Why don't we mourn cornstalks like we do trees?

Question

My earth day question:

I ask this as I'm sitting at a Georgia Pacific paper mill waiting to get my truck loaded. I drove through thousands, perhaps millions of square miles of forest, pretty much all of it pine. The trees are planted in perfect rows, all of them. One field all the trees may be 40 feet tall, the next, they are all 7 feet tall, again, planted in perfect rows. Seems to me, they plant them, harvest them, and replant, just like they do the corn back in my home state of Ohio. If this is true, why do we give so much importance to the life of a tree? What makes the tree so much more valuable form of life than a cornstalk? We don't mourn the cornstalks when we pump ethanol into our tanks, we pride ourselves on how green we are and how much we care about the planet. I don't get it.

Answer 1

Who's "we"?

I ain't been mournin' no trees.

Answer 2

There is a vast difference between indigenous forests made up from many many species of Flora , with a great diversity of life ,which use little water and produce healthy soil

and

Mono culture forests planted for the chain saw ,which deplete the soil of all nutrients and hence require fertilizers to keep growing  as well as chemicals to control the pests.

On top of which they use up far more water

.

These forest are called standing deserts and are an abomination ,to get lost in one of these is horrifying

The trees people moan about are the indigenous ones

like the difference between battery chickens and  partridge  

wondering about in the wild

And while you are pumping Ethanol try to think that today there is wide spread famine and many riots  in many places .in third world countries are expected

The world produces enough food ,but more than half of that goes towards ethanol,whilst food prices continue to rise..

All for the sake of corporate profits

Very clever ,and we are supposed to be the intelligent species????

Answer 3

Trees clean the air and produce more oxygen.

All ethanol does is drive up the cost of our food.

Answer 4

Somehow I don't get as impressed with stalks of grain that are meant to exist for one season and be consumed and then renewed. When I think of a corn stalk and an individual pine tree or redwood or maple - it is not the same. Most trees last decades or longer - corn is here one day and gone the next and most stalks look about the same - whereas trees have all kinds of personality as they grow and change over time.

This is how I see it anyway. Hope you find out what you are looking for.

Personally, I thank God for trees and corn too. I am very grateful to think we may find ways to stop depleting the fossil fuels and switch to renewable sources like corn. Isn't it wonderful the new things they are coming up with?

One last thought, George Washington Carver was an extremely bright and inventive man and he developed hundreds of things that could be made from PEANUTS. I just think that is so cool. It is amazing that a thing like a peanut can be used in many different ways - I don't remember exactly what he came up with - you could google it. I just stopped at sandwiches myself, as far as peanuts are concerned - I like  plain and crunchy peanut butter!!!  =)

Answer 5

A cornstalk grows much faster than a tree. Trees take years and years to fully grow, while a cornstalk will die in most climates during the winter anyway.

Answer 6

Actually, Ethanol is a huge load of BS and isn't good for people or the planet.

Anyway, I think that people mourn the loss of trees because they are a symbol of the loss of wilderness and places unaltered by development. Most people are over the whole "save the trees" thing, but even the ones who aren't are not referring to industrial monoculture tree farms. They're talking about thriving ecosystems of old growth forest that are habitat to a diverse range of wildlife. So it's not necessarily the individual tree, but the type of tree, where it was cut from, and what it's cutting means symbolically.