Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1378870
10 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 30 MAY 2021 OPINION Raphael Vassallo Revenge of the killer trees… WELL, what can I say? Thank goodness we have people like Transport Minister Ian Borg out there, to alert us all to 'life-threatening dangers' that we didn't even know existed. Like… um… trees, for in- stance. You know: those woody, leafy, branchy things, that used to line so many of our streets and thoroughfares in the past… casting pleasant shade over in- candescent tarmac… pumping out vital oxygen, to compen- sate for all the noxious fumes of passing traffic… providing homes for nesting birds, and all sorts of other arboreal wild- life… and above all, shielding from view all the ghastly, hide- ous urban accretions, that have arisen to replace them almost everywhere you look… Seriously, though: who would have ever guessed that these majestic (and seemingly innoc- uous) marvels of nature, actu- ally spend all their free time plotting murder and violence upon innocent passers-by? That each time we pause to admire the beauty of a solitary tree – or, more perilously still, stop to enjoy the shade provid- ed by its canopy of leaves – we are actually exposing ourselves to imminent, mortal danger…? It almost reminds me of the classic reactions, every time people discover that their seemingly 'friendly, harmless neighbour' was all along a serial killer: "What, him? But he was always so polite… so quiet and reserved… the sort who would never hurt a fly"… etc., etc. Ah… but thanks to the inde- fatigable life-saving efforts of our brave Minister of Trans- port: we now know better than to ever trust a living tree again. And we can also understand precisely why our benevolent government is so utterly hell- bent of removing every last herbaceous perennial from our islands, once and for all… It is not - as so many of us foolishly used to believe - out of reckless, irresponsible dis- dain for all that is 'natural' (and therefore, 'economical- ly worthless'). No… it was all along to protect us, and our loved ones, from the cunning- ly-disguised homicidal tenden- cies of Malta's 'public enemy number one'… Or at least, that's Ian Borg's latest excuse for chopping down the last few remaining ficus trees on the main Attard thoroughfare this week: that is to say, on the last bottle-neck leading to the Rabat Road… where so many of the elegant Mediterranean pines that once adorned that memorable land- scape have already been mer- cilessly uprooted, to make way for the Central Link Project. Hmm. OK, at this point, I shall have to admit that my sar- casm meter has officially run out of gas. There is, after all, a limit to the amount of sheer amount of illogical nonsense a population can realistically put up with, in defence of what can only be termed a daily on- slaught of State-sponsored en- vironmental terrorism. And truth be told, Ian Borg crossed that line long, long before arguing this week that – wait for it - "the Attard trees were removed because they posed a danger to motorists". In fact, I'm not even sure what irks me more: the fact that Ian Borg – and his allies in govern- ment – are doing their utmost to deprive Malta of what little remains of our precious natural environment; or that he would genuinely believe we are all stupid enough to fall for such an unparalleled crock of horse- shit in the first place. But tell you what: seeing as he made that outrageous claim (in Parliament, no less)… let's see how well it actually stands up to the facts on the ground. Starting with the most obvi- ous question of all: what proof is there, that 'trees in general' – and, even more so, those trees in particular – really do pose a threat to the health and safety of passing motorists? I suppose we shall have to start with a statistical analysis of precisely how many people are 'killed or injured by trees' in Malta each year. Luckily, Ian Borg – or to be more precise, the Infrastructure Malta audit he was quoting – has already done some of the spadework for us: by pointing towards an infamous 2018 traffic accident, in which two people lost their lives (and 13 more were griev- ously injured) when a dou- ble-decker tourist bus collided with a low-hanging ficus branch on the road leading to Zurrieq. And that is pretty much as far as this exercise will ever take us, because – to the best of my knowledge; and not taking in- to account any freak accident where a tree may have been up- rooted during a storm, possibly landing on a passing vehicle and/or pedestrian - there are quite simply no other known cases of motorists (or anyone, really) ever 'killed by a tree' in in the entire recorded history of Malta and Gozo. This places the number of tree-related traffic fatalities at the grand total of: two (2). And even that has to be qualified slightly; because – even though those unfortunate victims were undeniably killed in an arbore- al collision - it remains highly debatable whether that solitary Zurrieq tree can realistically be held responsible for those deaths in the first place. Last I looked, the only crim- inal action ever taken with re- gard to that incident happened to be against the bus driver, and the company that organ- ized the tour. At a stretch, we might also include the relevant authority (and which ministry does that fall under, by the way?) that originally granted a permit for an open-roofed, double-deck- er bus to be used for touristic purposes… on an island where the road network is clearly not suitable for vehicles of that height to begin with. But that's the utmost limit to which culpability an possi- bly be stretched, in this case. So to claim – as Ian Borg did this week - that the tree itself