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This is silly. The economy has been booming for a while now and technology is more advanced that it's ever been. The situation is accelerating the wrong way. Mo

by latch 8y ago

This is silly. The economy has been booming for a while now and technology is more advanced that it's ever been. The situation is accelerating the wrong way. More of the same won't help. Plant trees and revive massive amount of land loss that most countries have caused due to poor stewardship (overgrazing). Better capture negative externalities. Or at the very least, stop subsidizing them. (aka, tax beef production, water consumption and plastic use). This is a social, not technology problem.

gerbilly 8y ago
> Plant trees and revive massive amount of land loss that most countries have caused due to poor stewardship In some places you can't even plant the trees back. For example if you clearcut trees on a karst landscape, the rain washes away the thin soil completely, leaving only bare rock. >The lesson goes back to the ancient Romans, who harvested the great pine trees on the Dalmatian karst on the southern tip of Croatia. “As soon as new trees got started, the sheep or the goats ate them,” Ford says. “The word karst means stony ground—stony because they wrecked it.” In the Middle East, the mythic Cedars of Lebanon—believed by some Christians to be the place where the resurrected Jesus revealed himself—grew on pure limestone karst very much like that of Vancouver Island. They were mowed down to build the temples of ancient Egypt and Jerusalem. The soil disappeared and never came back. Around one percent of the original cedars remain, in scattered, protected groves. Slovenia banned clearcutting on karst in 1949—but by then it was too late. There are photos, circa 1900, of babushka-wrapped Austro-Hungarian peasants hauling topsoil back onto the bald karst after it was clearcut. (https://www.hakaimagazine.com/features/the-cavernous-world-under-the-woods/ https://www.hakaimagazine.com/features/the-cavernous-world-u...)
- CalRobert 8y ago
  Frustratingly these landscapes are often seen as natural in places where they've been around for a long time, a problem of shifting baselines. I was going to point out that this is a huge problem in Ireland, where the landscape is sheepwrecked, but the article uses it as an example: "The land would resemble a feature in Ireland called the Burren—an expanse of rundkarren produced by overgrazing and logging, marked by fissures that hint at the fathomless void beneath. " The burren's OK, but it would be nicer as forest.

by latch 8y ago

gerbilly 8y ago

> Plant trees and revive massive amount of land loss that most countries have caused due to poor stewardship In some places you can't even plant the trees back. For example if you clearcut trees on a karst landscape, the rain washes away the thin soil completely, leaving only bare rock. >The lesson goes back to the ancient Romans, who harvested the great pine trees on the Dalmatian karst on the southern tip of Croatia. “As soon as new trees got started, the sheep or the goats ate them,” Ford says. “The word karst means stony ground—stony because they wrecked it.” In the Middle East, the mythic Cedars of Lebanon—believed by some Christians to be the place where the resurrected Jesus revealed himself—grew on pure limestone karst very much like that of Vancouver Island. They were mowed down to build the temples of ancient Egypt and Jerusalem. The soil disappeared and never came back. Around one percent of the original cedars remain, in scattered, protected groves. Slovenia banned clearcutting on karst in 1949—but by then it was too late. There are photos, circa 1900, of babushka-wrapped Austro-Hungarian peasants hauling topsoil back onto the bald karst after it was clearcut. (https://www.hakaimagazine.com/features/the-cavernous-world-under-the-woods/ https://www.hakaimagazine.com/features/the-cavernous-world-u...)

CalRobert 8y ago
Frustratingly these landscapes are often seen as natural in places where they've been around for a long time, a problem of shifting baselines. I was going to point out that this is a huge problem in Ireland, where the landscape is sheepwrecked, but the article uses it as an example: "The land would resemble a feature in Ireland called the Burren—an expanse of rundkarren produced by overgrazing and logging, marked by fissures that hint at the fathomless void beneath. " The burren's OK, but it would be nicer as forest.