Our world is falling apart quietly. Human civilization has reduced the plant, a four-million-year-old life form, into three things: food, medicine, and wood. In our relentless and ever-intensifying obsession with obtaining a higher volume, potency, and variety of these three things, we have devastated plant ecology to an extent that millions of years of natural disaster could not. Roads have grow like a manic fungus and the endless miles of ditches that bracket these roads serve as hasty graves for perhaps millions of plant species extinguished in the name of progress. Planet Earth is nearly a Dr. Seuss book made real: every year since 1990 we have created more than eight billion new stumps. If we continue to fell healthy trees at this rate, less then six hundred years from now, every tree on the planet will have been reduced to a stump. My job is about making sure there will be some evidence that someone cared about the great tragedy that unfolded during our age. Hope Jahren
About This Quote

In the context of the quote, it means that human civilization is rapidly destroying the natural world. In a way it's almost a Dr Seuss story come to life, but with the animals replaced by trees. We are essentially chopping down all of the healthy trees and replacing them with unhealthy wood which contributes to climate change. It's not exactly something we need to worry about if we make wise decisions in our lives, but still I think it's worth mentioning.

Source: Lab Girl

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