EDITORIAL - Fallen trees and red faces

As God and nature ordained, everything that lives must die, and everything that goes up must come down. And no love or lover of the environment, real or contrived, self-proclaimed or otherwise, can do anything about it when it does.

And so, for all the protests made in the name of environment against considerations for human safety, practicality and progress, two century-plus-old acacia trees on a southern roadside, their time apparently up, have come crashing down of their own accord, the latest early Saturday.

But they did not go quietly, literally and figuratively. Two houses were hit in their demise. Luckily, their owners escaped unhurt, or there would have been hell to pay for those who, against all reason, insisted that the trees must never be touched for their majesty and their beauty.

Well, there goes their majesty and beauty, unaided into history by human interference. May those who blocked their cutting against all considerations perpetuate their memory in any record book they may choose to keep for all eternity.

There is nothing wrong with fighting for the environment. Indeed, it is a war that everybody must wage without exception. But like all wars, there are battles you charge into, and battles you withdraw from. There are even sacrifices you have to make to ensure greater and more meaningful victories later.

That is the story of the old trees along the roads in the south, among them the acacias in Carcar. That they are old, beautiful and majestic and once stood in silent witness to historical events may be appreciated in that sense. But not even that will make them last forever. Eventually they will have to go.

And there lies the weakness in the obstinate efforts to preserve them. There is no way to preserve them forever. Had they been in a forest or in a park or preserve, there would have been no problem in letting them be. But they are not. They are where everything submits to a superior reason even in their going.

When they come into conflict with human encroachment into their natural habitats, some very difficult decisions have to be made, decisions that, in the course of the entire human history, have been made again and again, even if, sadly, they are always in favor of man.

But there are always mitigating measures within reasonable parameters to ensure all is not lost. A case in point - the two acacias that fell. There were all the reasons to cut them but some people always thought the world owes them the last say. Well, now they have been told it never pays to think as God.