COMMENT OF THE DAY: EXXONMOBIL’S NEW PINE-FRESH SCENT “. . . And about those trees. Those are shit trees. I know because I grew up around them, they’re second growth pines that shed pine needles half the year, and disgorge nasty pollen for weeks. They’re not Sequoias. They’re not the original Big Thicket and old growth pine and cypress species. I hate those pine trees.” [Scott Bodenheimer, commenting on Urban Escape: An ExxonMobil Video Tour and Explanation for Its Enormous New Houston Forest Campus]
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In other words, the trees are alive and doing their natural thing. That includes providing oxygen, evapotranspiration, habitat, and carbon sequestration. Do you love St. Augustine grass?
I grew up there, and quite like the pines @$$.
Trees gonna be trees, bro
Morons get free speech too!
Stupid trees.
We still have to/get to steward them. And other things, so it would be good to be clear on what is a shame. There were a number of pretty good pine 16′-long rafters in the attic of my house, and this year a workman up there sawed some apart to make braces that wouldn’t have required a normal 2×4. I remember Scott was not a wanton person; he was very thoughtful about the apts at Alabama and Dunlavy. I will Hazard my guess
– since I think this was a worthy comment of the day in most respects, and if you want to think about it:
– that his, like my or yours and my, priorities are geared with a sense of how much it took for something to be there. This is mpt like saying that a basis is the sense of how irreplaceable something really will be in the foreseeable future [rather than of its absolute value], since that opportunity cost would be a matter of scarcity, where What It Takes is going to gauge a significance less relatively. We can make a type of claim according to that explanation of meaning versus waste… People don’t mourn elephants just because they’re charismatic megafauna :) — or because of disrespect to livingness or due to ecosystem/natural capital destruction — they grieve because an animal’s death *is* more an occasion for grief than when a mushroom or Saint Augustinegrass is gone for no good reason.
Pines are great compared to those awful live oak trees. Live oak trees are high emitters of volatile organic compounds. You should be so lucky to have nice clean pines all around you.
This comment thread is really making Houstonians look like the most anti-arborial people on the face of the earth.
Let the record show that I love live oak trees.
Death to the tallow trees!
No please clear cut some more trees for the greediest corporation in the world, sure who cares when there are record profits to me made gouging humanity as well as the environment. Kudos on your greed and lack of social responsibility, maybe you can hire a PR firm ala BP for some artificial goodwill.
I’d rather have 3 live oak trees around my house than a dozen pines. They really make good shade.
Old School is right. Do we have Oak-Sol? Oak-O-Oak? Nope. It’s all the power of Pine, baby…
This is a ridiculous statement, and the fact that the editor(s) made this the “comment of the day” makes me question their judgement.
I rather liked the Wilshire Village collection of old magnolia trees – sigh….
The OP lacks tact. I can see that. But if this is second-generation forest planted by humans with the intent of eventually harvesting the timber, then it probably is not very biodiverse. It takes some hardwoods to support a good mix of fauna.
It’d be nice to see Exxon buy up twice as much acreage as was developed (hopefully with more biodiversity than just pines) somewhere in east Texas, then develop it for ecotourism and gift it to the National Park System. It’d be some very affordable PR, as PR goes.
Too bad nobody told George Mitchell in time, instead of The Woodlands he could have built his master-planned community out in Katy or somewhere where he wouldn’t have had to deal with all those shit pines.