“When I talk to my students about sustainability at SMU, I tell them that compared to when I came here seven years ago, we’ve done wonders,” says Jeremy Lundholm, a biology instructor who is also part of Saint Mary’s University’s Environmental Studies Program. “They weren’t even recycling back then. Since then, they’re taking sustainability seriously—they’re putting money into it, they’ve switched the boilers from oil to natural gas, the student association is the first in Canada to have a sustainability program. I tell my students they should feel good about coming here. So this feels like a betrayal.”
*This* is a new parking lot, consisting of just 23 spaces where the last on-campus stand of trees stood, next to the Sobey’s Business School building. The trees were 30-40 years old, and consisted in large part of native red oak and white pine. “Think of how many tonnes of carbon those trees held,” says Lundholm.
“It was no secret,” says Steve Proctor, SMU’s communications person, of the new parking lot. “It was part of the five-year plan that was approved by staff and faculty.” Moreover, says Proctor, the lot is needed because 60 campus parking spaces are being lost due to construction of the new Homberg Centre for Health and Wellness, next to the Tower building.
Lundholm acknowledges that parking is constricted on campus, but says the university should have offered incentives for faculty and staff to take transit. Proctor says there are no such incentives, but some on-campus spaces are reserved for carpoolers.
“Building a parking lot won’t solve the campus parking problem,” says Lundholm. “It will just encourage more people to drive.”
This article appears in Dec 23-29, 2010.
Think of how many tonnes of carbon those trees held,” says Lundholm.”
Well, we could think about it or we could do the math.
So, 23 parking spaces plus laneways equals, maybe, 100 trees with an average age of 40 years. Assume one tree can offset one ton of carbon over a life span of 100 years (1). So, the amount carbon these trees could offset in their remaining life span is about 60 tonnes.
Today, the closing price of carbon credits on the Chicago exchange is $.05 per ton (2). So, the environmental cost of this tree cutting in terms of carbon is about $3.00. There, some perspective.
(1) http://www.carbonfootprint.com/termsandcon…
(2) http://www.chicagoclimatex.com/
Educational institutions have simply followed the rest of how we live these days. Where people still pop into their cars to go 200 m for their pack of smokes. Dal and NSCC both recently built new parking lots. This because students won’t be “inconvenienced” by using a bus they have already paid for, and more cars per peson seems to be the norm every year. It is usually not that hard to use transit these days (just use Google Maps Get Directions and the Transit Symbol). But if you want one issue that faculty associations and student unions scream the loudest about, this is it. They want no net loss alright – of parking stalls. And they don’t want to have to walk very far after they’ve parked, either!
BSP: I don’t doubt your numbers; 1 ton carbon sequestered per tree is reasonable, and the carbon price is pretty low.
Having agreed on that, let me ask this: what hope is there when the in situ value of a tree is basically zilch? Wouldn’t it be better if the value of a tree, once it is assessed on carbon sequestration, soil and drainage improvement, and effects on local climate, is realistically high enough that a woodlot owner can economically choose to invest in the preservation of the trees, rather than cutting them down? And by invest I don’t mean penalties if you cut them down, but a viable working market (tree credits as opposed to just carbon credits).
Don’t get me wrong – no realistic evaluation of tree value would have saved these particular trees. Economics won’t save every tree. In some cases, like this one, it depends on the landowner seeing a bigger picture. But I guess all that SMU saw was asphalt.
The carbon that a tree holds immediatly enters the atmosphere when that tree is cut down? News to me.
Should be pretty easy to plant 40 trees around campus, in areas that wont be developed.
Also, 40 year pine and oak saplings are very young for the species, with those two species in particular being the longest lived in NS, with white pine normally exceeding 300 years.
Yea, so sad they paved ‘paradise’ but plant a few trees and get over it.
Dear Realist, economics most certainly could have saved these trees. Not the economics cap and trade but the economics of parking. I understand faculty and staff at both SMU and Dal pay $300-$400 per year for parking. A few blocks away healthcare workers pay almost $1,200 a year.
Assuming my university parking rates are reasonable the cost per day for fuel and parking is about $2.65 (1). Compare this with the daily cost of public transit of $3.50 (2). Should be no surprise faculty drive their cars to work.
Charging faculty and staff market rates for parking on public land would have saved these trees and probably contributed upwards of $300,000 per year (3) to the public purse. However, this is not likely to happen as faculty at Dal have negotiated subsidized parking into their collective agreement. That’s the source of the problem.
(1) Assumes gas price $1.13/l, round trip commute 15kms, avg fuel economy 7l/100kms
(2) Metro Pass at $70 divided by 20 workdays per month.
(3) Say 400 parkers paying an additional $800 per year.
Wow – is this all it takes to ring the atrocity alarms in your world? If so, you’re going to love the ‘before’ and ‘after’ pics of your beloved pal Dexter’s biomass project.
Give it a friggin’ rest until you find something meaningful to get upset about, ‘kay?
I’m glad they’ve added more parking .
So to offset it, plant twice as many trees around campus.
I’d be even happier if they flattened that hill with the crumbly fortification on it (that never actually did a damn thing except sit there since day one ) & turned that into a huge parking lot…with trees, planted around the perimeter & in several rows where all the cars could be parked, for commons baseball games, & metro centre events… that would be sweet we could allow tall buildings to grow up around it & there people could look down on it & marvel at all the ‘big trees’ growing in the heart of Downtown Hellifax .
Sure, balance it out with new plantings in areas on campus that adhere to the campus plan. Cut one down, plant 2 in return. That should balance things out nicely – and it’s what urban development is all about, isn’t it?
I completely agree that building a parking lot will merely increase the amount of people who drive to campus. Incentives should have been and still should be offered for faculty and staff. This may increase transit use and in return encourage more-so the protection of the environment.