San Diego Hopes to Beat the Heat With Million Trees

Soon, it’ll be happening all over San Diego County.

Atop Palomar Mountain. Along city streets. In front of schools. Beside naked highways.

Trees will be sprouting throughout the county, if all goes according to plan, say a band of environmentalists who are arming themselves with shovels and seedlings to plant 1 million trees in San Diego County by 1991.

“It’s time for a refresher course in photosynthesis,” said Ruth Duemler, a San Diego Sierra Club spokeswoman.

The coalition of local environmental groups spearheading the planting hope to remind people of the important role trees play in converting carbon dioxide into oxygen, the precious element needed for survival by all living creatures.

The greening of San Diego, set to start during the fall planting season, mirrors nationwide efforts to replenish felled trees.

Reversal Sought

But more important, the tree-planting effort may help reverse the “greenhouse effect”--a global environmental disease that scientists say may make the planet uninhabitable.

Greedy for more tree products--from paper to lumber--modern man has hacked trees and left forests ravaged. And working like co-conspirators in a crime, industrial and chemical giants have polluted the Earth, environmentalists say.

The combined effects of too much carbon dioxide and diminished world forests sorely needed to filter the poisoned air have created a layer of toxic gases ringing the planet--allowing the sun’s rays through but trapping the Earth’s heat much like a greenhouse and preventing it from escaping into space.

The consequences of this greenhouse effect on global warming could be dire: Rising temperatures may bring the planet to a slow boil, cause severe droughts and force oceans to swell and flood. Such doomsday scenarios have the world’s leaders and scientists worried.

But San Diego’s green thumbs say they have a simple plan to counter a complex problem: Plant a tree.

The strategy: Plant trees to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in the air, which should deteriorate the gaseous layer surrounding the Earth and allow excess heat to escape into space.

Recognizing the growing public sentiment to find a solution for the greenhouse effect, Supervisor Susan Golding during her State of the County address in February challenged San Diegans to help solve the global problem by planting 1 million trees.

“There are so many complex problems facing us nowadays . . . we have a tendency to throw up our hands and say, ‘It’s certainly too big of a problem for me.’ ” Golding said. “But, by the very simple act of planting a tree, something every single child and adult can do, we can help reverse or neutralize the greenhouse effect.

No ‘Idealistic Whim’

“Tree planting isn’t some idealistic whim,” she added. “It’s a scientifically based strategy that will really work.”

The Sierra Club, the San Diego Ecology Centre and Educators for Environmental Protection, among others, have each offered a different way to curb the greenhouse effect. The Board of Supervisors created San Diego County Operation ReLEAF to unify their efforts.

The marriage of the independent organizations and the county should benefit both groups: The county, which simply doesn’t have the money or labor pool to undertake such an ambitious program, taps the groups’ volunteer spirit, and in return, offers the smaller outfits recognition, credibility and coordination.

Local nurseries have joined the effort too, often supplying environmental groups with free seedlings or selling trees at a discounted rate. Organizers are also wooing corporations to fund the ReLEAF program.

Although it is unknown how many trees must be planted to reverse global warming, skeptics say San Diego’s planting effort will have little impact on the damage already done by the world’s polluters.

Byproducts Described

But ReLEAF advocates argue that besides bolstering nature’s arsenal against the greenhouse effect, every seedling tucked in soil will eventually yield two beneficial byproducts. Verdant trees will not only spruce up neighborhoods, supporters say, but also when strategically placed to shade homes from the sun’s rays, trees can slash energy bills by 10% to 50%

Operation ReLEAF’s clear objective is to plant more trees and cut less. And according to Erika Wudtke of the San Diego Ecology Centre, recycling is a means to that goal.

This winter the Ecology Centre kicks off its campaign to persuade San Diegans to buy live Christmas trees instead of cut ones, program director Wudtke said.

“Christmas is supposed to be a time of joy and celebration of life,” Wudtke said. “And most of us celebrate it with a dead tree. It’s a silly tradition. We should be using live, growing trees.”

The Ecology Centre’s “Give the Earth a Gift” program encourages San Diegans to buy live trees, and once the holiday season ends, to plant them in their back yards.

No room to plant a tree in your yard? No problem, Wudtke said.

‘Can Give Them Back’

“Once people are done with them, they can give them back to us and our volunteers will go plant them,” Wudtke said. And if you want to get rid of a cut tree, Wudtke said the Ecology Centre will take those, too.

“Wanted, dead or alive, that’s our motto,” Wudtke said. Last year, the Ecology Centre--a nonprofit organization that advocates ecological awareness and preservation of natural resources--recycled 97,000 trees.

Added Wudtke: “If you recycle a stack of newspapers 6-foot-tall, you can save a tree that’s 35-foot-tall.”

Without manpower to plant seedlings, however, Operation ReLEAF is sure to fail. But organizers are encouraged to see that several San Diego groups have already enlisted in the war against the greenhouse effect.

In less than four months, the Sierra Club has recruited nearly 450 volunteers for Project Green, which plans to hold regularly scheduled planting sessions.

700 Schools Informed

In April, Project Green contacted 700 schools in the county and encouraged students to celebrate Arbor Day by planting trees. More than 1,000 seedlings took root. Including the students’ efforts, the group has planted more than 3,000 trees. At the Del Mar Fair, Project Green members have given away more than 3,000 seedlings to fair-goers who promise to plant and nurture them.

Now, Project Green members and planners for the California Department of Transportation are working on final details of a program to plant trees beside miles of naked freeways.

Educators for Environmental Protection, a national organization based in San Diego, teaches youth about environmental responsibility. The organization provides its 1,600 members, mostly teachers, with classroom kits to teach students about the dangers of the greenhouse effect, tropical deforestation and health problems linked to pollution, said Marc Schumacher, the group’s director. During the last three months, Schumacher has made environmental presentations before 3,000 San Diego students.

In addition, the group has developed an unusual fund-raising program for schools: Students are taught the basics of door-to-door salesmanship, but instead of pitching cookies or magazines, they sell seedlings and volunteer to plant them in yards or neighborhood parks. So far, the organization has received nearly 500 requests for the fund-raiser kits.

Warming of Concern

The newly formed San Diego People for Trees is particularly concerned about the amount of heat generated by treeless cities packed densely with buildings.

Recent studies have shown that cities, with their heavy volume of exhaust-emitting cars and heat-absorbing blacktop parking lots, dramatically raise temperatures.

“To cool these urban heat islands we’re targeting places where patches of trees can be planted, along city streets or around parking lots,” said Philip Maechling, a group spokesman. Since January, San Diego People for Trees has planted nearly 500 trees--hundreds atop Palomar Mountain and at several county schools.

Although San Diegans should be encouraged by the high volunteer turnout and their enthusiasm for planting, state ReLEAF planners caution that such positive attributes, unless carefully managed, may also lead to the program’s downfall.

Their nightmare is that ReLEAF would be a short-lived grass-roots movement manned by the uninformed.

“Planting a tree is like buying a pet . . . it’s the warm and fuzzy thing to do,” said Deborah Walker, program director for California ReLEAF. “Everyone wants to run out and do it because it makes you feel good. But once planted, trees need to be nurtured and maintained. People seem to lose enthusiasm when they realize the hard work that follows.”

One of California ReLEAF’s primary responsibilities is to steer volunteers toward proven planting programs. Directing volunteer effort is crucial, Walker said, because if it fails, it’s unlikely that municipal or county agencies would continue the environmental fight.

“Some cities have urban-planting programs, but whenever there’s a money crunch, it’s sure to be the first one to get cut,” Walker said.

She also emphasized the importance of planting the right trees in the right location. In arid regions like San Diego, for example, Walker said planters must choose trees that need little water.

Even Advocates Have Doubts

But critics wonder whether even well-managed efforts will actually reverse global warming.

Even San Diego ReLEAF advocates have doubts. They concede that, alone, their program will do little to reduce the voluminous quantities of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

But San Diego tree-planters have plenty of partners.

Besides California ReLEAF, which seeks to plant 20 million trees through the next decade, nearly every state has taken steps, fledgling as they may be, to establish a tree-planting program.

“This is really a citizens’ movement,” said Neil Sampson, executive vice president of the American Forestry Assn., a conservation organization established to improve trees and forests.

Last October, Sampson created Global ReLEAF--the association’s project that challenges Americans to plant 100 million trees nationwide before 1993. The national program, although it has no official ties with state and local efforts, initiated many of their campaigns and offers them guidance.

No Single ‘Magic Bullet’

“Tree-planting is not meant to be the one magic bullet that kills greenhouse,” he said. “But it is one of the many cures that needs to be taken. And most important, it gets a lot of people involved and aware.

“By combining the use of more fuel-efficient machines, practicing energy conservation and planting trees, we can have a real effect.”

Such a multifaceted attack against global warming also has other benefits, Sampson said. According to a study done by the U.S. Department of Energy, tree-planting coupled with energy conservation can lower the nation’s energy bill by $4 billion annually.

Since the launch of Global ReLEAF, more than 1,000 groups nationwide have initiated some type of tree-planting program. Sampson saiddmuch of the success is due to a resurgence of the volunteer spirit.

But, he added, a touch of fear may be motivating people too.

“The greenhouse effect is really troubling people, especially because no one really knows how bad it is or what’s actually going to happen. Even the scientists aren’t sure,” Sampson said. “And that uncertainty has people worrying even more.”