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It's less fun to consider that most of the Eastern half of what is now the United States was also a vast forest, until European settlers arrived and clear-cut i
by rosser 9y ago
It's less fun to consider that most of the Eastern half of what is now the United States was also a vast forest, until European settlers arrived and clear-cut it, first for agriculture and then for industry.
Edit: Yes, the indigenous peoples also cut down trees for agricultural purposes, and even practiced forestry-by-fire. They did so at a radically different scale, however, and it wasn't the loggers' wanton "cut it down and move on to the next patch".
To wit: "Timber production soared from one billion board feet in 1840 to 46 billion board feet in 1904... By 1880, lumber had overtaken agriculture as the most important driver of deforestation. By 1920, more than two-thirds of American forests had been leveled at least once, including the vast majority of eastern forests. Timber companies simply harvested the forest and moved on, from the Great Lakes to the South and across the West, leaving behind stumps, fire prone slash and dead or dying lumber towns. Finally, they were stopped by the Pacific Ocean and forced to begin replanting practices." [1]
Contrast that with, e.g., "the Cahokia people in Illinois (800-700 BP) cut one million trees to house 25,000 people. They also surrounded the village with a two-mile-long stockade composed of 15,000 oak and hickory logs 21 feet tall. Add all the trees they cut for fuel, and it wasn’t long before the Cahokia had leveled the forest within nine miles of their village." [ibid]
There is no reasonable comparison between the strictly localized activities of tribal peoples and industrial logging.
[1] https://www.americanforests.org/magazine/article/north-american-forests-in-the-age-of-man/ https://www.americanforests.org/magazine/article/north-ameri...
- josephjrobison 9y ago“Today, 80 percent of New England is covered by forest or thick woods. That is a far cry from the mere 30 to 40 percent that remained forested in most parts of the region in the mid-1800s, after early waves of settlers got done with their vast logging, farming, and leveling operations.“ Source: https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2013/08/31/new-england-sees-return-forests-and-wildlife/lJRxacvGcHeQDmtZt09WvN/story.html https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2013/08/31/new-england-see...
- sp332 9y agoNote also that at least New Hampshire has far more tree cover now than it ever did before the deforestation. But we have lost ~100% of our old-growth trees.
- kevin_thibedeau 9y agoThe new trees will become old growth in good time. Japan was heavily deforested 300 years ago too and much of that has recovered.
- sp332 9y agoYeah, hopefully. The trouble at the moment is an invasive species which nibbles the tips of all the pine trees, making them grow slowly and generally crappy looking. Also a big conservation area in my hometown sold logging rights. Sure it's "responsible sustainable" logging but it still scared off all the wildlife! I'd never heard that place be dead silent before. It's very depressing.
- mc32 9y agoCan only hope Brazil, India and Indonesia will follow in the replanting and reforestation after they're done with their denuding their tropical forests.
- zappo2938 9y agoPeople need to learn from what happened in Haiti. They have no trees to protect the soil for farming and from hurricanes. They over fished their coastal waters to the point they are dead now. Neither do they have access to fish for food nor one the biggest economic drivers in the Caribbean, diving reefs, which bring in billions in tourism dollars. It is so friggen' obvious what happens when we don't project the environment, I can't figure out why people are so naive.
- mc32 9y agoI'm guessing it would never happen but perhaps the most viable move would be for them to merge with the Dominican Republic --not that they are the best government around, but they cannot be worse than Port-au-Prince with regard to governance. Or they need to learn how to attract investment rather than feel-good NGOs who exacerbate the issue of corruption and dependence on foreign aid.
- ExactoKnight 9y agoIt's also becoming fricking obvious what happens when we allow environmentalism to make us deeply skeptical towards anything involving the physical manipulation of objects in the real world. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kxw-JDSvKTg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kxw-JDSvKTg Our economy is stagnating, and as our growth stagnates, politics becomes a zero sum game. Our radical environmentalism is creating a world that no longer accepts change in the world outside of bits.
- ageofwant 9y ago"Rampant Environmentalism" is by far the better problem to have. You can tune down from that, what we now have is a road to extinction. Also, its noteworthy that rampant exploitation begats radical environmentalism, just like uncontrolled libertarian capitalism begats marxism. Get rid of the one, and the reason for the other goes away too.
- andrewem 9y agoI guess it's anecdata, but near me within 10 miles of downtown Boston there is a substantial area of forested park land which used to be farms. You can tell it was farm land by the remnants of the stone walls, which themselves only became prominent somewhere around the Revolution when people had cut down so many trees there wasn't enough for building fences entirely from wood. Source: my recollection of reading https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1581571658 https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1581571658
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- oh_sigh 9y agoIndians were clearing large swaths of forest too...ever hear of slash and burn? Why is it less fun? At least on The east coast forests are making a comeback. The Moors are still as bald as they have been for 3000 years
- simonsarris 9y ago> Edit: Yes, the indigenous peoples also cut down trees for agricultural purposes, and even practiced forestry-by-fire. They did so at a radically different scale, however If you don't know how Australia and Scotland went from heavily forested to... not, I have bad news about indigenous peoples.
- BurningFrog 9y agoTo be fair, the tribal peoples didn't have the capacity to log on an industrial scale. It's not like they abstained from doing it on moral grounds or based on superior wisdom.
- rosser 9y agoOn the contrary, many indigenous peoples were and are acutely aware how much their well-being depended living within the carrying capacity of their environment. Many also weren't, of course, but it's silly to make a blanket proclamation that because they were primitive, they were also stupid.
- BurningFrog 9y agoI was ready to be misinterpreted, but not as wildly as your last sentence.
- rurp 9y agoSure, people are pretty much the same across eras. But cultures vary greatly, and that's a big distinction. A lifestyle that does not easily accommodate mass deforestation has a lot of benefits, intentional or otherwise. I'm not arguing that we should all strive to be hunter-gatherers, but there are a lot of ways modern life could go really wrong in the next thousand years and it would be good to be mindful of those pitfalls.
- ExactoKnight 9y agoI'm afriad we've swung WAY too far in the other direction. Almost all forms of environmental manipulation is now shunned, only manipulation in the world of bits is okay. It's slowly us down to a tremendous degree. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kxw-JDSvKTg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kxw-JDSvKTg
- ctack 9y agoIt's the second time you've linked to this in this thread. Are you affiliated?