No Need to Worry about Our Forests and Trees

No Need to Worry about Our Forests and Trees

Trees have been with us since the beginning of time. We have been using its products for

just as long. They have been used to fashion weapons, used as wheels, used for us to

write with and to have something to write on. Most importantly they have been and

continue to be used to provide shelter for us. I feel trees are an important resource for

us and to stop using this important resource would be an injustice to society. Trees are

there to be admired and to help our ecosystem survive but they are also there to provide

for the things we need in life.

An important example of how trees are helping people in extraordinary ways in by the use

of tree products as cancer drugs. According to Sally Christensen, "taxol is created by

using three one hundred year old pacific yew trees or roughly sixty pounds of bark."

Taxol is very helpful in fighting ovarian cancer when conventional methods no longer

work. This drug has been responsible for saving many lives (Christensen 552). Christensen

herself was saved with this drug. Sallie Tillsdale calls Christensen very selfish for

killing trees to help save herself. She says it is people versus trees. I feel it is life

versus life. If a few trees have to be cut down so a person can go on living then this is

a choice that I as a person am willing to make. No one is going to tell me that I cannot

have a chance at life because a group of environmentalists say that is wrong. It is

quoted by Walter T. Stace, "If a man's actions were wholly determined by chains of causes

stretching back into the remote past, so that they could be predicted beforehand by a

mind which knew all the causes, it was assumed that they could not in that case be

free."

One of the main needs of lumber is for building homes. This need skyrocketed after the

1950s. The need for new housing was tremendous and the need for lumber just kept growing.

The need for lumber dramatically increased when people wanted shaker style roofs, wood

flooring and wood siding (Robinson 25). Today things have changed slightly. Now we use

vinyl siding for our homes. So that has helped a little. But we still need to frame a

house so that it will stand up and at this point I do not know of anything else that will

get the job done.