And before there were hardwood toilet seats, we used something else which worked just as well. We buy such things because they are fashionable, because they are advertised on television, in magazines, on billboards. We have learnt to want them. We even confuse want with need. We may think the economy exists for us, but in fact we buy to keep the economy going.
Commercial loggers do tremendous damage in order to meet our demand.
Their methods are so careless that huge numbers of trees are injured unintentionally, which means that companies destroy much larger tracts of forest than is officially acknowledged. Each year improved technology makes timber companies faster at tearing down trees. A tree crusher topples and pulps several forest giants in an hour whilst a complex of modern machinery can clear two and a half acres of forest in just a couple of hours. Another development is the chipper. This machine reduces an average-sized tree, branches and all, into chips the size of a nickel in about one minute.