In a presentation at the First Unitarian Universalist Society in Newton on March 18, Nobel Peace Prize winning scientist William Moomaw urged for the conservation of forests and local trees, citing the benefits of preserving larger trees and the consequences of cutting them down.
The event, Why Protect Newton’s Trees?, included a presentation followed by a Q & A session hosted by Mothers Out Front Newton, Green Newton, Protect Newton Trees, and FUUSN Climate Action Task Force.
Moomaw, who is Professor Emeritus of International Environmental Policy at Tufts University, has researched and documented climate change and the environment for decades. He was a lead author of reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007. During his talk he discussed the important functions that trees and forests serve in the environment to combat global warming by removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and storing it.
“It is the forests in Western Massachusetts, Western Connecticut, Vermont, and New Hampshire that are keeping the Boston area cooler than it has any right to be, in terms of the warming that is taking place on the planet,” said Moomaw.
Moomaw said that urban trees provide many benefits in addition to storing carbon. They provide shade that can cool sidewalks and buildings, they reduce flooding by evaporating water, and they help maintain biodiversity.
However, trees in urban settings often get cut down due to fear of them falling, or their blocking development, or blocking electrical lines. Trees that are demolished are often bigger and older than the smaller trees that replace them, which means their replacement reduces overall capacity to store carbon dioxide, prevent flooding, and shade sidewalks, he said.
“Maintaining large trees provides far more benefits than planting small ones,” said Moomaw. He said newly planted, smaller trees hardly reach their full potential before dying, especially in urban areas. When roots are underexposed and hidden under concrete, it prevents trees from getting the proper water they need to grow and from living long enough to remove as much carbon dioxide from the atmosphere as a more mature tree can.
While planting new trees is “a wonderful thing to do,” said Moomaw, allowing existing trees to grow is more beneficial. He promotes proforestation, a term he helped coin, which means to allow existing trees and forests to grow to their full potential, thus allowing trees to store more carbon dioxide and mitigate climate change.
During the Q & A after his talk, Moomaw advocated for changing infrastructure, such as putting electrical lines underground to prevent trees from being torn down or mutilated, and planting a variety of native tree species to promote healthy biodiversity in any area, such as a park.
“We cannot plant our way out of climate change. We need to protect the trees that we have,” said Moomaw. While trees should be planted in neighborhoods that do not have them, he said, “[Existing trees are] irreplaceable, and we have to do something about this.”
