In 1970, not long after the very first Earth Day, a 15-year-old named Andy Lipkis escaped the lung-burning, mountain-obscuring L.A. smog to attend summer camp in the San Bernardino Mountains. There, he met a naturalist who pointed to the dirty air and the dying trees and said, "If we don't do something, they'll all be gone in 30 years." Lipkis rose to the challenge. Together with 23 other campers, he decided to revive a small patch of forest. Over the course of three weeks, they cleared a tar-covered parking lot and transformed it into a fertilized grove of saplings. By the end of the summer, animals had returned, life was coming back, and Andy Lipkis had found his calling.

By 18, Lipkis had pulled volunteers from other summer camps into his scheme. They planned to plant 20,000 pine seedlings, but first, they'd have to buy the trees, and the teenagers didn't have the funds. Undeterred, Lipkis alerted the media. After an article in the Los Angeles Times reported on Lipkis' soliciting 50-cent contributions for each tree, donations poured in by the thousands. Sacks of mail came in from everywhere, and within three weeks, Lipkis had raised $10,000. That experience, Lipkis says, "was like lighting a fuse — we've never stopped."

Now, 30 years later, the trees are still growing in the San Bernardino mountains and — thanks in part to Lipkis — they are thriving even in the valley of L.A. He and his group of citizen foresters — they call themselves TreePeople — teach city dwellers, urban planners, and schoolchildren how to clean and store water, filter air, reduce waste, and make neighborhoods more livable and beautiful. In other words: how to be more like a tree.

Lipkis has drawn tens of thousands of people into his projects, which include airlifting bare fruit trees to Africa, planting 1 million trees in Los Angeles before the 1984 Summer Olympics, and leading numerous disaster relief efforts during floods and fires. Andy's current program is T.R.E.E.S. (Transagency Resources for Environmental and Economic Stability), a public/private partnership aimed at retrofitting the greater Los Angeles area to be managed as a sustainable urban ecosystem. Lipkis literally changed the landscape of Los Angeles, by convincing the L.A. school board to pass a policy that removed 20 million square feet of asphalt from school grounds — that's enough to pave 347 football fields. The move lowered energy costs and brought shade and beauty to more than 400 schools.

Lipkis was named an Ashoka Fellow for 2008, an award given to social entrepreneurs to help bring their work to greater numbers of people. He recently returned from a briefing trip to Washington, a trip he took because he and his team at TreePeople are concerned that President Obama's economic stimulus program will go mostly toward gray infrastructure —roads, bridges, and airports — and prolong some of the problems caused by it, such as flooding, water shortages, and pollution. Lipkis sees the current moment as an extraordinary opportunity, a once-in-a-lifetime deal to invest in something new: "smart green" projects, as opposed to old, gray infrastructure.

Smart green infrastructure, like the infrastructure of a forest, is based on natural processes that provide multiple bangs for our buck. It provides essential city services while at the same time mitigating climate change and helping us adapt to its consequences, as well as supplying us with sustainable energy, water, and green-collar jobs. Being smart and green means working with nature, enhancing its ability to capture, clean, and store the water we need, filter the air, reduce waste hauling, and make our neighborhoods more livable and beautiful. 


For more information, and to learn how to get involved, visit http://www.treepeople.org/