Written in 1971 by Dr. Seuss, The Lorax is a children's book that depicts the consequences of human environmental destruction. The main character, who lives in a seemingly utopian city, discovers that outside, the world is destroyed, and he learns of how all the Truffula trees were cut down because of human greed. While fictitious, it serves as an important reminder of what happens when humans destroy the environment.
Currently, ten million hectares of forests, which is about equal to the size of the country of Portugal, are cut down annually. An assessment done by the New York Declaration on Forests in 2019 found that we are losing the battle against deforestation. From the nations of the Amazon Basin to Southeast Asia to the Congo, forests are being decimated daily for profit. Cattle ranchers, loggers, and palm oil producers are the biggest culprits in the issue and are all valued at billions of dollars.
Commercial agriculture was responsible for forty percent of tropical deforestation from 2000-2010, with meat producers clearing over forty-five million hectares of forest for cattle ranching. The illegal logging industry is valued at around one hundred and fifty billion dollars, and around fifteen to thirty percent of all timber is harvested illegally. Recently, the US Department of Agriculture opened over one hundred million hectares of land for accelerated logging.
Deforestation is currently the second largest human contributor to global warming, creating about seventeen percent of greenhouse gas emissions. This is because forests and oceans usually act as a "carbon sink", where they are able to absorb copious amounts of carbon dioxide from our environment, and then release it as oxygen, thus cleaning our atmosphere. Without forests, our oceans end up absorbing more carbon dioxide, leading to ocean acidification.
Seventy-four percent of communities of color live in nature-deprived areas compared to only twenty-three percent of white communities. Many modern medicines are created through plants found exclusively in tropical forests, such as medicines to treat malaria and leukemia. Scientists claim that protecting and maintaining at least fifty percent of the land will save the Earth's diversity, and if we put an end to deforestation, our annual greenhouse gas emissions will drop by ten percent.