Filed under: Trees - Los Angeles
Gabe Villanueva
003-607-816
Environment-170 make up essay
Andy Lipkis: Tree People
Andy Lipkis is the founder of Tree People, an organization started in 1973 that is dedicated to restoring the natural environment, while implementing health benefits that are associated with environmental issues. Andy Lipkis gave a presentation for the Education for Sustainable Living Program at UCLA.
The Tree People’s main priorities are to restore local communities, educate others on sustainable resources, work with the government to improve water policy, and eliminate health hazards that may threaten the local environment. Andy started his presentation with addressing the current state of the environment, as well as the economy, and how these can coexist to supplement each other while improving health standards. One of biggest problems he addressed is southern California’s reliance on resources such as water. Los Angeles imports most of it’s water from outside sources such as the snow-melt from the Sierra Nevada Mountains, ground water from the San Fernando Valley wells, and the Colorado River. Not only is this extremely wasteful, it is very unsustainable as the energy required to transport such large quantities of water exceeds what is in our limits. With the state of the economy at an all time low, and with the struggle to find sustainable resources, Andy presented us with his solutions that can solve some of our current affairs.
Some of Andy’s solutions includes conserving water by storing storm water in cisterns, improving water quality by decreasing urban run off, reducing floods by capturing water, plant deciduous trees for the reduction of energy consumption while reducing green house gases. Andy stressed the concept that we can use nature as a tool to bring us closure to sustainability as we coincide with the natural environment, or in other words; we start conforming to nature rather than having nature conform to us.
I think Andy presents some very interesting and feasible methods of healthy sustainability. The U.S. is in a short water supply and it is extremely expensive to treat water to meet drinking standards. 81 percent of water consumption goes to irrigation and a very small percentage used for dietary purposes. The water that is captured in the cisterns have the potential to feed that 81 percent that is used for irrigation. Water used for these purposes have different standards than drinking water and these aquifers have the potential to bring U.S. water consumption down because we would have water for designated uses.
