Out of one’s tree

Allergies suck. This is why we should bulldoze all the trees and replace them with McDonalds.
Apart from absorbing greenhouse gases, providing food, reducing erosion, housing wildlife, and catching rainwater, what have trees ever done for us?
They make me sick. Literally. There’s pollen everywhere. It’s like the Dust Bowl all over again. And tons of people are saying we should plant more.
I’ll explain why planting more trees is a bad idea as soon as I shake the yellow dust out of my keyboard.
If we cool, reasonable-minded folk — and there are so few of us — let the planters succeed, do you know what would happen?
The trees would take revenge. After all, we haven’t exactly treated them nicely. They’d gain extra confidence from the increase in their populations.
We all remember that chapter in “Lord of the Rings” where the Ents march to battle. Every itchy eye, every sore throat, would be felt a thousand times over.
And that’d be just the beginning.
More trees means more birds raising rackets outside your window. It means more obstacles to wrap your car around on rainy nights.
It means more arguments with your neighbor over how to split the bill for cutting down that limb that comes a bit over your fence but which is more on their side, which any fool could see if their eyes weren’t streaming from a herbaceous assault by Mother Nature.
If you and I want a world without allergies, a world where you don’t need to rake leaves for 573 hours each fall, a world where you can get a Big Mac on every corner, we must take action.
In fact, I can prove with the most rigorous scientific reasoning that no trees would be a net positive for humanity.

If there are no trees, there won’t be any leaves waving in the air to block sunlight. Increased heat means we can finally make the Arctic into the tropical resort it’s meant to be.
Think of all that prime real estate, currently buried under tons and tons of ice. Imagine the water parks you could build there.
You could slide down a scenic waterslide, across the scenic tundra, and right into a polar bear’s scenic mouth.
In a world with no trees, I’d have lots of fun. Or maybe it’s the other way around.
But the water parks are not all. With the increased light coming through to the ground, we can pave every square inch of planet with solar panels.
The resulting surge in electricity would give everyone great ‘80s hairstyles. Including the polar bears.
Also, it would let all of us jack up the air conditioning to the max, ultimately making life in the tropics much more pleasant. Except in the Arctic. We’ll head there to warm up.
Yet I still hear some of you naysayers yelling abstruse scientific terms like “ecology” and “commensalism” and “you absolute moron, you have your head on backward.”
Listen, if you find allergies so thrilling, you’re welcome to grow houseplants or spinach or whatever it is you crazy people like to cultivate.
But I know what my priorities are, thank you very much. If we keep the trees, how can I feed burgers to polar bears?

Copyright 2024 Alexandra Paskhaver, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.