Climate change is accelerating, cities are warming, and more deaths and heat impacts occur during each extreme heat event. Trees are affordable and amazing ways to cool neighborhoods and reduce health impacts.
- Neighborhoods with more pavements and buildings absorb more energy from the sun and are often 2 to 5 degrees warmer than neighborhoods with more trees. 1-minute video
- Connections between heat, health and trees
- All communities deserve to have trees, green space, nature, and healthy neighborhoods. Yet decades of inequitable investment in trees and urban greening in many communities throughout San Diego (and nationally) has led to neighborhoods with few trees, extensive pavement and hotter summer temperatures.
- It’s not so easy, and takes many resources and roles to grow trees together.
Climate Resources
- Think you’re making good climate choices? mini-quiz
- What can you do about climate change? online quiz PDF version of quiz
- Climate Change Communication, Yale University link to webpages
- Climate education, ClimateGov website , from National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)
- Climate Education, ClimateGen: link to website
- Short list of ways to live more sustainably with trees
- Report Card for implementation of Climate Action Plans in cities in San Diego region.
A Global View
- Intact forest ecosystems are the key
- Ambitious tree planting projects are failing
- Plantations are risking global ecosystems
- Do you really believe that a $1 donation will grow a tree? Or even plant a tree? Or replant again next year?
- Growing trees for cap-and-trade offsets require tracking trees for 40 years and that is an almost-unsurmountable hurdle unless stronger public infrastructure is developed for this.
How can we better advocate for trees locally?
Watch this 25-minute video about Urban Forest Advocacy in San Diego.