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Global deforestation peaked in the 1980s
- asterix_pano 5y agoAre we ready to stop eating meat?
- _Microft 5y agoWe don't have to stop eating meat. Reducing consumption goes a long way already. Here's my story. I noticed that I was eating far more meat than I actually wanted to. It happened out of habit and because it was just there. That means I had been "mindlessly" buying meat while shopping instead of having a plan what to do with it. Once I stopped shopping like that, I found that I craved meat less often than I had expected. When I now do, I actually have meat and that without feeling bad at all. I consume far less meat than I used to, without actually missing anything. I consider that a success and one that is sustainable for me on top of that.
- jeffbee 5y agoI find it hard to fathom what are said to be average American meat consumption habits. They say it’s 4 pounds per week per person, but that’s just insane. Sometimes I buy half a pound of bacon and end up throwing half away a month later. I use half a pound of ground pork in a sauce that serves ten for dinner. I feel like I’d have to make a comedic effort to eat four pounds of meat in a week.
- boringg 5y agoTechnically i think that bacon you throw away is considered part of your consumption. I would be curious how much meat is wasted vs eaten. It is still a large amount of meat but fascinated by the nuances.
- jeffbee 5y agoI 100% admit to consuming food that I waste. That's on me! Half a pound is the least they sell. What's beyond me is just the top line, gross figure. I'd need to bring home 10-20 pounds of meat every week to conform to the average, which is unimaginable.
- latchkey 5y agoBuy exact weight from the butcher counter.
- ectopod 5y agoYou can freeze bacon for a few months. Any longer and it will start to taste rancid.
- lkbm 5y agoI've been a vegetarian for a while now, but I remember visiting England at age 17 and at nearly every restaurant we visited, I would order a burger. Every place had a "quarter pound beefburger" or something like it on the menu, and I was there for it. The greatest and most memorable was this one restaurant where one of the menu items was, as I recall, "two half-pound beefburgers". When it showed up at the table my brother was astounded and my dad said something like "He might share with the rest of us." I did not. They had their own meals, and I had my pound of beef for lunch. I've had to slow down a bit as I reach middle age, and I've been a vegetarian since 2003, but I probably eat around 4LBs of fake meat most weeks, not counting all the tofu. (I'm not saying this isn't absurd. Just a fun anecdote.)
- mistrial9 5y agothanks for conflating two enormous, guranteed-NO items.. not Please understand that cultures worldwide have profoundly different relationships to wooded areas, first Secondly, markets and population economics vary drastically across geography Thirdly, a discussion is a communications endeavor, no matter what the facts are.. the actual participants have to engage in some sensible fashion reset, please
- Cthulhu_ 5y agoOversimplification. Eating meat does not cause deforestation, cutting down trees does. There are other, more sustainable ways to feed cattle. Don't blame the average consumer for an issue much bigger than their own individual contributions.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y agoConsumer behavior drives industry to do the things it does. People demand more meat, industry cuts down large swaths of forest to make land on which to graze cattle. I don't get how people think this is supposed to work. It's like they just want to not take any responsibility whatsoever for how their behavior affects the world. Where do you think the change is going to come from if no one is willing to alter their lifestyle?
- goatlover 5y agoAnd yet, deforestation rates have declined significantly over the past several decades globally despite added several billion people, while Europe and the US have been reforesting. From the article: "As we explore in more detail in our related article, countries tend to follow a predictable development in forest cover, a U-shaped curve.5 They lose forests as populations grow and demand for agricultural land and fuel increases, but eventually they reach the so-called ‘forest transition point’ where they begin to regrow more forests than they lose."
- asterix_pano 5y agoIt's like saying pressing the trigger doesn't kill someone, only the bullet does. We are feeding over 70 billions of land animals for our appetite, nothing about that is sustainable.
- rexreed 5y agoAre you ready to stop using palm oil? https://www.rainforest-rescue.org/topics/palm-oil https://www.rainforest-rescue.org/topics/palm-oil
- asterix_pano 5y agoAbsolutely. However, palm oil is a much smaller cause than the animal agriculture (like 1/10).
- rexreed 5y agoYou might be surprised by the actual facts on this matter: https://news.mongabay.com/2018/09/whats-causing-deforestation-new-study-reveals-global-drivers/ https://news.mongabay.com/2018/09/whats-causing-deforestatio... And in particular: "The study found that clearing forests for oil palm plantations like the one above in Sabah, Malaysia, was the leading cause of deforestation in Indonesia and Malaysia during 2001 and 2015." For North America, the major cause of deforestation was timber logging and forest fires. The only place where cattle ranching has a major role in deforestation is in Brazil, and even in that case is not 90% of the cause as you imply above.
- asterix_pano 5y agoYou need to have a look at the numbers globally. And include all the deforestation done to clear space for growing soy beans (later used to feed farmed animals). some sources below Margulis, Sergio. "Causes of Deforestation of the Brazilian Amazon". World Bank Working Paper No. 22. 2003 Tabuchi, Hiroko, Rigny, Claire & White, Jeremy. "Amazon Deforestation, Once Tamed, Comes Roaring Back". New York Times. February 2017(New) Bellantonio, Marisa, et al. "The Ultimate Mystery Meat: Exposing the Secrets Behind Burger King and Global Meat Production". Mighty Earth (New) Oppenlander, Richard A. Food Choice and Sustainability: Why Buying Local, Eating Less Meat, and Taking Baby Steps Won’t Work. . Minneapolis, MN : Langdon Street, 2013. Print.
- r00fus 5y agoIf you can avoid Nutella, you can avoid palm oil (it was tough for our family but we just don't buy it). Palm oil (and it's derivatives like palm fruit oil, or palm solids) is infested throughout a lot of shelf-stable snacks.
- hellbannedguy 5y agoThe HN crowd does get their panties in a bunch when anyone mentions vegetarianism, population control, or anything related to Socialism. You can't have it all. Well the very wealthy can, but you can't. Not eating meat would probally overnight stop the deforestation of the Amazon. Plus you desk jockeys might live past 60 in decent health.
- luckylion 5y ago> Not eating meat would probally overnight stop the deforestation of the Amazon. Unfortunately not. The Amazon would still get converted into farm land, but it would be even more palm oil instead of cattle.
- softwaredoug 5y agoI'm not ready to become fully vegetarian. But I'd be curious what steps people have taken to reduce or change their meat consumption? I'm thinking of only eating meat when going out to a nice restaurant, or for certain special meals (ie American Thanksgiving). But avoiding the commodity meat and being vegetarian as much as possible at home.
- latchkey 5y agoI moved to Vietnam and became vegetarian when I realized that despite what Bourdain (rip) likes you to believe, cheap street food isn't that good for you after all. They don't go through much effort to hide the source of meat. In fact, some places hang the meat out in the sun (and flies and dirt) for you to see it as you drive by. Never mind that there is no quality control, animal welfare, USDA, sanitization, etc... Heck, the meat they serve you might not even be what they advertise. Plenty of dogs and cats roaming around. Don't forget, right before covid, there was a mass swine flu going around where they slaughtered literally every single pig in the northern part of the country. Anyway, I always cringe now when people try to tell me how good street food is... if you've seen some of the things I've seen... the decision is pretty easy.
- cipher_system 5y agoTry just adding some good side vegetables or salads to your ordinary dishes and you should be able to reduce the amount of meat and carbs in each meal. You could also try to find one good vegetarian dish and cook that once in a while. Daal is my goto vegetarian dish that tastes good and is easy to make in large batches.
- sputknick 5y agoBased on the map, this looks like a problem that will be solved with money. The tropical regions are less wealthy than the temperate regions, and probably as they become more wealthy, they will urbanize and improve farming techniques, both of which require less land, which nature is then able to re-capture.
- sam_0123 5y agoI'd worry that the improved farming techniques will not facilitate a release of land back to wild, but would simply intensify whatever acreage is already farmed + whatever new ground anyone can justify (like anywhere else I'm aware of).
- kavalg 5y agoand will produce lower quality food
- relax88 5y agoThe total land area used for agriculture has actually decreased in the last few decades in some of the richer and more developed areas. Europe in general has seen some reforestation and is greener now than 100 years ago (though still much less green than several hundred years ago).
- _Algernon_ 5y agoIs that due to more effective farming methods or just due to importing more foods? I have the suspicion that this is a case of patting ourselves on the back similar to our reduction in CO2-emissions that are merely being exported to China.
- paul_f 5y agoMaybe you could actually go research this and let us know what you find.
- rexreed 5y ago
- tsjq 5y agocan't believe. what about the Amazon forest decimation threads we've had here?
- zpeti 5y agoYour brain is wired to upvote and share apocalyptic news more than positive news.
- fzzzy 5y agoNo, it's just that there is not as much forest that is as easily exploitable as there was in the 80s, so of course the rate has to go down. We already cut most of it down. [edit] forest cover is still going down. we are not increasing the amount of forest. the first derivative of forest has gone down. that's meaningless. forest is still going to approach zero at the current rate.
- goatlover 5y ago"In total, the increase in leaf area over the past two decades corresponds to an area as large as the Amazon rainforest. There are now over two million square kilometers more green leaf area compared to the beginning of the 2000s. That is an increase of five percent." https://www.warpnews.org/human-progress/nasa-the-earth-is-greener-now-than-it-was-20-years-ago/ https://www.warpnews.org/human-progress/nasa-the-earth-is-gr... As the article notes, it's not all good news and deforestation needs to decrease in certain regions. But it's also not true that we already cut most of it down. There are more trees today than 20 and 100 years ago.
- jeffbee 5y agoGlobal forest proliferation and Amazon deforestation can happen at the same time.
- fzzzy 5y agoYou understand that old growth forest and new growth forest have completely different ecological profiles, right? False equivalence. Regreening of new growth forest does not make up for the same amount of area as old growth.
- jnmandal 5y agoThis is somewhat of a misleading headline. Yes, the rate of deforestation may have peaked in 1980s. There is also not very good data on this before 1990s. The estimate of forested areas in the context of our land use distribution are still in decline. Now this is adjacent but whats more important in my mind is not reflected in any of these data; that is to say that most of the planet's savanna have been completely lost. Savanna are arguably more important than forest due to the sequestration of carbon in-ground systems (as opposed to woody biomass) and the amount of caloric availability they offer to wild animals. They thus support a huge amount of biomass (though not necessarily biofuel, like a forest). Some of the areas that are being afforested originally would have been savannas but due to biodiversity loss, they succeed directly to forests (no animals to control the spread of trees). By some estimates less than 1% of North American oak savanna still exists today.
- Robotbeat 5y agoIs the savanah really an effective carbon sink, or is this still based on the (recently discredited) humus theory of soil?
- thatcat 5y agoHumus stabilizing in soil is the result of mycorhizzae extracting mineral elements from the soil and exchanging that for carbohydrates. The humus theory was that humus is an essential nutrient. If humus theory were true carbon would be removed, not added to soil. That theory was debunked more than 20 y ago. https://blog.nutri-tech.com.au/mycorrhizal-magic-new-biological-breakthrough/ https://blog.nutri-tech.com.au/mycorrhizal-magic-new-biologi...
- jnmandal 5y agoNot related. The suspected importance of savanna is more based on biodiversity than soil science. In these biomes, you have comparatively large amounts of animal and insect biomass. You have animals constantly eating the plants. This causes deep rooted plants which can regenerate quickly to dominate as they grow back intermittently. The sequestered carbon is mostly in the plants and animals as opposed to soil. Measuring biomass accumulation below ground is more difficult than above ground (counting trees is pretty easy). However some land use pattern studies have looked at which areas have historically been savanna normally show overlap with heavy agriculture regions as the soil is so good. In some cases these former oak savannas in the US will have dozens of feet of fertile topsoil. So there's some speculation that the high soil fertility in such biomes is due to compaction from grazing animals, which I guess is not related to the humus theory, but would be a similar idea about how so much carbon can accumulate.
- eljimmy 5y agoThis makes you wonder - did the whole save the trees movement give rise to a far dangerous alternative, the mass usage of plastics?
- palijer 5y agoI don't think that would explain the transition from reusable milk glass bottles to plastic milk jugs. A decrease in deforestation doesn't explain a systemic rise in using plastics.
- dane-pgp 5y agoMoreover, plastic straws were in use before the 1980s, and only since the 80s has there been pressure to replace them with paper-based straws.
- contingencies 5y agoPlastic is cheaper by weight, lighter, easier to form and far more adjustable in appearance. It has a broader range of temperature responses, chemical responses, physical properties and textures. It is in general harder to break. In short, plastic excels because it is apparently cheap and useful and its dire costs, in particular of single use plastics and in particular to the commons, are - much like other systemic issues burgeoning under capitalism - never adequately accounted for.
- mrpopo 5y agoThe whole save-the-trees movement did nothing for 98% of the world's population, and the mass usage of plastics was propped up by companies switching to a cheaper and more efficient material, with no regard for consequences (because why would they? They need economic incentives for that).
- m0llusk 5y agoCultural issues are huge here. Back in the 1980s high end construction made great use of tropical hardwoods which were considered premium materials that any proper wealthy person would prefer in their home. By the mid to late 1990s there was a huge shift and wealthy people building custom homes started to request LEED certification instead which completely changed everything. Out with the tropical hardwoods and in with reused barn beams. And all through this time the argument focused on legalities when evidence was mounting that the tastes and preferences of the wealthy were what really made the difference.
- samstave 5y agoWhen I was tech implementation manager for a bunch of salesforce building in the US... 50 Fremont street sanfrancisco - they built waterfall reception desks from Koa Wood, where the wood had to be purchased from other, previously built pieces. IIRC the average price for each of these reception desk pieces was $65,000 Koa trees cannot be harvested and so to get Koa wood - you have to buy something that was already built and then make your thing out of it..
- ltbarcly3 5y agoThe use of tropical woods can basically be ignored in the discussion of deforestation. 1. When you harvest wood, the forest will generally recover and new trees will grow. 2. Lumber only accounts for about 2% of the total area deforested. 3. Agriculture accounts for 90+% of deforested area, most of this being for cattle or soy, and once land is converted to agriculture the change is generally permanent.
- m0llusk 5y agoThese are good ideas, but the numbers are flatly unbelievable. Until quite recently most tropical hardwood was harvested illegally and distributed through black markets. This often involved either clear cutting or selective removal of rare trees or both. There is very little if any hard information about exactly how much tropical deforestation in the 1980s involved lumber, though there has been significant progress in enforcement since then.
- diggernet 5y agoMeanwhile, there are plans for environmental restoration of parts of Siberia through... deforestation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pleistocene_Park https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pleistocene_Park
- piercebot 5y agoI wonder how much of this changed due to public sentiment driven by pop culture? Movies like Fern Gully[0] and TV shows like Captain Planet[1] definitely had a hand in shaping my generation growing up. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FernGully:_The_Last_Rainforest https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FernGully:_The_Last_Rainforest [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captain_Planet_and_the_Planeteers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captain_Planet_and_the_Planete...
- mrjangles 5y agoForest cover in just about every first world country has been increasing since the the late 1970s, which predates these shows. All deforestation since then has been occurring almost exclusively in poor countries, not to mention most other environmental problems such as the dumping of plastics and toxic chemicals into the ocean. It seems to me that a clean environment is a kind of pleasure project that people are willing to spend money on only once they can afford it.
- stormbrew 5y agoI mean, follow the money. Why are those countries dumping chemicals, plastics in the ocean? Why are they cutting down forests and agriculturizing their land? Mostly because the rich countries pay them to do it, basically. So they can build our toys and grow our beef. In other words, we export our environmental damage so we can afford to keep our environment cleaner.
- Robotbeat 5y agoThe modern environmental movement got its start in the late 1960s. So that’s consistent, although not with TV shows.
- goindeep 5y agoThis is one reason I have a lot of faith in humanity. There are many fear mongers publishing all sorts of scary stories about climate change but I am sorry if we can send people to the moon and cure all sorts of diseases, we can sort out the climate problem with technology too.
- mrpopo 5y agoThe rate of deforestation peaked. Deforestation is still ongoing. We can sort out the climate problem with technology, sure. The thing is, we already have it. What you probably mean is, you want to sort out the climate problem with hypothetical technology that would change absolutely nothing to our ways of life and cost us nothing. Maybe this hypothetical technology should also give us free massages otherwise who would bother changing?
- paulddraper 5y agoWhat is the rate of reforestation?
- mrpopo 5y agoWe cut down less trees in the 2010s that in the 1980s but we still cut down trees. The world's forested area is continuously decreasing, just less fast.
- paulddraper 5y agoBut don't you have to measure the number of new trees planted/grown? There will always be a positive # of trees felled by humans. Even if there are only 10 of them on the planet.
- paulddraper 5y ago> hypothetical technology that would change absolutely nothing to our ways of life and cost us nothing AKA nuclear power.