On "comfortable" ...

Towering over our house is a fir tree that is the home to a community of furry, winged and feathered folks, who chase and chatter and chirp.  The tree is central in a complex ecosystem of microbes that symbiotically work with it to access nutrients in the soil, and to communicate with other nearby plants.   

The trunk is on the other side of the fence between our yard and our neighbour’s, but its boughs and roots disregard property lines. It shades our yard and home, cooling us in the summer, and sheltering us in the winter. It creates a microenvironment for shade loving plants, enhancing the floral and faunal diversity of the yard, a critical pillar of resilience and sustainability. We marvel at its height and grace. There aren’t too many grandfathers like it in this neighbourhood. 

We recently learned that our neighbours plan to demolish their house to build a bigger, more “comfortable” structure. They told us that they could not see a way to do this that would save the tree. (To oppose this, please find a petition below)

“Comfort” is relative, particularly in a climate of COVID-19 in which all of us have been forced to contort our homes to make space for work and school and recreation - and some who have lost their homes altogether.  Comfort is relative in a world in which nearly 9% of the global population still practices open defecation. The tree would be protected by not tearing down a solid house to build a bigger one, or by creatively designing the space to accommodate this grandfather. 

Even if we persist in a view of the world in which non-humans are “resources” and “property,” the removal of a mature tree in an urban setting is ludicrous.  In 2019, the city of Toronto declared a climate emergency.  Toronto's Resilience Action strategy cites the imperative to mitigate floods and extreme heat in part by scaling up blue and green infrastructure. The City’s Strategic Forest Management Plan values "the benefits provided by trees in terms of air pollution filtration and energy savings” at more than $28 million a year. The most recent urban forestry statement adds avoided runoff and carbon sequestration to the list of "services" provided by trees. Trees offer the most technologically advanced system to remove carbon from the atmosphere, a critical component of the goal of achieving net zero as a city by 2050. All the tree asks in return is that we let it be, but the hands of their advocates are tied in bureaucratic red tape.  

My neighbours’ rights trump the inherent dignity and worth of this tree.  By-laws that allow for the destruction of perfectly good buildings at the whim of owners (which itself contributes to carbon emissions and pollution), and the destruction of mature trees to satisfy the whim, have not been amended to embody the city’s avowed commitment to addressing the climate emergency.  Permits to remove trees require a plan to plant two saplings in their stead.  While beneficial in decades, saplings do not come close to providing the “services” that one mature tree does; as the adage goes, the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago.   

My ardent opposition will likely not cultivate good neighbourly relations. However, I have a much deeper, reciprocal, and lasting kinship with the tree, and the life it supports. In her beautiful book "Braiding Sweetgrass," Robin Wall Kimmerer says:

When we tell [our children] that the tree is not a who, but an it, we make that maple an object; we put a barrier between us, absolving ourselves of moral responsibility and opening the door to exploitation.  Saying it makes a living land into "natural resources." If a maple is an it, we can take up the chain saw.  If a maple is a her, we think twice.

You may find me up that tree when the chainsaws arrive.

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