Florida is ditching palm trees to fight the climate crisis
“Palm trees do not sequester carbon at the same rate as our native canopy trees and do not provide shade, cool down streets and sidewalks to help counter the urban heat island effect that canopy trees do,” said Penni Redford, the Resilience and Climate Change Manager for West Palm Beach.
Scientists are working on solutions to capture and safely contain atmospheric carbon. One approach is called “terrestrial sequestration” — which is essentially planting trees. A tree absorbs carbon during photosynthesis and stores it for the life of the tree.
But Florida’s beloved palms are the least effective at carbon sequestration. The average palm in southern Florida only absorbs 5 pounds of CO2 per year.
Compared to other trees — oaks, mahogany, pines, and cedars — that can sequester more than 3,000 pounds of CO2 over their lifetime, it may be best to exclude palms in favor of more broadleaf trees or conifers.
Kristine Crous, a senior lecturer at Western Sydney University, explains that palms don’t produce wood, so they’re poorer at storing carbon.
Even though palms may not be great at carbon sequestration, chopping them down isn’t the answer. Instead, programs in both West Palm Beach and Miami Beach, Florida, are taking the initiative to plant trees more adept at handling changing climate conditions.
“Southern Live oak, Quercus Virginiana — large canopy trees, can withstand occasional floods and hurricanes and are resistant to salt spray, provide habitat for birds and a variety of moss and bromeliads in south Florida,” Redford said.
Even without considering logging and deforestation, Mother Nature brings down a lot of trees. As Earth continues to warm rapidly, tree loss from hurricanes and flooding will become even bigger concerns in the future.
However, in the case of palms, the best solution may not be to simply replace them with more palms. Instead, they should be replaced with trees that are better at mitigating the climate crisis.
But we can’t blame palm trees alone, since the type of tree is only one piece of the puzzle.
Crous told CNN the age of the tree matters, too: Younger trees absorb less carbon dioxide than older trees.
“Yes, tree species matter, some grow faster than others and so their response to elevated CO2…
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