If we can only get people to dislike trees...

Someone at the Cato institute has taken time out of their busy day to complain that trees fall down and knock out power lines!

I was surfing the Cato Institute's website (looking for bad environmental arguments to target in a talk I'm giving next week) and found this article, which claims that we have too many power outages during big storms because no one is willing to cut down trees.

The power companies can't come in and saw down trees on your property that stand 60 feet from the residential power line. If they had the authority and the will to do so, there would hardly be any shade left in Falls Church. Imagine the hue and cry from our suburban culture, which worships trees as ardently as Egyptians once venerated cats. (At least cats are -- sometimes -- animated.) Obviously our love for trees will continue unabated (and like the Egyptians' love for cats, unrequited), so the solution to our current problem lies in removing the power line. As in, bury it.

But is the Cato institute really interested in preventing suburban power loss? The well being of the contents of your fridge is not on their official platform, but privatizing federal lands is. Admittedly, there is no direct call for logging or opening up federal lands in the article on trees falling on power lines. But why else promote tree chopping at every turn?