensington High Street. Being a tender-hearted fellow unable to resist such an eloquent appeal for mercy, I set aside my flame thrower and read on. The notices are products of a campaign called, with admirable directness, Stop Burning Our Trees - and it's come not a moment too soon. How often have you stepped out in the morning with a song in your heart, only to find a blackened stump where once a proud tree stood in all its leafy glory? It seems they're burning our trees to fuel power stations (boo) instead of making tables (hurrah) which would 'lock up' carbon. So it would presumably be okay to make all our trees into tables - hmmm... In point of fact, wood is used very little in power generation, its burning generates 50-80 per cent less carbon dioxide than fossil fuels, and - what all these 'save our trees' campaigns always overlook - trees are an endlessly renewable resource. Still, hats off to SBOT for staying the hand of the Royal Borough, whose officials were no doubt on the point of torching its rather fine street trees without a second thought.

5 comments:

  1. I gather burning trees has caused serious increases in the price of woodchip, for boards, etc. Perhaps it's encouraging the use of plastics? Best intentions and all that.

    However, I imagine this will be rectified in time by an increase in supply. So good for tree-planting and the encouragement of woodland (as we know, chopping down trees needn't do any harm to a wood in the long term).

    It would be great to see a return to widespread coppicing in this country, not least because of what it would do for rural employment. I wonder how economic it would be?

    As for the protesting stickers, unless they're put there by Big Chipboard, it's difficult to see what they want other than a return to a time before humans first used fire. Or do they think we should be looking into the extraction of sunbeams from cucumbers?

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  2. And the butterflies, Gareth - they'd benefit no end from coppicing. And the woodland flora. What would we do with all those poles though? Pollarding of oaks etc would be brilliant, as that would yield timber. You're probably right about Big Chipboard!

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  3. We'd burn the poles at biomass power stations, Nige.

    I didn't realise pre-Rackham how reliant woodland flora was on periodic coppicing - and I hadn't considered how important it would therefore be to butterflies until now.

    Blimey, I have a rather wonderful vision before me - happy woodcutters stacking logs, green sprouting hazels, a carpet of flowers, butterflies darting and the chimney of a local biomass plant overshadowing all. I just hope the govt succeeds in building some affordable housing in the countryside and the picture would be complete!

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  4. And don't forget the pigs foraging for acorns under the pollard oaks. All this could have come to pass,of course, if the govt had suck to its guns over the Forestry Commission selloff...

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  5. And don't forget the pigs foraging for acorns under the pollard oaks. All this could have come to pass,of course, if the govt had suck to its guns over the Forestry Commission selloff...

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