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Cultural issues are huge here. Back in the 1980s high end construction made great use of tropical hardwoods which were considered premium materials that any pr

Cultural 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 ago
When 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 ago
The 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 ago
  These 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.

samstave 5y ago

When 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 ago

The 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 ago
These 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.