Today Greenpeace blocked the entrance to Lumber Liquidators in protest of their involvement with the destruction of the rainforest. I admire the way the police handled it. No arrests. No tear gas. It is the reaction of the people following the media reports that upset me. When one person commented that:
"its sad the way we treat our planet. one day when the trees are all gone and nothing remains but sand we will wonder why we cant breathe. hopefully we can obtain the technological and social standards needed for intergalactic space travel for I fear our races only hope of survival with the continuation of its current practices is to find another planet to suck dry of resources somewhere else. We will pretty much have to become the evil space aliens that run around killing off other planets to sustain their own societies."
another responded with the ever classic answer of idiocy:
"we have more trees now then in the past" followed by another ones comment of: "we have never run out of anything - Plenty to last your lifetime and more to come"
My answer to this is a big NO. The effect trees has on us is more than the number of them. Size, age, type, location on earth, etc all play a big part of our health and well being. If you cut down one big 100 plus year old tree and plant two small ones it will not replace the other. All planting trees does is help repair the damage but it will never replace what was missing. To fix the rainforest we need to stop destroying it! Nothing we plant in Oregon, or Russia, or Hawaii can ever replace the rainforest.
Lumber Liquidators is only a small part of the puzzle. Stopping them will only cause anther rainforest hungry company to take over.
A note on todays peaceful protest. It was wonderful of the community to allow the protest to be peaceful. In my area you attempt any such thing and it will get ugly. If more communities followed the examples of Toano then maybe there will be more public displays of outrage towards the damage to not just the rainforest but beyond.
News link:
Greenpeace protests Lumber Liquidators
