Deforestation
Artists paint them, lovers carve their initials on them and birds build their nests in them. Trees
provide us with food and shelter not to mention clean air. They provide us with shelter from the
sun as well as furniture for our homes. Why then are we trying to eliminate them from our
world?
It is a fact that a third of the land surface of our planet was once covered with forests. Today less
than half of those forests remain. A third of what is left is under severe pressure and will soon
disappear. For each minute we are here discussing this tragedy 2,000 single trees will be cut
down. The virgin forests we are felling are irreplaceable. We are only just coming to realise the
true results of our plunder.
For the developed world this news is a double-edged sword. In the US 95% of native forests
have already been lost. Across Britain and Europe centuries of industrialisation and the felling of
timber has left once great swathes of forests a mere fraction of their former sizes. Yet in the US,
