KILLER TREES

We've all heard some variation of this environmental mantra, "save the planet, plant a tree". As it turns out, trees can be deadly:

Planting trees can create deserts, lower water tables and drain rivers, rather than filling them, claims a new report supported by the UK government.

The findings - which may come as heresy to tree-lovers and most environmentalists - is an emerging new consensus among forest and water professionals.

“Common but misguided views about water management,” says the report, are resulting in the waste of tens of millions of pounds every year across the world. Forests planted with the intention of trapping moisture are instead depleting reservoirs and drying out soils.

Forests are not always bad, the authors concede. “We’re not saying they never produce water benefits or that they don’t have an important role in the ecosystem,” says Ian Calder from the University of Newcastle. “But if we are trying to manage water resources effectively, the simple view that more trees are always better is bad policy.”

Misguided pretty much sums up the whole environmental movement.

Update: Nashville's Jim Colyer wrote Save the Planet back in the '90s but didn't record it. If only he had, the world might be a different place:

If Bin Laden had heard my song, there would have been no 9/11. Al Qaeda would have used its energy to plant trees rather than to spread chaos.

Colyer could have a point about the song preventing 9/11: if bin Laden had listened to it back in the '90s he probably would have declared war on the environmental movement.