In response to Senator Brown’s introduction of the Neighborhood Trees Act of 2022 announced today, American Forests President and Chief Executive Officer Jad Daley released the following statement:
Across the country, our urban neighborhoods are facing rising threats to health, safety and prosperity from climate change, including higher temperatures and heat-related illness, worsening air quality, increased flooding, and greater economic disparity. In fact, heat related deaths in America are projected to rise from 12,000 per year today to nearly 100,000 per year this century, representing the single greatest health threat from climate change.
Trees can offer valuable natural protection from these pressing climate threats and enhance community prosperity, but too many neighborhoods lack adequate tree cover, especially lower-income neighborhoods and communities of color as shown by American Forests’ Tree Equity Score. Fixing this inequity is a life or death issue.
American Forests has long championed increased federal funding to help cities and their partners to plant and care for urban trees toward a goal of Tree Equity in every neighborhood. That’s why we support Senator Brown’s Neighborhood Trees Act, which will immediately tackle the climate crisis head-on by planting and caring for trees where needed most as life-saving green infrastructure.
The Neighborhood Trees Act of 2022 will create a Tree Equity Fund at the U.S. Forest Service, scaling up funding for tree equity grants to $2 billion over the next five years. These funds will help to plant and maintain the health of millions of trees to cool and cleanse the air in our neighborhoods.
Making this investment will also help address the underlying economic inequities found in the neighborhoods that most need trees. Through the investments in this bill, we’ll be able to create and support as many as 52,000 jobs in the very communities most affected by climate change. These jobs boost local economies, because they’re not limited to tree maintenance, planting and inventory – they include small business development and greater economic ripple effects throughout the community, already amounting to an economic and employment footprint of $64 billion each year.
Beyond protection from climate threats, trees offer our best natural solution to climate change, storing hundreds of millions of tons of carbon from the atmosphere each year. Urban forests across the U.S. are a big part of this, contributing more than 15% of the natural carbon capture in America’s trees and forests. Urban trees also provide additional greenhouse gas savings with natural cooling and insulation that reduces home energy use for air conditioning and heating by 7.2% nationally. That reduced energy use saves homeowners over $7 billion annually – making it a winner for our economy and our climate.
It is clear that expanding our urban tree canopy and achieving Tree Equity in our communities will deliver both climate action and climate justice, along with economic prosperity. Senator Brown’s Neighborhood Trees Act of 2022 offers a great way to capture this huge opportunity to address climate change, social equity and economic development in one fell swoop. We look forward to working with him to advance this important bill into law.