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.
"Some people in the public would ask, 'Why would we spend money on this?' Well, the Christmas tree industry is a $1 billion industry".
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.
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.
On Tuesday, for instance, hours before he was set to flip the switch on the lights for the state's Christmas tree, industry executives said the Independent System Operator was scrambling to find more than 1,000 megawatts of electricity it was short that day.
Katie is also patron of Fair Trees, the organisation that is trying to stop exploitation of cone pickers in Ambrolauri, Georgia, by the European Christmas tree industry.
In North America, the woolly adelgid has inflicted damage on old-growth spruce, fir and hemlock forests and damages the Christmas tree industry.
The man is partly joking about saving America, of course–he knows the kind of shade-tree industries he reveres may be too far gone; he gets that he is an all-but-invisible player in an epic drama but he is in earnest, too.
The fact that these guys are being replaced by bloggers who give a shit and know the sports they write about is reason enough to cheer the ink-on-dead-trees industry's demise. .
