20-Year Prospect
While 2,255 square miles of Amazonian rainforest may have disappeared between 2012 and 2013, here in the United States, people are planting trees left and right. This is good news for arborists, who can look forward to having many arboreal patients to diagnose and treat in the decades ahead.
Once upon a time, American loggers were as guilty of harvesting every tree in sight as their Brazilian counterparts are today. Times have changed, though: Now it's good corporate policy to embrace "reforestation" and "cutting down on carbon emissions" and "giving back to the community."
Since no inhabitant of a C-suite is going to be caught dead planting saplings when he could instead be sipping mimosas behind the wheel of his Ferrari, it'll be up to arborists to make sure that the approximately 3,500 square miles of trees planted in the U.S. every year as a result of Fortune 500 guilt stay healthy.
And then there are the many suburbanites who will be too elderly and decrepit in the future to trim the trees they planted when they were young, hip, and cared about the resale value of their McMansions. Arborists will be needed to work in a yard care capacity...and to give old folks someone to scream "Get off my lawn!" at.