From the Clean Air Council (http://www.cleanair.org/):
According to the Philadelphia Tree Canopy Assessment, the city of Philadelphia lost 1,095 acres of tree canopy from 2008 to 2018, with the greatest losses because of residential development. Congresspeople in the House and Senate recently introduced the Trees for Residential Energy and Economic Savings Act of 2021 (TREES Act), which would plant 300,000 trees a year for the next five years in low-income areas with minimal tree coverage and large senior populations. The bill specifies that individual programs will hire local residents that are currently unemployed or underemployed to plant and maintain the trees.
Individual programs will target areas where tree plantings will, “provide the largest potential reduction in residential energy consumption for households with a high energy burden.” This means that this program will not only increase tree coverage nationally, improving the capacity for trees to absorb carbon dioxide – it will also conserve electricity in low-income neighborhoods, reducing utility bills and air pollution.
The U.S. Forest Service recently concluded that if Philadelphia could increase its tree coverage from 20% to 30%, approximately 403 premature deaths could be avoided annually in the city. According to the City of Philadelphia’s Community Heat Relief Plan, “there have been more deaths from heat than from all other natural disasters combined.”
Please tell Congress to pass the TREES Act to reduce electricity consumption, improve public health, and increase employment at https://cleanaircouncil.salsalabs.org/treesact/index.html.
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