Trees are one of the few ways within our direct control to fight climate change, and native trees are particularly important. Valley oak trees are a keystone species - a species on which many other organisms in an ecosystem depend, such that if it were lost the ecosystem would change drastically. Valley oaks support approximately 300 animals, 1,100 plants, 370 fungi, and 5,000 insects and invertebrates.

It is shocking to hear histrionics like "My sense is this ordinance really prioritizes the lives of trees over the lives of our citizens" from a Planning Commissioner. If that were true, surely he would have done everything possible to rid Palo Alto of cars, which are infinitely more dangerous to people than trees.

Protecting and growing our tree canopy, particularly critical native, is a really hard problem, as the city becomes more densely built out. But that is what we should expect our Planning Commission to focus on, not scaremongering on behalf of developers and oversize McMansions.

@M should we prioritize the preservation of a single tree over the life of a human being? Is maybe what the PT Commissioner was getting at. And How many live oaks were milled into to planks to sustain humans under one now “historic” home build in Old Palo Alto ?

It is hard. No pun intended. Yet denying humans the dignity of a home is tragic and yes, unsustainable. Our climate is directly impacting yes the native oak insect and the human mammal (all mammals) absolutely.

Our unhoused local humans are our starkest visual reality of a climate change economy — entirely human engineered. So as much as sick dolphins & seals are washing up on our shores or Oaks are dying from sudden oak disease, not building will save us, either.

Pushing this crisis downline to exist over there is not taking climate action steps. It’s but making it worse ...

I am reminded of places on earth where our toxic addictive electronic device garbage ends up for the birds and children to pick thru for scant pennies.

Let us stop buying into the latest iPhone version of nothing. but link g the pockets of the mega rich. The Palo Alto Giant Tech hubs, including Tesla are sucking up all the remaining juice, weakening our outdated electric grid further, drying up the soil.

And those humans not tethered to a power cord are the first to socio economically perish from, yes their climate action, of not “connecting” to a grid. Marginalizing this population, a forced life without and yet deemed as “misfits” .

What we can do is provide a more balanced approach. And yes sticking 2000 units of housing where there is zero canopy coverage on a flood plain, on. Freeway and a wastewater treatment plant is not climate solving but climate change producing. Dispersing housing within the canopy is.

Here's the irony: a city that wants to preserve shade at the cost of human lives, yet would likely deny an unhoused person the right to rest or nap beneath a shady tree.

I've seen better canopies. Right up ECR in Menlo Park, for one. For decades, the ECR strip there was drab at best. And yes, the swarm of development has impinged on open space. But at least part of their planning was to include trees. Why can't we do that?

PA's future developments are devoid of trees and they will stick out like sore thumbs just like the recent developments. PA is becoming a hodgepodge of lego buildings that will never meet the Historic Building elements, thats for sure. Not all trees are the same. They require regular maintenance by someone who is familiar wiith hundreds of trees and knows how to care for them. Perhaps this agency could provide an assist: >Web Link Local arborists.