One could argue that Tolkien is an enemy to the trees. [Warning unverified sources and very rough maths lie below]
- The LOTR Trilogy has sold 150 million copies, and the Hobbit has sold 142 million source
- Each LOTR book has a (very rough) average of 430 pages, while the Hobbit has ~360. This totals to 115,620,000,000 pages printed
- The average tree creates ~20,000 sheets of paper source
This means Tolkien is responsible for the deaths of at least 5,781,000 trees. The Ents would not be happy
I was just gonna make a low effort “says the guy who wrote books for a living” joke. Kudos to you for doing the math. Do keep in mind he wrote tons of things other than LotR, and he should be held partially responsible for every book/screenplay inspired by his works.
Yeah, I considered including at least the Simarillion in the calculations, but the sales numbers for LoTR and the Hobbit are so staggeringly large that including his other works seemed pointless.
You raise a very good point about holding him responsible for all the works he inspired through. He invented a whole new sub-genre of fantasy, leading to hundreds of millions (if not billions) more books being printed.
And think of the movies! I wonder how many trees died to print scripts and build sets for 6 movies and a TV series
“I am on no one’s side because nobody is on my side.”
I wonder if they based Treebeard’s face on Tolkien’s? I’m seeing a lot of similarities in this photo.
Hoom hom.
Even the trees walked in those movies!
