Greed is Eating Our Greenscapes

The fight against self-interest starts in our backyards

8:19 p.m. Oct. 6, 2025

You’re probably familiar with occasions like National Dog Day, Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and National Teacher Appreciation Week. We humans have taken a liking to dedicating days, weeks, and even months to a diverse range of things.

However, did you know that we also have entire decades devoted to specific causes? The years 2021 to 2030 have been declared the Decade on Ecosystem Restoration by the United Nations, coming at a time when we need a stark reminder of how crucial it is that we work to revive the world around us. It is, after all, the only one we’ve got.

The natural world is our most precious one. Whether you’re in the hills of Middle Tennessee, the deserts of Africa, or the beaches of the Tropics, the trees above or the sand below serve as proof of nature’s sacred beauty. Everywhere has something to offer, along with people to utilize, cherish, and protect it.

Here in Moore County, we’re surrounded by some of the most beautiful flora and fauna in the world – and we must fight to keep it that way.

It sounds cheesy, I know. Most of the marketing for environmental protection is. Slogans like “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle,” “Think Green,” and “Leave No Trace” have been used extensively, ingraining themselves into our association with conservation to the point where we often roll our eyes when hearing them. As a result, we’ve become desensitized to the very real impending issues that these words fight to bring attention to.

Ecosystem restoration is a commitment that must take hold globally, but, like all things, the work starts at home. We are rapidly depleting our natural resources, which is unsustainable for both humanity and all other living creatures that inhabit the world alongside us.

Practices like land degradation, deforestation, and pollution are eating away at the natural world, leaving us with barren landscapes that are both an eyesore and an inevitable death sentence for environmental health.

Globally, deforestation robs us of around six million hectares (or about 14.82 million acres) of trees each year. The state of Tennessee lost 707,000 hectares of tree cover to deforestation between 2001 and 2024. This doesn’t take into account the nearly 200 acres of farmland lost per day in the state since 2017.

Additionally, the 2024 Living Planet Report, conducted by the World Wildlife Fund, revealed that the average size of global wildlife has decreased by a whopping 73% since the 1970s, mainly due to nature and habitat loss, as well as a severe lack of sustainable practices among businesses and governments.

So what does all of this destruction boil down to? Greed. One of the seven deadly sins and, arguably, the worst of them at that.

Greed is a prevalent theme in the present day, particularly in the corporate sector. We invest in uninvesting from communities to make money. But what happens when there is no more money to be made after all the resources, including our precious green spaces, are depleted?

Was it really worth it to eradicate the very thing that you claimed to promote?

There can be no greener world without trees or wildlife. Beyond corporations, we’ve proven that greed is inherent in humanity itself, which disregards the habitats and well-being of the creatures that share the earth with us. They have just as much right to a safe, clean home as we do.

As the old Chinese proverb goes, “The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.” Those 20 years have long since passed, but there’s always today to sow the seeds for a better future. And cutting down those trees sure hasn’t done anything for us yet.