If that were all, we might be able to put up with it, but the high-handed, arrogant city, in order to increase its benefits and extravagance, continually plunders and destroys the forests in these other areas as well. If one goes to the port at Shimizu, one can see the shiploads of lumber and pulp robbed from the forests of developing nations. The countries thus plundered are now watching their clearcuts turn into wasteland and desert.
Thus, by means of producing vast quantities of throwaway wrapping paper and packing boxes, and its idiotic newspapers, magazines, and leaflets, by becoming drunk on its own extravagance and convenience, the city is cutting its own throat; it is carrying on activities that contribute to the reduction of its all-important oxygen. What is more, after consuming these vast quantities of paper, the city disposes of them by burning, consuming yet more oxygen.
The city should take a good look at what is happening. By plundering the forests of the southern hemisphere it is not only bringing about a crisis there. It is using up its own supply of trees as well — the trees without which it cannot survive.
Evil Two
The second evil is the plunder of farmland.
In the previous section I wrote that the city was built by destroying the forests, but land which was formerly forested is first and foremost that which can and should be used for farming. The cities are built almost solely on the level, most fertile land. And other urbanized areas, such as those along rail lines and roads, or the centers of villages — though there are a few places which have been made by cutting into the mountains — have been built on plundered farmland. The urbanization of farmland is accomplished by such high-handed legal stratagems as taxing the land as if it were residential property, or employing urban planning laws.
The residents of the cities had best not forget that the very farmland they continue to urbanize is the source of their food.
Evil Three
The third evil is, as I mentioned in the previous chapter, the covering of the earth with concrete.
In order to profit from plundered farmland, the city usually covers it with concrete, thereby making the land forever useless.