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Trees for me, we and thee: What's behind the growing push for 'tree equity'

Most of us don't think of trees as a measure of social justice, but it's a real thing.

Wealthy areas have up to 65% more tree cover than lower-income communities.

When we talk about environmental justice, we usually talk about how vulnerable communities are disproportionately impacted by things like contaminated water, air pollution, toxic living conditions and lack of access to healthy food. We aren't usually referring to about how many trees someone has around them on a regular basis, but a push for "tree equity" indicates that maybe we should.

That's right, tree equity. It's a real thing.

The impact that trees have on our daily lives is significant. Not only do trees provide natural beauty that brings us joy and comfort, but they absorb carbon dioxide and other air pollutants, release oxygen, provide cooling shade, filter drinking water and support wildlife. Being near trees helps us live healthier lives in various ways, but some people see more of these benefits than others.

In fact, according to the non-profit group American Forests, wealthy areas have 65% more tree cover than lower-income areas nationwide in the U.S., and it's especially an issue in our cities.

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via Nasa

To honor the 50th anniversary of Earth Day and he 20th anniversary of NASA's Earth Observatory, the agency asked the public to pick our all-time best image on Earth. After five a five-round tournament and more than 56,000 votes, the readers chose Ocean Sand, Bahamas as their favorite.

We've posted 16 of the other top entrants. You can see the complete tournament results at Earth Observatory.

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Over the past several years, artist Benjamin Von Wong has been on an amazing journey inspiring people to reconsider what they throw away.

It started with a trip to Guatemala and an up-close photoshoot of a massive trash heap there, and quickly morphed into a series of projects designed to confront people with various aspects of the world's waste problem.

As an artist, however, he wanted to do it in a way that would get people to look first before he unloaded harrowing facts about waste on them. There's so much alarmist news out there about what we're doing to our planet that, frankly, after a while, many of us end up turning off to the problem. Von Wong's method of turning trash into something beautiful to get our attention is a different, perhaps more productive approach.

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On Earth Day we're reminded how precious our planet is and what will happen without meaningful change.

You probably don't spend much time thinking about your computer's screensaver. But what if something so simple could help make a difference for endangered wildlife around the globe?

Graduate student Lauren Race and three creative partners (Carl Jannerfeldt, Beth Kushner, and Nancy Black) retouched some of the most common screensaver images to reflect what they might more accurately look like due to the effects of climate change.

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