The Fight Against Deforestation
By: Jackson Custer
Steve is a 12 year old activist, the youngest to ever walk the Earth. One day when Steve was strolling down Milton Avenue on his way to the park he fell flat on his face. Steve was, at times, very clumsy. When he arrived he started with his normal five minute jog. While he was jogging, he noticed a logger cutting down the trees in the park. He took out his glasses from his pocket and put them on to see what was actually happening. When he took out his earbuds his hearing increased, to him it sounded like helicopters had just landed all around him. He thought there was just one logger at first, but then he realized there was a whole swarm of them.
Steve walked up to one of the men and asked “Why are you cutting down all these trees?”
“Kid,” said the logger.
“Wait, I prefere Steve,” he snapped.
“So Steve, us loggers don’t want to cut down all these trees. We get paid to do this, so if we don’t keep doing our job our families will become poor,” replied the logger.
“Why don’t you get a different job then?” Steve inquired.
The logger replied, “ Steve you don’t get how hard it is to find a job, if you care so much about Deforestation then maybe you should do something about it.”
Steve started to run while he raged in fury as he yelled, “Maybe I will!”
Steve was still furious as he ran past the stream next to his house. When he got to the house he stomped into the front door as he blared to his Mom about what happened. He said,“How do I make a change about this situation? If I don’t do something we might run out of trees in the world.”
“Well Steve, you should form a protest like you did about the problem you had about global warming. But first, you need to get ready for bed, it’s getting late,” stated his Mom.
“Ok,” replied Steve. Steve got up the next morning and set off to make a protest.
When Steve stepped out of the door he saw the beautiful sun rise. The Wisteria Tree was basking in the sun’s rays and the sweet chirping of the rock sparrow filled the air with gleeful noises. The air blew through the Wisteria’s leaves gorgeously creating a painter’s dream. The dandelions on the edge of the stream were gleefully dancing in the wind, they looked so smooth that he could lay there and drift to sleep. As they went on forever he felt like they had no limit. He knew that if he didn’t stop Deforestation then all these animals might no longer have a home. That sparked his enthusiasm to stop Deforestation.
He couldn’t get get distracted by the appealing landscape or he would never get to his final goal of stopping Deforestation. He knew he wanted to stop Deforestation but he didn’t have enough information to back up his protest. So Steve went door to door to try to get people to protest with him. Some of them disagreed with him and said that Deforestation wasn’t a problem, but what surprised him was how many people agreed with him that Deforestation was a problem worth acting on. Many of them said that they wanted to make a protest but they never had the guts to actually do it.
Steve thought he had enough people to make a protest so him and his neighbors went to town to start their protest. They yelled things like, “If you cut a tree you pay a fee!”
They also shouted things like, “Loggers are doing nothing but taking our air!”
The mayor stepped out of his limousine and hollered, “What is all this commotion about?”
“Sir we are making a protest to stop Deforestation,” Steve said proudly as he high-fived the neighbors that helped him protest.
The Mayor replied, “I will ring the head Logger and tell him that there are some people protesting about your work.”
As the Mayor dialed the Loggers he said word for word what he told us he was going to say. He also added something at the end of the phone call, this was report to the Park on Milton Avenue or you will suspended without pay.
After the loggers, the Mayor, Steve and his neighbors got to the park, the Mayor stated “I’ve heard enough from Steve and his crew now it’s time to hear the loggers side of the story,”
The head logger answered, “Well we only cut down trees so we can make money and feed our families.”
Steve countered ,“Why don’t you just get a different job?”
The Logger replied “It isn’t that easy to get a job, and to make things worse we don’t have that good of grades so that limits our variety of jobs that we can pick from. Wait, why are we listening to a kid about jobs anyway? Kids are clumsy, immature and irresponsible.”
Steve was very offended, “Steve said “I’m not clumsy!”
But as soon as he finished talking he tripped over a tree root and spilled his glass of grape juice all over the head loggers white T-shirt.
The logger replied, “ See, I told you that this kid wasn’t worth listening to!”
Steve replied, “I may be young and clumsy but that doesn’t mean that the whole town should suffer because of me. I know the effects of deforestation and they can be very harmful to the environment, so stop cutting down trees! What would you do if I wasn’t a kid?”
“I would treat you with respect,” the logger stated.
“Well, why don’t I get the same respect? I probably did more research on Deforestation than all of you, so why don’t I get respect?” Steve stated with full confidence.
Steve finally got the logger to understand his point of view. There was a moment of silence that made everyone have a sudden sense of discomfort.
“Look,” said Steve, “It’s not that I don’t want you and your family to have a nice life it’s just that I think that there will be some major effects from Deforestation.”
Finally the Mayor spoke up and said, “Why don’t we do this so we stop arguing. How about the loggers don’t cut down as many trees so they don’t lose their jobs, but also so that Deforestation won’t happen so fast.”
Steve shook hands with the head logger to show that the loggers would stop cutting down as many trees. Steve walked home with pride. When he got home, after about an hour he thought to himself what should I act on next?