The sky may not be falling, but acres of forests are

ROBERT GARDNER

I have always disliked the Chicken Littles of this world, alarming

the populace with hysterical claims that the sky is falling when a

quick look around assures us that the sky is in its proper place.

It’s an entirely different story, however, when the threat is real. I

feel it is my responsibility as a concerned citizen to alert my

neighbors to a real threat to our way of life, and this is the

possibility that we might run out of paper.

When I graduated from law school in 1935, my sisters bought me a

state-of-

the-art briefcase, a large piece of leather that folded over and

when connected by a zipper became a briefcase. Packed to the gills,

it might expand to about a one-inch thickness, and this was ample to

hold the file of an average lawsuit.

In 1969, when I went to the Court of Appeal from the Superior

Court, my Superior Court staff gave me a fancy new briefcase as a

going-away present. This one was about three inches wide, but it

would still hold the file of an average lawsuit.

I eventually retired from the Court of Appeal. After spending an

enjoyable year or two on the beach developing my skin cancers, I went

to American Samoa for a three-year term on the High Court. Presiding

in a gray serge lava lava, I had no need of a briefcase. Returning

from Samoa, I spent several more years on the beach, further ensuring

the financial well-being of my dermatologist, and then went back to

the Superior Court on assignment.

A huge change had taken place in the interim. Once again back on

the bench, I was exposed to a new generation, not just of lawyers,

but of their briefcases or, as they should be termed, briefboxes,

because that’s what they had become -- big leather boxes 10 to 12

inches across that one would think would be more than large enough to

hold the file of an average lawsuit.

Not at all. The lawyers came in with their briefboxes plus

armloads of papers for even the most piddling lawsuit. The lawsuits

were the same as they were in 1935, but the amount of paper

supporting them had exploded, and this is but a reflection of the

massive use, or overuse, of paper in our present business,

commercial, professional and social lives.

When computers became popular, we were supposed to be entering the

paperless age. No more would we kill innocent trees to document all

the necessary things we felt we needed to document. Everything would

be stored on our computers, but somewhere along the line it didn’t

happen. In fact, just the opposite. It seems like the computer age

has created an even greater use of paper in every walk of life. I

can’t imagine what the daily paper flow is at a large corporation

such as General Motors, and I shudder to think of the amount of paper

used by the federal or state bureaucracy.

Not that we escape the deluge at home. The Sunday paper used to be

a slightly tarted-up version of the daily -- color comics and a

magazine, but that was it. Now you can’t pick it up without danger of

a hernia. I don’t have to worry if I break a table leg. A couple of

days’ worth of junk mail and I’ve got it taken care of.

Obviously, at the present rate of paper use we are going to run

out of trees. Washington and Oregon will eventually resemble the

Texas panhandle with stumps, and when that happens -- well, the sky

may not fall, but civilization as we know it may. Just remember, you

heard it from Chicken Little.

* ROBERT GARDNER is a Corona del Mar resident and a former judge.

His column runs Tuesdays.