What *is* wrong with plastic trees?

In an oft-anthologized and justly famous article, Martin Krieger asked "What's wrong with plastic trees?" He began with the conflict between two different strategies for protecting the natural world: the traditional conservationinst impulse to slow environmental degradation by maximizing the cost-benefit ratio of alternative uses over time; and the preservationist impulse of the more recent ecology movement, an approach that would protect wilderness areas regardless of the cost to present and future generations. To this discussion, Krieger brought three new considerations: the necessity of finding a middle ground as the ecologically-motivated gained influence and inevitably moderated their position in response to the demand for practical compromises; the legitimate concern for social justice—a concern lacking in both prior perspectives; and the new sensitivity to the social construction of wilderness. This brought Krieger to his title question, and he suggested that more could be done with plastic trees to give people an experience of wilderness. In this presentation I return to Krieger's question to consider why I think plastic trees—or in our era, virtual reality trees—are tempting, and why we should nevertheless resist that temptation precisely as failing to achieve the social justice goals that motivate Krieger's suggestion.