Forests to fall for food and fuel »
Posted By ameliog 3 months ago in StyleDemand for land to grow food, fuel crops and wood is set to outstrip supply, leading to the probable destruction of forests, a report warns.
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newbie04203 months ago
How much of your house, apratment, condo or dwelling is composed of wood?
You greedy human you....
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memestryker3 months ago
Greed? Even without it, overpopulation is the real root cause of all of our crises surrounding both renewable and non-renewable resources. If you had only 1 million very greedy people, they would not begin to overuse resources.
Until we admit it's the population (stupid), we're going to keep grasping at straws.
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1-2-Oscar3 months ago
Reforming ownership, or as the article says, "handing over significant tracts to local communities," is probably the WORST thing to do if you really want to preserve the forests. There will be a few places where the forest itself generates tourist dollars, and therefore preserving it will benefit the community. but it most cases the forest is the local community's principal resource, and the only ways in which they can immediately exploit it will also destroy it. If you want to save the forest, you SHOULD NOT turn it over to the people who will derive the most immediate benefit from its destruction.
Some of these folks seem to have confused two different objectives--preserving the forests, and redistributing resources to benefit the poorer people. While they are not mutually exclusive, they are definitely NOT always compatible goals, and doing one will sometimes ensure that you CANNOT do the other.
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nostalgia3 months ago
Oscar
A friend of mine lives outside of Seattle
She sent me an article some time ago about what has been going on in some areas of the northwest
Environmentalists were successful in shutting down Weyerhaeuser in many areas
What happpened - large tracts were sold to developers. Clearing cutting soon started to make room for malls and housing developments
Now the environmentalists want Weyerhaeuser to come back. They realize that the company did a much better job managing the forests.
Ironic isn't it?
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1-2-Oscar3 months ago
The same story can be told a thousand times, and you can pick the state--Washington, Montana, Minnesota, Michigan, Maine, Kentucky, Georgia, Florida--it's always the same.
I own some Weyerhauser stock. I bought into that particular company because they ARE good stewards of the environment. Not only do they plant a lot more trees than they cut, but they preserve wilderness while opening key parts of their property to the public to use like parks. They do more to perpetuate the forests than all the tree-huggers combined. After all, the forests are their business.
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newbie04203 months ago
An ineresting read on thw world's forests:
http://www.earth-policy.org/Indicators/Forest/2...
Some people may be surprised that the most forest coverage is actually in Europe.
Also interesting is that adult trees that aren't growing anymore don't produce much, if any oxygen:
http://www.the-tree.org.uk/MessageBoard/thread....
"I would also point out that a mature deciduous tree, which is no longer growing and accumulating carbon, is not actually producing a net amount of oxygen because it respires all that it produces for maintenance and respiration. Therefore, on an annual basis, net production is 0 litres per hour for many deciduous trees... only young trees that are in the process of growing would be useful"
So maybe cutting down the old forests and planting new ones is actually a good thign (assuming we plant new ones)
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newbie04203 months ago
I believ so, I know that there are plenty of reforestation efforts going on, when my old man was still around we used to work on it with our forest preserves in Illinois.
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ecotourusa3 months ago
leave it to DropKick to put the neg. in there. Just remember, in history it was our prostituting congress that blocked the development of hemp in this nation.
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Wolfie20073 months ago
Here's another lesson regarding, ABETTO or a blind eye to the oblivious, of liberals. When you use food for fuel you are going to need more land under cultivation. Why did the liberals not realize this would happen and/or the price of food would increase, also. You guys just stupid or what?
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amazed3 months ago
agribusiness that was empowered by liberals.
There many of us that pointed out that ethanol was not a good idea on so many levels before it was foisted on us. We were shouted down as earth haters, deniers and all manner of nasty names.
Ethanol is at least as unfortunate "solution" to our ecological problems as MTBE is.
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Grrr3 months ago
Liberals are the ones that are blind to the effects of deforestation? C'mon, you don't call us treehuggers for nothing. More disingenuous keyboard vomit from Wolfie.
It's you idiot CON capitalizers that are clearcutting for stupid reasons.
You're the idiots that seem to think bio-fuel isn't CO2 emitting, and thought it would be a good idea to use our food for it, so now we have to cut down more forests, which was what started the problem in the first place...
Liberals aren't that stupid, the CON is.
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amazed3 months ago
omg, grrr CERTAINLY didn't mean to give you a good, just meant to comment.
No, liberals are not blind to the effects of deforestation. What they are blind to is the deleterous results of their knee-jerk reactions to any perceived or real environmental issues.
Chasing responsible paper and lumber companies (like Weyerheuser) out of the forests only to find that with the lumber industry gone, the developers move in.
I have heard many scientists claim that the reason the forest fires in the west regularly turn into wildfires is because no fires in the forest were allowed, despite the fact that fire is part of the natural ecology of this area. This allows more brush to grow, so when the fires start, they burn hotter and the fire catches in the canopy. When fires burn naturally and regularly, they don't get as hot, so the canopy is not involved and the forest regenerates.
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smithichie3 months ago
As a liberal from a corn producing state I can tell you no one asked me what source we should be making ethanol from. But if they did, I would agree with you that using a food source is a terrible idea and as far as food sources go, corn is one of the most expensive to grow and harvest.
Instead of harvesting biomass with machines that cost 6 figures I would have recomended getting that biomass with nothing more expensive than a lawn mower. If ever there was a crop that cried out for genetic modification it's the crops we use for ethanol production. With a bit of modification simple yard clippings could produce all the ethanol we would need. This would utilize a source that currently goes to waste while allowing food to be grown for food. Local ethanol plants could pick up people's clippings and give them credit towards purchases on ethanol. Win win.
Problem with my scenario is pointed out by QP below, it doesn't make bucks for Agribusiness.
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Grrr3 months ago
Enter "soylent green", stage right...
But seriously, once we get everything else worked out, the big issue will be population control. China is going to expect everyone to take the steps that they have to stabilize population. And the ass-backwards capitalism we practice is based on growth and not sustainability.
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smithichie3 months ago
I think the raising of people's standard's of living has proven to be the most effective way of population control and has the benefit of not having to be enforced. Many 'first world' nations would be losing populations if not for imigration from other parts of the world that are growing out of control.
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truthiness3 months ago
fta-But it also raises the question of who owns rights to the trees - the rich Western countries that want to fund carbon sequestration, or the people who live in the forest areas?
-really? thats a poser? seems pretty obvious.
once again, the only thing keeping us from harvesting the never ending supply of solar energy efficiently is the technology.. which, history teaches, is just a matter of applying ourselves.
we could also use lest trees by using hemp for paper. the acreage ratio is dramatically better. by the way, hempseed oil makes great biodiesel as well. just a thought.
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CHAM3 months ago
About the most stupid thing we could do is cut down trees to convert to energy. Who says we don't have enough land laying fallow to produce energy sources such as Sorghum and a few weeds?
The United States can go energy independent anytime they want to. But the raw materials (Land), technology, financial resources, etc, ad nasuem, are tied up in the wallets of the powerful and mega rich Corporations who know its against their bottom line to flood America with energy.
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CHAM3 months ago
About the most stupid thing we could do is cut down trees to convert to energy. Who says we don't have enough land laying fallow to produce energy sources such as Sorghum and a few weeds?
The United States can go energy independent anytime they want to. But the raw materials (Land), technology, financial resources, etc, ad nasuem, are tied up in the wallets of the powerful and mega rich Corporations who know its against their bottom line to flood America with energy.
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Cityslicker3 months ago
I own the Forest , I am a inhabitance of Earth I own the Forest along with everyone else , who gave the land to the Government ?
No one really owns the Earth , because no one can claim their family was the first to settle any part of Earth .
Do a DNA test on the oldest human remains and whom ever is the descendant of that is the true owner of Earth and the Forest .
Then ask them what is to be done .
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memestryker3 months ago
Birth control is the only certain way within our control to end our abuse of our environment and assure a future with adequate resources. When China finally admitted this, and took action, their economy finally began to soar.
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