Trees are too useful so we keep cutting them down
Nobody uses an urban tree that gets cut down. It just gets hauled off to the landfill.
It’s absolutely ludicrous that when the gigantic oak in my yard fell the arborist didn’t know of anybody who could cut it up into lumber for me – even in a city with so many urban trees that it’s called the “city in a forest” – but allegedly the economics of it don’t work out, or something. I dunno if that’s true, but it pisses me off enough that I’m half-tempted to go buy a damn portable sawmill and start a business doing it myself.
Say that to the table in my living room. (They removed a lot of old exotic trees that were lining some road some years back, those trees got sold to people making nice tables).
Selling the trees was only a side effect, and these weren’t your run of the mill trees either. But exceptions exist