NYC Councilmember Wants to Give 200 Trees Their Own Email Addresses
It's hard out there for a tree, off the grid.
New York’s hippie, socialist politicians just can’t stop handing out freebies on the taxpayer dime. First they left nearly 2 percent of the city’s apartments rent controlled, and then tossed on no-cost ferry rides. Now they want to give 200 of the city’s trees their own email addresses. It’s a techno-Marxist paradise.
The idea was proposed by Mark Levine, a council member from the Upper West Side of Manhattan. His office describes the emails as a way of “deepening public engagement with the trees.”
“NYC is a tough place to be a tree,” Levine told Gothamist. “By giving each tree a unique e-mail address, it makes it really easy to report problems.” Levine’s interview stopped short of giving hard numbers on the tax-payer burden for this so-called “tree-mail.” Typical.
This idea has been tried once before in Melbourne, Australia back in 2013. The Atlantic dug up some of the emails to plants people with access to a publicly funded universal health care system are wont to produce:
“To: Golden Elm, Tree ID 1037148
21 May 2015
I’m so sorry you’re going to die soon. It makes me sad when trucks damage your low hanging branches. Are you as tired of all this construction work as we are??”
Then this tree-to-tree communique:
“To: Oak, Tree ID 1070546
11 February 2015
How y’all?
Just sayin how do.
My name is Quercus Alba. Y’all can call me Al. I’m about 350 years old and live on a small farm in N.E. Mississippi, USA. I’m about 80 feet tall, with a trunk girth of about 16 feet. I don’t travel much (actually haven’t moved since I was an acorn). I just stand around and provide a perch for local birds and squirrels.
Have good day,
Al”
And finally a call for more environmental oversight:
“To: Algerian Oak, Tree ID 1032705
2 February 2015
Dear Algerian oak,
Thank you for giving us oxygen.
Thank you for being so pretty.
I don’t know where I’d be without you to extract my carbon dioxide. (I would probably be in heaven) Stay strong, stand tall amongst the crowd.
You are the gift that keeps on giving.
We were going to speak about wildlife but don’t have enough time and have other priorities unfortunately.
Hopefully one day our environment will be our priority.”
If the idea goes through, NYC’s tree-mail will be answered by Parks Department employees, at least until we presumably figure out how to actually talk to trees.
