The Cost of a Tree

written Monday 2007-05-21 14:18

I've noticed that people in the United States hate big trees. There's an attitude that if a tree gets too big, then it's dangerous. It's like a big tree is a terrorist, just waiting for a pricey car to drive underneath so it can drop a limb on it, just waiting for a good gust of wind so it can fall over on a house, just waiting for snowstorm so it can split and take out a power line and make your pipes freeze. Or maybe it'll do it's work hidden, growing roots under the driveway and buckling the pavement.

I think part of the problem is that these are costs people can see. And yes, they could happen— even if they are somewhat unlikely. But if they did, they would have a definite, calculable cost to them. A new windscreen, a few hundred bucks. Falling on your house, thousands. Taking out the power line, inconvenience of no power plus potentially pipes freezing which could run thousands. And the possibility of an uneven driveway, well...

But for all these unlikely possibilities that could occur, what is the tree already doing every day?

By February, on a cold but sunny day, my enclosed but not well sealed porch will warm up to a comfortable temperature just from the dull winter sunlight, and sitting in the rectangle of sun coming in through a window feels wonderful. So imagine how much a well-placed tree shades a house in the summer, how much warmer the house would be without it. What's the dollar amount of not having to constantly run an air conditioner? What's the value of being able to get fresh air rather than being cooped up?

They say trees block the wind, and thus reduce heat loss in winter. How much gas does it save? What's the value of having less wind-chill when you're out scraping off the windscreen?

Every day, the tree makes your life a little nicer than without it. Every month, the tree saves you a couple of bucks energy expenses. Over a year, a good tree could save a noteworthy amount, if you could count it.

But these aren't measurable; the values are blended in with other costs. You don't know the dollar amount that the tree provides to you per-day in reduced heating/cooling, so you can't sum them up and have a concrete number of it's value. And if you cut it down, the change just washes into the mix of expenses, you never really notice it; if you do notice higher cost, it's attributed to inflation, higher energy prices caused by terrorism in the middle-east, and never attributed to that tree, as it had just sat there, tormenting, waiting for the right moment.

In the United States, we know that the best defense is a good offense. So lube and load your chainsaws, gentlemen, we have some problems to deal with, before they get us.