Not Out of (the) Woods Yet

         

Gershenfeld          3

Not Out of (the) Woods Yet

         Everyone hates deforestation except one group: Lumberjacks. They have arguably the worst job in the world, yet people still do it. Picture a hairy flannel-donning man swinging an axe chopping down trees in an otherwise serene forest. Perhaps he lives in a log cabin himself, always in touch with nature. Regardless, you can usually spot the telltale black and red checkered shirt and smell the fresh air through the dense foliage.
         Now erase that picture- this isn't an 1850s fairytale. Instead imagine a clearing, stumps littering the ground. An overweight man in a loose t-shirt sits in the cab of a towering machine. The contraption throws up clouds of black vomit and destroys trees like they're made of the paper they will soon create. The man pulls a sandwich out of his sweaty back pocket and starts eating, using one hand to mindlessly destroy the ecosystem around him. He is literally singlehandedly destroying the environment. The modern lumberjack puts the jack in jackass. They live off the destruction of forests, turning the trees they chop down into the money they spend every week and breathing the air created by the plant they just demolished because for them, money does grow on trees.
         Yet, these people are still employed. Bead-wearing hippies preach 'save the trees' but go down to the local CVS to buy a ream of paper every month regardless of how hippie-critical that might be. The human race as a whole is growing at such a rate that it is impractical to give up paper, so we add it to the list of causes-we-support-but-do-nothing-to-fix right behind cleaning the oceans and gerrymandering. To be fair, it isn't the lumberjack's fault that he has such an evil job in the same way that it's not the bank's fault your house got foreclosed. They needed work, had the right technical skills, and were morally flexible so cutting down trees was a perfectly viable option. What people don't realize, however, is the immense risk they put themselves in while they destroy the earth.
         Lumberjacks have statistically the most dangerous job on earth. 135 out of every 100,000 lumberjacks die on the job every year coming in at .13% of workers. That seems insignificant but when is the last time you heard of an accountant dying of overcalculation? This dwarves the amount of people who die from shark attacks each year and sharks are a lot scarier than trees. These people risk their lives on a daily basis to cut down trees, facing death with every CRACK of splitting wood and CRASH of falling branches. They walk into work every morning hoping that all of them walk out again that afternoon. I would say they knock on wood, but eventually there won't be any left to knock on. That's quite a change from the teenagers clocking out at the local supermarket where the biggest worry is getting hit by a car while collecting carts in the parking lot. Granted, that is a real danger given the driving quality of supermarket-goers, but the fatalities are much fewer.
         Now, you may be wondering: am I supposed to pity the same people who are hired to assassinate the earth one branch at a time? The answer: maybe? Yes, it does take a certain kind of person to be ethically okay with deforestation, but it really isn't their fault. That would be like blaming the meaningless worker who stuck trigger on a gun in some factory overseas for the death of someone murdered in the United States. Gun control aside, there are more important people to blame than lumberjacks... like farmers.
         Farmers sell huge swathes of forested land to corporations who hire lumberjacks to cut down the forest to make way for new farms which will eventually urbanize, converting into a city which uses a lot of wood at which point the farmers will need more land to farm and the cities need more wood causing more deforestation. This endless cycle can't even be blamed on the farmers, as much as I'd like to blame them for everything, so you may ask 'what is the root of the problem. No, apart from matters concerning recalled milk, the farmers aren't the ultimate scapegoat. Instead it is human development, increasing populations and industreelization. So yes, at the end of the day, you are to blame. And if you have kids, you are especially to blame. Sorry.
         I walk past hundreds of trees every day, not thinking twice about their disappearance all over the world. A lady holding a 'save the trees sign' waves and I wave back, taking a brief break from staring at my phone, logging off momentarily, completely ready to theoretically support the cause. I don't think about the plight of the lumberjack, the struggle they go through to do one of the toughest emotional and physical jobs on the planet. They are, however, still to blame- they do destroy the environment for a living. Thus, it is fair to say that lumberjacks have the worst job in the world, putting themselves in substantial risk and only finding ridicule in return. But now the question remains: if a lumberjack dies in a deforested field and no one is there to hear him do the trees keep falling?