Environmentalists, that is. It was long thought the planet had about 400 billion trees. Now it turns out that the true number is about 3 trillion. Environmentalists should be jumping for joy, but no, they’re still not satisfied. You see, there used to be twice as many—until the ax was invented. But, of course, how do they know that? If they only recently thought there were 400 billion trees and had to revise the number to 3 trillion, how can they be trusted to know how many trees there used to be hundreds and thousands of years ago. And that’s not all. Because mankind is using too many trees, in 300 years the planet will run out of trees. More trees need to be planted, but not so we don’t run out of them, but to combat the effects of climate change.

The Best of Laurence M. Vance