The Rockefeller Center in NYC is responsible for cutting down perfectly healthy spruce and fir trees for its annual Christmas tree. These old and huge trees range between 70 and 100 feet, and are felled simply to become a tourist attraction for a few weeks.

This wasteful practice contributes to deforestation in upstate New York and in nearby states like Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania every year. In addition to deforestation and destruction of local wildlife habitat, there is an immense carbon footprint of transporting these roughly 6 storey-tall trees across state lines, and then artificially erecting it at the Center.

The Rockefeller Center tries to excuse this by saying that these trees are then donated for lumber use. At a time when lumber companies themselves are moving towards sustainable harvesting from planted forests, it is hypocritical to justify the felling of these decades-old, large conifers for tourism and lumber.

Instead of this environmentally wasteful practice, the Rockefeller Center should plant and tend to a conifer on their premises, and decorate that every Christmas.