Indonesia, like other countries with paper and pulp industries, counts industrial tree plantations as forests.
The voiceover said of the palm oil industry: "Its trees give life and help our planet breathe.
Wild shads are highly prized, and rescuing and transplanting them has become quite an industry, with trees fetching into the five figures.
KINGS BEACH, CALIFORNIA--Gases released by industry and trees combine in a noxious cocktail that produces damaging ozone in California forests, according to a study presented here on 9 October at the Sierra Science Symposium.
"Some people in the public would ask, 'Why would we spend money on this?' Well, the Christmas tree industry is a $1 billion industry".
But the oil palm tree industry is also an environmental disaster, according to many conservation biologists.
The Christmas tree industry gets permission to tax itself but the Obama administration retracts it.
The proceeds were to be used "to strengthen the Christmas tree industry's position in the marketplace", a euphemism, presumably, for class warfare against the owners of plastic trees, especially evil imported ones.
Earlier this year, in a video circulated among Communist Party members, Raúl Castro, the president's brother and defence minister, likened the industry to "a tree born twisted that must be uprooted and planted anew".
The environmental devastation caused by the oil palm tree industry illustrates the need for new policies and practices that better respect the complex and delicate interconnections among our food, water and energy systems and how those systems interact with the natural world.
