RE: Imminent chances of societal collapse is sky high
August 1, 2020 at 9:33 am
(This post was last modified: August 1, 2020 at 9:37 am by The Grand Nudger.)
A long time, hopefully. I wouldn't mind 300 million years. I don't think that their model accurately or fully reflects human behavior with respect to deforestation.
Deforestation is the environmental movements greatest success story. While we know that, globally, we cut down more trees than we plant, this is almost entirely due to the destruction of tropical forests and the needs of those countries and others to develop. Outside of that, and I'll use the US east coast as an example, we've doubled the amount of trees over the past 70 years. We've entirely reversed the pre-columbian deforestation of the east coast, and we're well on the way toward reversing the post contact harvest toll. We're not there yet, lots of work still to be done, and the west coast is recovering from a massive deficit.
As it turns out, something very much like this created the amazon, as we know it. It's more an intentional garden than the raw nature we imagine. Once we realize that we're dealing with managed plots, the behavior can be recognized for what it is, for the same thing we did until the 20's. As the authors of the paper note, trees are a very important resource and there's always an economic incentive to having trees. There are other incentives, best expressed by referencing the creation of national forests or the forest centric value systems of the people who grew the amazon.
Deforestation is not new, it's mans primary means of survival - and any credible effort to reduce or reverse it must be capable of acknowledging and respecting this immutable fact and it's relationship to human well being. We go through boom and bust cycles on a regional basis, but examples of complete deforestation and collapse are only remarkable for their rarity.
Deforestation is the environmental movements greatest success story. While we know that, globally, we cut down more trees than we plant, this is almost entirely due to the destruction of tropical forests and the needs of those countries and others to develop. Outside of that, and I'll use the US east coast as an example, we've doubled the amount of trees over the past 70 years. We've entirely reversed the pre-columbian deforestation of the east coast, and we're well on the way toward reversing the post contact harvest toll. We're not there yet, lots of work still to be done, and the west coast is recovering from a massive deficit.
As it turns out, something very much like this created the amazon, as we know it. It's more an intentional garden than the raw nature we imagine. Once we realize that we're dealing with managed plots, the behavior can be recognized for what it is, for the same thing we did until the 20's. As the authors of the paper note, trees are a very important resource and there's always an economic incentive to having trees. There are other incentives, best expressed by referencing the creation of national forests or the forest centric value systems of the people who grew the amazon.
Deforestation is not new, it's mans primary means of survival - and any credible effort to reduce or reverse it must be capable of acknowledging and respecting this immutable fact and it's relationship to human well being. We go through boom and bust cycles on a regional basis, but examples of complete deforestation and collapse are only remarkable for their rarity.
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