Was the Trade Worth the Price?

By now you may have heard about the trees.  The space shuttle Endeavor will soon be on the final leg of it journey to the California Science Center.  Its twelve miles from the Los Angeles airport to the Science Center.  This week those miles will be littered with the debris left behind as over 400 trees are removed so that the shuttle's wing span can be accommodated on the route.  By removed I mean cut down.  Cut down and chipped immediately.  I am very much in favor of cutting trees in the course of using wood for sawn and pulped products.   On a macro scale, trees are a renewable resource.  Start with 100 acres of fast growing pine, cut 5 each year, replant immediately and in 20 years you can start the rotation over again.  But trees planted early in the last century to shade the sunny streets of Los Angeles present a micro landscaping problem.  Despite the Science Center's promise to plant 2 trees for every 1 cut down, the street scene will not be the same for generations.  No argument in favor of tourism and school field trips would have made the trade off worthwhile to me.