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Trees secure kids' lives

(China Daily)
Updated: 2009-03-12 07:45

The 31st National Tree Planting Day should be a solemn reminder to us not to weaken our battle to save the environment despite the crisis on the economic front. Increasing unemployment, rising number of bankruptcies and declining consumer confidence may paint a gloomy picture of the economy, but the environmental crisis runs even deeper.

Environmental disasters such as soil erosion, desertification, floods, droughts, acid rain, and water, air and soil pollution have become a greater threat to our lives than what we had feared. And the blame for all this rests directly or indirectly on greenhouse gas emissions and deforestation. It's true that the economic crisis is serious enough to threaten individuals, companies and governments, but the impact of environmental degradation would be more long lasting, for it could ruin not only our lives, but also that of the coming generations.

People's health, in general, has suffered because of environmental degradation. To make matters worse, the vanishing greenery has made our lives more stressful and less pleasant. There are fewer green spots where we can take a leisurely stroll, breathe fresh air, and where our children can play with gay abandon.

Official data often talk about billions of saplings (and/or trees) being planted across the country every year. But no one tells us how many of them actually survive, or how many are cut down to make furniture, paper and disposable chopsticks.

Figures released in Shanghai recently are just as confusing. The city, for example, claims a green cover of 38 percent and a per capita greenery of 12.5 square meters. But a bird's eye view from a skyscraper reveals the color green to be conspicuously absent from the city. Even the once green suburbs have turned into concrete jungles.

Most of the trees are being planted far from densely populated city centers because no one seems to have the courage to green the downtown areas. Greening a city center, after all, doesn't make realty sense.

Forests (and trees) are the lungs of the earth. If a person with damaged lungs cannot expect to survive long, how can Mother Earth do so? Damaging forests and chopping down trees could only mean imperiling our future.

The debts we owe to nature are much higher than those of all the world's corporations and governments. Worse still, the economic crisis is cyclical and environmental deterioration irreversible. So we have to act now. Our children can forgive us for leaving them only a small amount or even nothing, but they will never forgive us for handing them an uninhabitable planet even if it's covered with cash.

Chinese are proud of a saying: one generation plants trees, the next rests in its shade. It would be a crime to act against that adage, irrespective of any excuse.

(China Daily 03/12/2009 page9)