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Congo is one of the countries, that is already receiving foreign aid, so claiming, that it is not receiving any is simply a lie. >>> They (we) would have to pa

Congo is one of the countries, that is already receiving foreign aid, so claiming, that it is not receiving any is simply a lie. >>> They (we) would have to pay to Congolese people a competitive price for each tree saved from cutting. The biggest issue of all of the foreign aid is corruption. The output of aid in most cases makes few mega rich billionaires from Africa and total poverty for rest. There is hypocricity in the whole "save the forests" idea, because the only way to save forests is by dramatically reducing population - I don't see reappearance of forests(where squirrel can run wild and free without the need to touch the soil) in United Kingdom, where money should not be the issue. DRC has population >100 million - that fact alone is making unsustainable maintenance of forests, for a population, that has basic needs, that include roof above their home, clothing and food.

jetsetgo 5y ago
Foreign aid is the lie that white people tell themselves and screech about all the time. Most of foreign aid is siphoned back via corporations, rest is scrapped by corrupt dictators and politicians. People get nothing.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- atlasunshrugged 5y ago
  Don't forget the "well meaning" NGOs that are on the ground and jack up the prices of apartments and local goods and sit in their gated compounds on western salaries until they get rotated to some other country.
- goohle 5y ago
  LOL, foreign aid is for country, not for people. Country has lot of expenses, which are paid from taxes, so aid helps to reduce taxes, thus everyone, who works and pays taxes, pays less. Your claim is like "if foreign worker helped to fix a bus, then it must pay all passengers also".
whateveriguess 5y ago
> Congo is one of the countries, that is already receiving foreign aid, so claiming, that it is not receiving any is simply a lie. > The biggest issue of all of the foreign aid is corruption. The output of aid in most cases makes few mega rich billionaires from Africa and total poverty for rest. One must be careful with this narrative. Foreign aid received by developing countries is dwarfed (more than an order of magnitude) by unequal exchange, illicit trade flows and trade misinvoicing in the opposite direction, often allowed by these corrupt leaders to their own benefit and that of multinational corps, and enforced via rigged systems such as the IMF/World Bank/WTO. Other comments have responded robustly to your depopulation comment.
- Bobylonian 5y ago
  >>>Other comments have responded robustly to your depopulation comment. Were you refering to yourself when created this new account?
  - whateveriguess 5y ago
    Nope, just a long-time listener, first-time caller kinda deal... was just surprised that everyone seemed to agree with your first comment, but took such issue on depopulation.
    - Bobylonian 5y ago
      I think, that agreement here is about foreign aid, where op was offering it as a solution. Depopulation of overpopulated countries is the only viable solution if rich overpopulated countries are demanding to other countries to save their forests. That is also a chance to show solidarity in preservation of forests. Claims, that forests are long gone and nothing can be done are childish - they can be restored and regrown back to their natural original glory. One of the commenter here had a very "sensible" solution to cram population of those overpopulated countries into some small areas and free up rest of the land for forests... And by the way - did you read that article or are you here only because of comments, that you had to do something about them? Oh, those comentators - you can't let them roam free...
blablabla123 5y ago
> The biggest issue of all of the foreign aid is corruption. The biggest problem is the concept of aid because it is not resilient to corruption. The economy needs to factor in the outside environment, otherwise we're doomed. CO2 certificates are a good start but they need to be correctly priced and more is needed. Probably something like negatively priced Forest certificates that the country and the people can profit from by keeping the forest every year in a good state. The same problem but with a richer country exists in Brazil.
- southerntofu 5y ago
  > aid because it is not resilient to corruption Good point. That's why we in the global north should fix our shit and not send raw money to the corrupt overlords our industry and secret services have placed in power overseas. For example, subsidized food production from the EU is weaponized to destroy local markets in Africa, and that's a shame!
charlescearl 5y ago
Most of the Black people in my section of the u.s. were stolen from Congo/Angola. To be precise, those of us whose ancestors came through Charleston, SC enroute to other areas in the southeast. The devastation upon thriving, sustainable Indigenous economies — because we’re talking about peoples who made rainforests “work” before any human arrived in Europe or Asia — wrought by the trans-Atlantic slave trade from the 1500s onward and European colonialism is documented in Walter Rodney’s “How Europe Underdeveloped Africa” among hundreds of other analyses. The level of eugenics and racism in the comments, let alone ignorance of the last 500 years of human history is incredible.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- Bobylonian 5y ago
  If you feel that you belong to that corner of Africa, why you are still in US and not on the route to your homeland? No one is barring you from leaving US! Though, I wonder - what are the people you are going to identify with - descendants of slavers, that massacred tribe of your long gone ancestors? Not long before Europeans appeared in Congo basin, most of the local natives of area were robbed of their lands by new arrivals of taller black people. Their co-existence with these new masters is nothing less than slavery even in modern times. I wonder... how deep is that box of Pandora, that you want to open? Are you ready to pay for sins of your ancestors or is this exclusive thing to Whites only? Are you even aware, that significant part of Europeans in US initially were brought to US as slaves? Europeans did not brought slavery to Africa and neither to US, where locals were happily enslaving each other. 500 years ago before arrival of Europeans with rare exceptions, any society in Africa had slavery. History is unpleasant, but that has hardly anything to do with ongoing war, that has reached heat in modern US. Btw, Hitler also eradicated Jews with the exactly same ideas about Aryan race, but you might need to get past 500 years in your history book to realize that.
  - drekk 5y ago
    Your refusal to acknowledge the difference between prisoners of war and the institution of chattel slavery is a disgrace and a consequence of the American education system that manufactures consent for imperialism and colonialism. Maybe to put it in techy terms, Europeans did slavery at scale. We live in the aftermath of that and the threads are still visible (former colonies are still captive markets that export raw resources, more often than not to their previous colonial master's). We don't live in the global hegemony of the Corsair pirates, so if you want to discuss bondage on the African continent maybe address the context that it didn't form the basis of the global order we live in today. Hitler is widely regarded as one of history's worst humans for just taking the colonialism European powers did at the time and applying it to Jews and other "undesirables" in Europe. While we're on the topic of America and how it didn't invent racism or slavery, might be worth noting how the Nazis got their idea for lebensraum and racial purity? I'm sure manifest destiny and one drop rules, or the fact that Long Island was the "eugenics capital of the world" played a part.
southerntofu 5y ago
> the only way to save forests is by dramatically reducing population You seem awfully sure of that, yet i would argue there's many other strategies to deploy: - criminalize planned obsolescence so something that is built once will last (if Ikea execs/engineers risked jails, they may produce more reliable products) - ban products tied to deforestation (eg. avocados, palm oil) unless they're locally sourced from organic farms - run public policies to reduce animal exploitation, as cattle is a top 3 factor for deforestation and 30-60% of global cultivated land is only cultivated to feed cattle: start by removing subsidies for animal exploitation and stopping public money going in this industry (eg. via school/office lunch), maybe even tax meat/dairy to subsidize more ecological production? - ban or tax wood pallets for heating: they are currently presented as the "green" alternative to gas, but it's definitely not green and the forests involved are huge monocultures of certain tree species, where no proper ecosystem can develop I'm sure there's many other points i'm missing. Overall, the "overpopulation" point is not entirely wrong. It's just vastly overplayed by Global North elites who don't like us asking inconvenient questions about why they're the ones polluting everything, and profiting financially from destroying our environment. We have an abundance of resources to feed and house everyone, if we stop this bourgeois non-sense lifestyle some people like to entertain.
- an9n 5y ago
  Agree with your points, to an extent. But how the hell do we get China etc. to agree?
  - southerntofu 5y ago
    Don't mean to be rude, but who cares? Just because someone else is doing something wrong doesn't mean you shouldn't make it right? Also, it's worth pointing out that 3rd world countries are tired of global north hypocrits like us tech people pointing the finger at them for pollution while our european/north-american societies are the ones who fucked up everything for everyone: "we" colonized all territories, stole all resources, employed slave labor from mines to factories to sell shitty products to billions of people worldwide. And our countries are very much expected to be the least impacted by climate change, which is precisely why our governments are doing nothing about it beyond buying themselves a clean conscience by funneling public money into private pockets in "green new deal" setups. If you expect others to follow, leading by example is a pretty reasonable course of action, don't you think? To be clear i'm not advocating to ban chinese imports overnight. But you could very well for example use the repairability index setup by the EU last year, so that only items with 10/10 scores can legally be imported and sold. And if you really wanna make a green new deal, then subsidize people buying solid materials: just because cheap/dirty stuff has been outlawed doesn't mean locally-produced alternatives are much cheaper. I'm not saying i have the best answers: there's so much we could do and the powers that be are not doing because they couldn't care less. These people are fucking psychopaths and until we start putting heads on spikes will never listen.
fallingknife 5y ago
Congolese population density is only 10% higher than the US, which is currently gaining forest coverage. So I don't think population levels are relevant to this particular issue.
quetzthecoatl 5y ago
>>The biggest issue of all of the foreign aid is corruption. It's worse than corruption. It buys entire ruling class of poorer nations paying peanuts in dollars/euros. It's subversion of poor countries by propping up oligarchies.
drekk 5y ago
No, the biggest issue is that the aid "developing" (exploited) countries receive is orders of magnitude less than the wealth that is extracted from the continent. How is that wealth extracted? Debt. Haiti is still paying France for daring to secure their independence. Industrialization. African slave labor and raw colonial resources paved the way for the European industrial revolution while relegating developing countries to a captive market status. You still don't see industrialization for the most part in these former colonies. Destabilization. Maintaining the petrodollar and regional interests is more important to the US than stable, autonomous, multicultural democracies. We could have an entire course on how Americans and Europeans play foreign ethnic groups against one another and destabilize democracies in the process. If you want to know why all these countries are so corrupt, maybe look at how those ruling classes came to power. More often than not we played a part in installing them and shielding them from consequences.
nine_k 5y ago
This is very true. All the problems of poverty in the world are bad governance / bad social structures, not lack of resources. Industrial countries produce enough to pull everyone out of poverty already, to fill every cauldron, were many cauldrons not so badly perforated.
- Bobylonian 5y ago
  Industrial countries of modern age are also China and India and most of countries that are manufacturing goods for export. If China is "exploiting" DRC, it clearly is not going to pay for trees, that it can't get. Prosperous countries can give money to save some tress and locals will accept it and will also sell the tree to China - that's double profit ftw! DRC is not governed by colonizers and is doing this on their free will. My people were oppressed by Russian Empire longer than DRC was colonized by Europeans and when they gained freedom, they in short time gained prosperity. It is an insult to the Congolese people, to consider them unable to think for themselves and make their own choices and sacrifices for their better future and that someone from US, who is not living in DRC has better understanding what is best for them. Trees are not only producing oxygen, but they are also consuming it, so in total oxygen production value of trees around equatorial regions is 0. Threes might produce more oxygen further away from equator, only where days are longer, but they have never been a reason why on this planet there is an oxygen. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/why-amazon-doesnt-produce-20-percent-worlds-oxygen https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/why-a...
  - wbazant 5y ago
    The big thing about trees is that they absorb CO2 - of which there is too much in the atmosphere - not that they produce oxygen, which we are at no risk of running out of.
    - Bobylonian 5y ago
      Oh dear - this is also laughable issue, because combating CO2 is depriving trees of their food. Whole Sahara has become greener from climate change and CO2 avaibility - maybe it is worth to grow trees in Sahara. Forests of Sahara - what a great name!
atlasunshrugged 5y ago
I don't think it's necessary to dramatically reduce population. Why not just have significantly more dense urban areas (urbanization especially in Africa is taking care of this naturally) and more sustainable energy sources (this I think should be subsidized by the West or at least supported with tech transfer to African nations who are unfamiliar with building hydro-power and nuclear)?
- asciident 5y ago
  Because each person still uses about 10 full wardrobes in their lifetime, 100,000 prepared meals, a few dozen smartphones and other electronics, a mountain of disposibles like diapers and napkins and takeout containers and masks. People need a lot of resources for even a modest standard of living.
- Bobylonian 5y ago
  But can you think and provide any reasonable solution on how to restore historical uninterrupted forest, that once covered most of Europe and which now is highly urbanized area? And I would suggest to read the article - the main issue that locals are concerned about is not preservation of trees, but receiving profit share from cutting these trees. Fate of trees is not uncertainty - they will be gone to give place where to grow crops. Most of CDR population does not use electricity, but if they were using electricity, they would have even more needs and trees would be cut out in even bigger rate, to sustain that lifestyle.
  - gambiting 5y ago
    You probably can't restore a truly "uninterrupted" forest in Europe, as you said people live in most places now and there isn't much you can do about it. Having said that - Europe's forest coverage is increasing rapidly[0], and growing every year[1]. For another example, UK's forests are already up to "medieval" levels, and growing[2]. [0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2014/12/04/watch-how-europe-is-greener-now-than-100-years-ago/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2014/12/04... [1] https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/07/forest-europe-environment/ https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/07/forest-europe-environ... [2] https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/woodland-back-to-medieval-levels-j097fqtkw https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/woodland-back-to-medieval...
diordiderot 5y ago
> The biggest issue of all of the foreign aid is corruption. The output of aid in most cases makes few mega rich billionaires from Africa and total poverty for rest. Very right >the only way to save forests is by dramatically reducing population Very very wrong. If you made LA county the same density as Paris, you could house every American. Stop eating meat, 41% of American land goes back. That's a lot of nature preserve my dude. Obviously not a practical or feasible solution but there's a whole lot of spectrum between mega Paris + no meat and what we have now! More UK specific, you have a housing crisis brought on by building restrictions, meaning people have to build out not up (despite the desire of young non-homeowners). There is a huge rewinding movement and the government is paying expenses to convert unproductive farm land to forest. They're also rebuilding wetlands along the South East
- Bobylonian 5y ago
  >>>If you made LA county the same density as Paris, you could house every American. Where they will get water? How they will get food? How many roads and transportation and wasted energy will be required to deliver these bare necessities? Where they will dump their shit and garbage? I sure hope - not in the Ocean! My wild guess, dude, is that you will still need rest of USA to feed and support that concentration of population. Not to mention need for mental health support, because of encroaching of personal and communal space. People might be very social animals, but they are not sardines. >>Stop eating meat Consumption of meat - in particular, cooked meat, only in 3 million years made primates into humans. In that light, abandonment of meat also can lead to evolutionary changes and lack of protein, that meat is providing will affect brains. Not raising cattle mostly shifts land usage to single culture crops, which are no better for environment and lead to impoverishment of arable lands. The main reason why animals are raised is economy - it takes less effort and energy to raise animals, compared to money you would earn from raising crops - to reach the same amount of money by raising crops, you need more arable lands and resources to maintain them - not to mentioning, that raising that amount of single crops will decrease their price value(because of open market) that will affect all crop growers and in the end they will be impoverished - not some dude in CA, who dos not have to tend crops. >>>More UK specific In UK many highrises from 1970s are razed to the ground and in their place are rebuilt family size houses, because highrises are extremely expensive to maintain, not to mention, that in crisis situations they are unmanageable - if there is a fire, then death is in 10s - even hundreds, if there is a single crime, then affected is not just one household and neighbouring families but the whole highrise. UK is transforming some of the lands of defunct mines into forests, because it is dangerous to build house in place, that can suck it up with all the inhabitants. Wetlands are contantly exposed to tides from sea - also not viable place to build a house. Well, you can build house anywhere - in space, on the botom of the ocean, even on the active volcano, but it all comes of unsustainable costs for most of us out there. No one is holding you back to do what you preach - on your own expense. "Housing crisis" in UK is not about lack of houses in a market, but lack of social welfare houses, that can be offered to people, who are living on welfare - and the main crisis here is that such people share in UK has reached significant share among population.

jetsetgo 5y ago

Foreign aid is the lie that white people tell themselves and screech about all the time. Most of foreign aid is siphoned back via corporations, rest is scrapped by corrupt dictators and politicians. People get nothing.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
atlasunshrugged 5y ago
Don't forget the "well meaning" NGOs that are on the ground and jack up the prices of apartments and local goods and sit in their gated compounds on western salaries until they get rotated to some other country.
goohle 5y ago
LOL, foreign aid is for country, not for people. Country has lot of expenses, which are paid from taxes, so aid helps to reduce taxes, thus everyone, who works and pays taxes, pays less. Your claim is like "if foreign worker helped to fix a bus, then it must pay all passengers also".

whateveriguess 5y ago

> Congo is one of the countries, that is already receiving foreign aid, so claiming, that it is not receiving any is simply a lie. > The biggest issue of all of the foreign aid is corruption. The output of aid in most cases makes few mega rich billionaires from Africa and total poverty for rest. One must be careful with this narrative. Foreign aid received by developing countries is dwarfed (more than an order of magnitude) by unequal exchange, illicit trade flows and trade misinvoicing in the opposite direction, often allowed by these corrupt leaders to their own benefit and that of multinational corps, and enforced via rigged systems such as the IMF/World Bank/WTO. Other comments have responded robustly to your depopulation comment.

Bobylonian 5y ago
>>>Other comments have responded robustly to your depopulation comment. Were you refering to yourself when created this new account?
- whateveriguess 5y ago
  Nope, just a long-time listener, first-time caller kinda deal... was just surprised that everyone seemed to agree with your first comment, but took such issue on depopulation.
  - Bobylonian 5y ago
    I think, that agreement here is about foreign aid, where op was offering it as a solution. Depopulation of overpopulated countries is the only viable solution if rich overpopulated countries are demanding to other countries to save their forests. That is also a chance to show solidarity in preservation of forests. Claims, that forests are long gone and nothing can be done are childish - they can be restored and regrown back to their natural original glory. One of the commenter here had a very "sensible" solution to cram population of those overpopulated countries into some small areas and free up rest of the land for forests... And by the way - did you read that article or are you here only because of comments, that you had to do something about them? Oh, those comentators - you can't let them roam free...

blablabla123 5y ago

> The biggest issue of all of the foreign aid is corruption. The biggest problem is the concept of aid because it is not resilient to corruption. The economy needs to factor in the outside environment, otherwise we're doomed. CO2 certificates are a good start but they need to be correctly priced and more is needed. Probably something like negatively priced Forest certificates that the country and the people can profit from by keeping the forest every year in a good state. The same problem but with a richer country exists in Brazil.

southerntofu 5y ago
> aid because it is not resilient to corruption Good point. That's why we in the global north should fix our shit and not send raw money to the corrupt overlords our industry and secret services have placed in power overseas. For example, subsidized food production from the EU is weaponized to destroy local markets in Africa, and that's a shame!

charlescearl 5y ago

Most of the Black people in my section of the u.s. were stolen from Congo/Angola. To be precise, those of us whose ancestors came through Charleston, SC enroute to other areas in the southeast. The devastation upon thriving, sustainable Indigenous economies — because we’re talking about peoples who made rainforests “work” before any human arrived in Europe or Asia — wrought by the trans-Atlantic slave trade from the 1500s onward and European colonialism is documented in Walter Rodney’s “How Europe Underdeveloped Africa” among hundreds of other analyses. The level of eugenics and racism in the comments, let alone ignorance of the last 500 years of human history is incredible.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
Bobylonian 5y ago
If you feel that you belong to that corner of Africa, why you are still in US and not on the route to your homeland? No one is barring you from leaving US! Though, I wonder - what are the people you are going to identify with - descendants of slavers, that massacred tribe of your long gone ancestors? Not long before Europeans appeared in Congo basin, most of the local natives of area were robbed of their lands by new arrivals of taller black people. Their co-existence with these new masters is nothing less than slavery even in modern times. I wonder... how deep is that box of Pandora, that you want to open? Are you ready to pay for sins of your ancestors or is this exclusive thing to Whites only? Are you even aware, that significant part of Europeans in US initially were brought to US as slaves? Europeans did not brought slavery to Africa and neither to US, where locals were happily enslaving each other. 500 years ago before arrival of Europeans with rare exceptions, any society in Africa had slavery. History is unpleasant, but that has hardly anything to do with ongoing war, that has reached heat in modern US. Btw, Hitler also eradicated Jews with the exactly same ideas about Aryan race, but you might need to get past 500 years in your history book to realize that.
- drekk 5y ago
  Your refusal to acknowledge the difference between prisoners of war and the institution of chattel slavery is a disgrace and a consequence of the American education system that manufactures consent for imperialism and colonialism. Maybe to put it in techy terms, Europeans did slavery at scale. We live in the aftermath of that and the threads are still visible (former colonies are still captive markets that export raw resources, more often than not to their previous colonial master's). We don't live in the global hegemony of the Corsair pirates, so if you want to discuss bondage on the African continent maybe address the context that it didn't form the basis of the global order we live in today. Hitler is widely regarded as one of history's worst humans for just taking the colonialism European powers did at the time and applying it to Jews and other "undesirables" in Europe. While we're on the topic of America and how it didn't invent racism or slavery, might be worth noting how the Nazis got their idea for lebensraum and racial purity? I'm sure manifest destiny and one drop rules, or the fact that Long Island was the "eugenics capital of the world" played a part.

southerntofu 5y ago

> the only way to save forests is by dramatically reducing population You seem awfully sure of that, yet i would argue there's many other strategies to deploy: - criminalize planned obsolescence so something that is built once will last (if Ikea execs/engineers risked jails, they may produce more reliable products) - ban products tied to deforestation (eg. avocados, palm oil) unless they're locally sourced from organic farms - run public policies to reduce animal exploitation, as cattle is a top 3 factor for deforestation and 30-60% of global cultivated land is only cultivated to feed cattle: start by removing subsidies for animal exploitation and stopping public money going in this industry (eg. via school/office lunch), maybe even tax meat/dairy to subsidize more ecological production? - ban or tax wood pallets for heating: they are currently presented as the "green" alternative to gas, but it's definitely not green and the forests involved are huge monocultures of certain tree species, where no proper ecosystem can develop I'm sure there's many other points i'm missing. Overall, the "overpopulation" point is not entirely wrong. It's just vastly overplayed by Global North elites who don't like us asking inconvenient questions about why they're the ones polluting everything, and profiting financially from destroying our environment. We have an abundance of resources to feed and house everyone, if we stop this bourgeois non-sense lifestyle some people like to entertain.

an9n 5y ago
Agree with your points, to an extent. But how the hell do we get China etc. to agree?
- southerntofu 5y ago
  Don't mean to be rude, but who cares? Just because someone else is doing something wrong doesn't mean you shouldn't make it right? Also, it's worth pointing out that 3rd world countries are tired of global north hypocrits like us tech people pointing the finger at them for pollution while our european/north-american societies are the ones who fucked up everything for everyone: "we" colonized all territories, stole all resources, employed slave labor from mines to factories to sell shitty products to billions of people worldwide. And our countries are very much expected to be the least impacted by climate change, which is precisely why our governments are doing nothing about it beyond buying themselves a clean conscience by funneling public money into private pockets in "green new deal" setups. If you expect others to follow, leading by example is a pretty reasonable course of action, don't you think? To be clear i'm not advocating to ban chinese imports overnight. But you could very well for example use the repairability index setup by the EU last year, so that only items with 10/10 scores can legally be imported and sold. And if you really wanna make a green new deal, then subsidize people buying solid materials: just because cheap/dirty stuff has been outlawed doesn't mean locally-produced alternatives are much cheaper. I'm not saying i have the best answers: there's so much we could do and the powers that be are not doing because they couldn't care less. These people are fucking psychopaths and until we start putting heads on spikes will never listen.

fallingknife 5y ago

Congolese population density is only 10% higher than the US, which is currently gaining forest coverage. So I don't think population levels are relevant to this particular issue.

quetzthecoatl 5y ago

>>The biggest issue of all of the foreign aid is corruption. It's worse than corruption. It buys entire ruling class of poorer nations paying peanuts in dollars/euros. It's subversion of poor countries by propping up oligarchies.

drekk 5y ago

No, the biggest issue is that the aid "developing" (exploited) countries receive is orders of magnitude less than the wealth that is extracted from the continent. How is that wealth extracted? Debt. Haiti is still paying France for daring to secure their independence. Industrialization. African slave labor and raw colonial resources paved the way for the European industrial revolution while relegating developing countries to a captive market status. You still don't see industrialization for the most part in these former colonies. Destabilization. Maintaining the petrodollar and regional interests is more important to the US than stable, autonomous, multicultural democracies. We could have an entire course on how Americans and Europeans play foreign ethnic groups against one another and destabilize democracies in the process. If you want to know why all these countries are so corrupt, maybe look at how those ruling classes came to power. More often than not we played a part in installing them and shielding them from consequences.

nine_k 5y ago

This is very true. All the problems of poverty in the world are bad governance / bad social structures, not lack of resources. Industrial countries produce enough to pull everyone out of poverty already, to fill every cauldron, were many cauldrons not so badly perforated.

Bobylonian 5y ago
Industrial countries of modern age are also China and India and most of countries that are manufacturing goods for export. If China is "exploiting" DRC, it clearly is not going to pay for trees, that it can't get. Prosperous countries can give money to save some tress and locals will accept it and will also sell the tree to China - that's double profit ftw! DRC is not governed by colonizers and is doing this on their free will. My people were oppressed by Russian Empire longer than DRC was colonized by Europeans and when they gained freedom, they in short time gained prosperity. It is an insult to the Congolese people, to consider them unable to think for themselves and make their own choices and sacrifices for their better future and that someone from US, who is not living in DRC has better understanding what is best for them. Trees are not only producing oxygen, but they are also consuming it, so in total oxygen production value of trees around equatorial regions is 0. Threes might produce more oxygen further away from equator, only where days are longer, but they have never been a reason why on this planet there is an oxygen. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/why-amazon-doesnt-produce-20-percent-worlds-oxygen https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/why-a...
- wbazant 5y ago
  The big thing about trees is that they absorb CO2 - of which there is too much in the atmosphere - not that they produce oxygen, which we are at no risk of running out of.
  - Bobylonian 5y ago
    Oh dear - this is also laughable issue, because combating CO2 is depriving trees of their food. Whole Sahara has become greener from climate change and CO2 avaibility - maybe it is worth to grow trees in Sahara. Forests of Sahara - what a great name!

atlasunshrugged 5y ago

I don't think it's necessary to dramatically reduce population. Why not just have significantly more dense urban areas (urbanization especially in Africa is taking care of this naturally) and more sustainable energy sources (this I think should be subsidized by the West or at least supported with tech transfer to African nations who are unfamiliar with building hydro-power and nuclear)?

asciident 5y ago
Because each person still uses about 10 full wardrobes in their lifetime, 100,000 prepared meals, a few dozen smartphones and other electronics, a mountain of disposibles like diapers and napkins and takeout containers and masks. People need a lot of resources for even a modest standard of living.
Bobylonian 5y ago
But can you think and provide any reasonable solution on how to restore historical uninterrupted forest, that once covered most of Europe and which now is highly urbanized area? And I would suggest to read the article - the main issue that locals are concerned about is not preservation of trees, but receiving profit share from cutting these trees. Fate of trees is not uncertainty - they will be gone to give place where to grow crops. Most of CDR population does not use electricity, but if they were using electricity, they would have even more needs and trees would be cut out in even bigger rate, to sustain that lifestyle.
- gambiting 5y ago
  You probably can't restore a truly "uninterrupted" forest in Europe, as you said people live in most places now and there isn't much you can do about it. Having said that - Europe's forest coverage is increasing rapidly[0], and growing every year[1]. For another example, UK's forests are already up to "medieval" levels, and growing[2]. [0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2014/12/04/watch-how-europe-is-greener-now-than-100-years-ago/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2014/12/04... [1] https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/07/forest-europe-environment/ https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/07/forest-europe-environ... [2] https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/woodland-back-to-medieval-levels-j097fqtkw https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/woodland-back-to-medieval...

diordiderot 5y ago

> The biggest issue of all of the foreign aid is corruption. The output of aid in most cases makes few mega rich billionaires from Africa and total poverty for rest. Very right >the only way to save forests is by dramatically reducing population Very very wrong. If you made LA county the same density as Paris, you could house every American. Stop eating meat, 41% of American land goes back. That's a lot of nature preserve my dude. Obviously not a practical or feasible solution but there's a whole lot of spectrum between mega Paris + no meat and what we have now! More UK specific, you have a housing crisis brought on by building restrictions, meaning people have to build out not up (despite the desire of young non-homeowners). There is a huge rewinding movement and the government is paying expenses to convert unproductive farm land to forest. They're also rebuilding wetlands along the South East

Bobylonian 5y ago
>>>If you made LA county the same density as Paris, you could house every American. Where they will get water? How they will get food? How many roads and transportation and wasted energy will be required to deliver these bare necessities? Where they will dump their shit and garbage? I sure hope - not in the Ocean! My wild guess, dude, is that you will still need rest of USA to feed and support that concentration of population. Not to mention need for mental health support, because of encroaching of personal and communal space. People might be very social animals, but they are not sardines. >>Stop eating meat Consumption of meat - in particular, cooked meat, only in 3 million years made primates into humans. In that light, abandonment of meat also can lead to evolutionary changes and lack of protein, that meat is providing will affect brains. Not raising cattle mostly shifts land usage to single culture crops, which are no better for environment and lead to impoverishment of arable lands. The main reason why animals are raised is economy - it takes less effort and energy to raise animals, compared to money you would earn from raising crops - to reach the same amount of money by raising crops, you need more arable lands and resources to maintain them - not to mentioning, that raising that amount of single crops will decrease their price value(because of open market) that will affect all crop growers and in the end they will be impoverished - not some dude in CA, who dos not have to tend crops. >>>More UK specific In UK many highrises from 1970s are razed to the ground and in their place are rebuilt family size houses, because highrises are extremely expensive to maintain, not to mention, that in crisis situations they are unmanageable - if there is a fire, then death is in 10s - even hundreds, if there is a single crime, then affected is not just one household and neighbouring families but the whole highrise. UK is transforming some of the lands of defunct mines into forests, because it is dangerous to build house in place, that can suck it up with all the inhabitants. Wetlands are contantly exposed to tides from sea - also not viable place to build a house. Well, you can build house anywhere - in space, on the botom of the ocean, even on the active volcano, but it all comes of unsustainable costs for most of us out there. No one is holding you back to do what you preach - on your own expense. "Housing crisis" in UK is not about lack of houses in a market, but lack of social welfare houses, that can be offered to people, who are living on welfare - and the main crisis here is that such people share in UK has reached significant share among population.