4 ms·

The high cost of IKEA furniture

ephbit 5y ago
Article subtitle: > Since 2007, Romania has lost between half and two-thirds of its virgin forest. The environmentalists and activists trying to protect it keep getting killed. --- Whatever the reason for this attrition of forest, it's alarming.
- technobabbler 5y ago
  Everything is dying, all the time, everywhere lol. It's hard to keep up anymore... people using up resources way faster than they can be replenished, and it's only getting worse...
  - ephbit 5y ago
    Yeah, we're in for a bumpy ride, that's for sure. At some point, there'll be the sufficiently direct negative feedback from nature to humanity which will slow and eventually halt the destruction ... but ... it'll probably take a while until then. I'd say 2035-2040 until we see politicians in the democratic states make decisions that are painful for citizens and effective enough to notably slow the destruction. (I have a feeling that China will get there earlier, say 2030 or so.)
    - technobabbler 5y ago
      > I'd say 2035-2040 until we see politicians in the democratic states make decisions that are painful for citizens and effective enough to notably slow the destruction. I sincerely doubt there will be any meaningful democracies left by 2040 :) People always trend towards strong leaders and authoritarianism in the face of crisis, and there will be oh so many crises...
      - user68858788 5y ago
        I don’t doubt you, but I’d like to know the history of your statement. Which democracies became authoritarian regimes, and for which crisis?
        technobabbler 5y ago
        Mussolini, Hitler, Trump (almost), Venezuela... and of course, Russia. Additionally, much of the modern conservative movement (around the world) is centered around personality worship and anti-democratization of power structures and are trying very hard to move their democracies toward autocracy favoring a cultural or ethnic in-group. Wikipedia has a much more extensive list, along with various things that contribute to it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_backsliding https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_backsliding
legitster 5y ago
> Those forests are extremely important because they’re not only the most effective carbon capture method on the planet—the old-growth forest captures carbon at this incredible rate that’s not seen in logged and replanted forest I'm wondering where they are getting this from. Most sources I can find say the exact opposite.
- claudiulodro 5y ago
  All the non-tree plants that get destroyed during the logging process I assume. Bushes, shrubs, ferns, grasses, ivies, etc. all get really destroyed during the logging process and will only return after a number of years when the ecosystem becomes favorable and seeds have re-propagated to the area.
- technobabbler 5y ago
  I think this is a topic of continuing research. Probably the New Republic doesn't dive too deep into climate research? One original article from 2008 made the case that they suck up a lot of CO2: https://www.nature.com/articles/nature07276 https://www.nature.com/articles/nature07276 (or https://sci-hub.hkvisa.net/10.1038/nature07276 https://sci-hub.hkvisa.net/10.1038/nature07276) But this finding was challenged in 2021: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/03/210325150055.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/03/210325150055.h... (or https://sci-hub.hkvisa.net/https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03266-z https://sci-hub.hkvisa.net/https://www.nature.com/articles/s...) Edit: Dunno if climate is really the best argument there anyway. The old-growths have high biodiversity value, and are hard to regrow. Carbon is more or less a fungible commodity that can be sunk in a billion other ways.
  - GekkePrutser 5y ago
    Well it can be sunk in some other ways but those trees were already doing it before they got logged. The most efficient way of CO2 sink is the one that's already there because it takes no resources to keep it.
    - technobabbler 5y ago
eternityforest 5y ago
How does IKEA specifically compare to other places? Do they especially do a lot of illegal logging or just the industry baseline amount? I would think that, given the same source, IKEA would be better than just about anyone, since their products are mostly just air and yet somehow seem to last a rather long time. In fact, I would almost suspect that our obsession with "Real quality" is a bigger issue than ikea, because ikea stuff often doesn't ever wear out, it is discarded before that because we are taught that we should be aiming to upgrade and eventually own quality things, despite the tech having progressed beyond the need to use solid woods in a lot of cases.

Article subtitle: > Since 2007, Romania has lost between half and two-thirds of its virgin forest. The environmentalists and activists trying to protect it keep getting killed. --- Whatever the reason for this attrition of forest, it's alarming.

technobabbler 5y ago
Everything is dying, all the time, everywhere lol. It's hard to keep up anymore... people using up resources way faster than they can be replenished, and it's only getting worse...
- ephbit 5y ago
  Yeah, we're in for a bumpy ride, that's for sure. At some point, there'll be the sufficiently direct negative feedback from nature to humanity which will slow and eventually halt the destruction ... but ... it'll probably take a while until then. I'd say 2035-2040 until we see politicians in the democratic states make decisions that are painful for citizens and effective enough to notably slow the destruction. (I have a feeling that China will get there earlier, say 2030 or so.)
  - technobabbler 5y ago
    > I'd say 2035-2040 until we see politicians in the democratic states make decisions that are painful for citizens and effective enough to notably slow the destruction. I sincerely doubt there will be any meaningful democracies left by 2040 :) People always trend towards strong leaders and authoritarianism in the face of crisis, and there will be oh so many crises...
    - user68858788 5y ago
      I don’t doubt you, but I’d like to know the history of your statement. Which democracies became authoritarian regimes, and for which crisis?
      - technobabbler 5y ago
        Mussolini, Hitler, Trump (almost), Venezuela... and of course, Russia. Additionally, much of the modern conservative movement (around the world) is centered around personality worship and anti-democratization of power structures and are trying very hard to move their democracies toward autocracy favoring a cultural or ethnic in-group. Wikipedia has a much more extensive list, along with various things that contribute to it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_backsliding https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_backsliding

legitster 5y ago

> Those forests are extremely important because they’re not only the most effective carbon capture method on the planet—the old-growth forest captures carbon at this incredible rate that’s not seen in logged and replanted forest I'm wondering where they are getting this from. Most sources I can find say the exact opposite.

claudiulodro 5y ago
All the non-tree plants that get destroyed during the logging process I assume. Bushes, shrubs, ferns, grasses, ivies, etc. all get really destroyed during the logging process and will only return after a number of years when the ecosystem becomes favorable and seeds have re-propagated to the area.
technobabbler 5y ago
I think this is a topic of continuing research. Probably the New Republic doesn't dive too deep into climate research? One original article from 2008 made the case that they suck up a lot of CO2: https://www.nature.com/articles/nature07276 https://www.nature.com/articles/nature07276 (or https://sci-hub.hkvisa.net/10.1038/nature07276 https://sci-hub.hkvisa.net/10.1038/nature07276) But this finding was challenged in 2021: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/03/210325150055.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/03/210325150055.h... (or https://sci-hub.hkvisa.net/https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03266-z https://sci-hub.hkvisa.net/https://www.nature.com/articles/s...) Edit: Dunno if climate is really the best argument there anyway. The old-growths have high biodiversity value, and are hard to regrow. Carbon is more or less a fungible commodity that can be sunk in a billion other ways.
- GekkePrutser 5y ago
  Well it can be sunk in some other ways but those trees were already doing it before they got logged. The most efficient way of CO2 sink is the one that's already there because it takes no resources to keep it.
  - technobabbler 5y ago

eternityforest 5y ago

How does IKEA specifically compare to other places? Do they especially do a lot of illegal logging or just the industry baseline amount? I would think that, given the same source, IKEA would be better than just about anyone, since their products are mostly just air and yet somehow seem to last a rather long time. In fact, I would almost suspect that our obsession with "Real quality" is a bigger issue than ikea, because ikea stuff often doesn't ever wear out, it is discarded before that because we are taught that we should be aiming to upgrade and eventually own quality things, despite the tech having progressed beyond the need to use solid woods in a lot of cases.