Mayor Villaraigosa has announced a new program to plant one million new trees across Los Angeles according to the LA TImes.
“Los Angeles, the dirtiest big city in America, has the opportunity to be the greenest,” the mayor said, referring to reports that the city has the worst air quality in the nation.
Wearing a white T-shirt displaying the campaign’s slogan “Live for Today, Plant for Tomorrow,” the mayor thanked the several nonprofit and neighborhood groups that have promised to help with funding, planting or both.
He urged residents to participate by calling the city’s 311 information line or by signing on to the program’s website at http://www.milliontreesla.org
Neighborhoods with lush trees are usually the richest and most desirable: Santa Monica, Brentwood, Beverly Hills, Hancock Park. In the San Gabriel Valley, wealthy San Marino is covered with a canopy of green, but south of Huntington Drive, arid middle class Alhambra sits under sun and smog.
But trees do not purify the air, despite what some believe. All the plantings along our freeways have never made an iota of difference in cleansing the toxic effuse of vehicle emissions. But trees shield us from the sun and make living in the desert kinder.
Here in Van Nuys 