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Wasn't every nation? Europe and China have lost almost all their forests. Pre-European New Zealand natives exterminated the giant flightless moa. There was a po

Wasn't every nation? Europe and China have lost almost all their forests. Pre-European New Zealand natives exterminated the giant flightless moa. There was a powerful ancient African civilization that died out because they used up all the artesian water. I'd say nobody cared about conservation until rich people we comfortable enough to stop worrying about their next meal and look at broader issues.

dotancohen 8y ago
I don't understand why you are being downvoted. You're 100% right. I specifically mention the West because it is the West (the EU) who are pressuring the Philippines to better regulate their fishing industry, as per the fine article, and also because it is the West who are now comfortable enough to worry about the tragedy of the commons since they are done exploiting it.
ptaipale 8y ago
BTW, elsewhere I just read that the amount of forests in England has now recovered above the levels recorded in Domesday Book (William Conqueror's land survey in 1086). Same's happening in many countries in Europe. I have a picture of my birth home, taken in 1903 from a nearby hill. The landscape is mostly bare, almost everything except the actual fields is used for cattle. Now you can't take a picture like that. Almost everything is covered by a forest, but you can't see it from the trees growing on the hill.
- orwin 8y ago
  England might have been lucky enough (blessed with rain and all). Southern France and Greece, not so much, and will probably never recover pre-roman empire forests.
  - ddnb 8y ago
    If there's not enough rain to sustain a forest, then even should they have been left untouched in antiquity they wouldn't be there anymore now either right?
    - ptaipale 8y ago
      Where I live, you can't really destroy a forest. You can hack it down and lay concrete over the ground; if you then leave it there, in a matter of decades or centuries it'll be a forest again, if you don't regularly weed it out and hack it down again. If climate changes - as it has changed in the Mediterranean, prior to industrialisation - that's then different.
- lopmotr 8y ago
  Surprising! But now it sounds like rich people are regrowing the forests that the poor people of earlier centuries destroyed. Evidence that rich people help the environment and poor people harm it. Still no sign of the harm that the grandparent claimed rich people are doing to the environment.

dotancohen 8y ago

I don't understand why you are being downvoted. You're 100% right. I specifically mention the West because it is the West (the EU) who are pressuring the Philippines to better regulate their fishing industry, as per the fine article, and also because it is the West who are now comfortable enough to worry about the tragedy of the commons since they are done exploiting it.

ptaipale 8y ago

BTW, elsewhere I just read that the amount of forests in England has now recovered above the levels recorded in Domesday Book (William Conqueror's land survey in 1086). Same's happening in many countries in Europe. I have a picture of my birth home, taken in 1903 from a nearby hill. The landscape is mostly bare, almost everything except the actual fields is used for cattle. Now you can't take a picture like that. Almost everything is covered by a forest, but you can't see it from the trees growing on the hill.

orwin 8y ago
England might have been lucky enough (blessed with rain and all). Southern France and Greece, not so much, and will probably never recover pre-roman empire forests.
- ddnb 8y ago
  If there's not enough rain to sustain a forest, then even should they have been left untouched in antiquity they wouldn't be there anymore now either right?
  - ptaipale 8y ago
    Where I live, you can't really destroy a forest. You can hack it down and lay concrete over the ground; if you then leave it there, in a matter of decades or centuries it'll be a forest again, if you don't regularly weed it out and hack it down again. If climate changes - as it has changed in the Mediterranean, prior to industrialisation - that's then different.
lopmotr 8y ago
Surprising! But now it sounds like rich people are regrowing the forests that the poor people of earlier centuries destroyed. Evidence that rich people help the environment and poor people harm it. Still no sign of the harm that the grandparent claimed rich people are doing to the environment.