The statement is correct, but only in the sense that they are not polluted at all. The next assertion is that deforestation proceeds at a ruinous pace . This is also completely, totally false. There is now more forest on the planet than there was 200 or 300 years ago. There are more trees on earth today than there were a century ago, and a century ago there were more trees than there were two centuries ago.
Forests are profitable when maintained, and they are.
The most densely populated state in the Union is New Jersey, where I live, and the Department of the Interior classifies one third of the Garden State as forest. The only areas of deforestation that were of significance in the past half century were in the Communist countries of the USSR and mainland China. Since 1978, China has been reforesting. The USSR, which is almost all forest to begin with, is being replenished too. The New York Times is writing silly things, not worthy of a high school newspaper.