Once confined to California and the East Coast of Florida, a new front has opened in the war on palm trees. NBC2 NEWS in Fort Myers has posted The Problems with Palm Trees When it Comes to Climate Change.
This brief 2:21 minute video developed by meteorologist, Lauren Hope, is a naive, first world, pearl-clutching introduction to how lining McGregor Boulevard with royal palms may somehow be significantly contributing to climate change.
The piece starts off with two local news team reporters filling us in about the emerging palm threat, including the quote: “. . while these trees are beautiful, they do not do much for our planet.” Really, because there are many places in Florida and around the world where they are the only trees that can grow.
The piece relies heavily on an interview with Dr. Brian Bovard, Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies at Florida Gulf Coast University. His testimony asks viewers not to rule out palms because of their role in the ecosystem and notes ( as suggested above) they occupy a role in the ecosystem that other trees can’t occupy. And he encourages the use of native palms such as cabbage palms and royal palms. You get the sense he actually likes palms and through the use of creative editing Dr Bovard has been co-opted to add some ask-an-expert street cred to the piece that started with a foregone conclusion.
Meteorologist Hope points out that an oak or pine could have 30 times the leaf area of a comparably aged palm tree. This is as meaningless as pointing out that one palm frond is thousands of times better at absorbing CO2 than an oak leaf or pine needle. She does not mention that one could plant multiple palms instead insisting on a trunk by trunk comparison. And she actually suggests lining Florida streets with pine trees – something we see virtually nowhere (because pines are not greet street trees).
This is the type of superficial mainstream media soundbite reporting that is so misleading. The fallacies inherent in these stories are reviewed elsewhere [Ditching Urban Palms? Not so fast!], but talk about missing the forest for the trees — some palms actually are a significant climate change threat because of the ongoing replacement of tropical forests with palm oil plantations.
Union of Concerned Scientists: Palm Oil and Climate Change
Palm oil production is a major contributor to CO2 emissions
World Wildlife Fund on Palm Oil
Dr Bovard’s research and teaching interests include: “The responses of forest ecosystems to predicted changes in atmospheric CO2 and climate, and the role forest ecosystems play in both carbon storage and hydrologic processes especially when impacted by human activities,” so he’s no doubt aware that the missed carbon capture opportunity of lining McGregor Boulevard with Royal Palms is insignificant compared with a single palm oil plantation, but our local news teams can be relied upon to make the global threat all about us, and not the real challenges posed by big corporate players.