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This is what kills me about the destruction of the rainforests and old growth forests. We're constantly finding new things in our own backyards. There's no tell

This is what kills me about the destruction of the rainforests and old growth forests. We're constantly finding new things in our own backyards. There's no telling what we've lost/are losing or how it could have been used to benefit us.

rgrieselhuber 2y ago
This is because of the reductionist myth that all organic matter is fungible. It’s always “well we plant new trees, so what’s the problem?”
- autoexec 2y ago
  That's one of those lies I suspect the tellers don't actually believe, they just expect the masses to be uneducated enough to fall for it. I have to give them credit though because it seems to be working for them
- luggageproblem 2y ago
  >>> Across the road from my cabin was a huge clear-cut--hundreds of acres of massive spruce stumps interspersed with tiny Douglas firs--products of what they call "Reforestation," which I guess makes the spindly firs en masse a "Reforest," which makes an individual spindly fir a "Refir," which means you could say that Weyerhauser, who owns the joint, has Refir Madness, since they think that sawing down 200-foot-tall spruces and replacing them with puling 2-foot Refirs is no different from farming beans or corn or alfalfa. They even call the towering spires they wipe from the Earth's face forever a "crop"--as if they'd planted the virgin forest! But I'm just a fisherman and may be missing some deeper significance in their nomenclature and stranger treatment of primordial trees. from The River Why
  - 14 2y ago
    Can’t even have toilet paper without the logging industry. Housing would be pretty savage if we had to build everything out of rocks and mud. I strongly believe that any currently old growth forests should be protected but everything else really is just a crop.
    - samarthr1 2y ago
      If you consider concrete and cement to be rocks and mud, no, outside of NA, most of the world uses stones and mud just fine. ~~atleast an angry drunk can't punch through my wall~~
      - xvector 2y ago
        Having lived in both constructions, for the American environs, wood-built houses are vastly superior to cement ones. Wood construction is better insulating, easier to repair, easier overhaul as the times inevitably change, naturally regulates temperature, adapts better to different weathers, flexes more and thus adapts to stress better, requires fewer and less stringent inspections, fails less catastrophically, has a smaller carbon footprint, is cheaper and easier to source, and is easier to transport.
        adrianN 2y ago
        That's interesting, can you elaborate? I was under the impression that the main benefit of wood+sheetrock was cost and speed of construction.
        xvector 2y ago
        Updated my comment with details
        katbyte 2y ago
        Tl;dr, basically it’s just real cheap.
        abenga 2y ago
        I've been watching a lot of real estate videos on YouTube, and it boggles my mind that people pay seven, even eight digit figures for houses made of wood. It's obviously rational (or so many people wouldn't do it), but it is really, really hard to drop the prejudice coming from my part of the world that Wooden = Flimsy & Cheap.
        2y ago
- 14 2y ago
  What would be a better option than wood for construction? Yes now days we have other products I suppose but wood previously and arguable long into the future is simply the best option. Forests for the history of man kind burn down and grow back and logging though could outpace the growing back is vital to society as it exists.
  - autoexec 2y ago
    I think it'd be a false dichotomy to suggest that if we weren't clear cutting rainforests and old growth forests with abandon we couldn't have wood for construction and would need to "build everything out of rocks and mud". I think that it's likely possible to harvest wood for construction sustainably and responsibly, but what we're doing today isn't that.
    - 14 2y ago
      Well where do you think we would get the wood from? Where I am from, considered the logging capital of the world, it is sustainable. We also have very regulated industry that is managed by environmental bodies separate from the logging owners. People are so emotional about trees being cut down but I believe it is much like those who say oil industry is bad but continue to use products like plastic wrap and buy cheap plastic made fabrics in their clothing just as logging means housing, toilet paper, the boxes your items are shipped in, the paper we write on, the pallets your appliances are shipped on and on and on. Wood is a vital part of society like it or not and being emotional and disagreeing with that point is equal to head in the sand mentality. Perhaps where you are from logging hasn’t traditionally been managed well but where I am from it is vital to the economy and management is absolutely critical that it remains long term viable business. Even after over a hundred years of logging in my area I am still surrounded by endless forests that one could get lost in and never found. That is not by fluke it is by the fact that like any other crop, forests are too a crop.
      - mandmandam 2y ago
        > forests are too a crop. “When you understand that under capitalism a forest has no value until it's cut down, you begin to understand the root of our ecological crises.” - Adam Idek Hastie
- tbrownaw 2y ago
  > It’s always “well we plant new trees, so what’s the problem?” This is a perfectly reasonable response to complaints that are about the overall amount of forest rather then about "this particular forest is beautiful and unique and shouldn't ever be touched... just like every other forest".
  - Nursie 2y ago
    Not really, secondary forest is known to be less diverse in terms of both plant, animal and fungi species. It's not just that you can't exactly recreate the original, it's that what you're recreating is often just a shadow of the ecosystems that were destroyed. Better a shadow than nothing, of course, but better not to have destroyed it in the first place.
- tuatoru 2y ago
  James Scott writes at length about Germany's experience with "scientific forestry" in an early chapter of Seeing Like A State. I highly recommend the book to ... well, everyone.
- exp1orer 2y ago
  if anything is fungible, surely mushrooms are...
tbrownaw 2y ago
When the thing being avoided is more important then the thing being preserved because "what if", this same reasoning is called FOMO.
- godelski 2y ago
  We need to consider them and do our best. Neither should hypotheticals stop us nor should they be dismissed.
Kaijo 2y ago
It's an especially acute problem for fungi. Fungi defy easy collection. With most animals and plants one can envisage conservation strategies to preserve lineages in artificial conditions. Breeding programmes, seed banks, tissue culture... But whole swathes of the fungal kindgom have such complex ecological requirements and sensitivities that isolating and growing them outside their natural habitat presents huge technical challenges. Even if you can coax them into culture, getting them to complete their life cycle is another matter entirely. And even with our best preservation methods, cultures that are not maintained as breeding populations have an expiry date. I have had a lot of frustration retrieving fungi of conservation interest from culture collections, supposed repositories of biodiversity, that turned out to be hopelessly senescent.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
peatmoss 2y ago
I think the upside of industrially grown wood is better than the upside of industrially grown meat. The biological services of an old forest are more than the material they yield. Imagine cultured sheets of perfect n-ply plywood, quartersawn timber of any size, 3d lattices that create chairs and other furniture with no joinery... Lumber grown at sea on barges, taking water and nutrients from sea water, chasing the equatorial sun.
- rad_gruchalski 2y ago
  https://fullgrown.co.uk/ https://fullgrown.co.uk/
- ctoth 2y ago
  I want to read this book please.
- freilanzer 2y ago
  > better than the upside of industrially grown meat. Sure, besides ending the suffering of many millions of animals, wood is nice.
  - peatmoss 2y ago
    Habitat destruction for wild animals? Lab meat would also be nice.
BillTthree 2y ago
I think its equally likely something would be toxic to humans

rgrieselhuber 2y ago

This is because of the reductionist myth that all organic matter is fungible. It’s always “well we plant new trees, so what’s the problem?”

autoexec 2y ago
That's one of those lies I suspect the tellers don't actually believe, they just expect the masses to be uneducated enough to fall for it. I have to give them credit though because it seems to be working for them
luggageproblem 2y ago
>>> Across the road from my cabin was a huge clear-cut--hundreds of acres of massive spruce stumps interspersed with tiny Douglas firs--products of what they call "Reforestation," which I guess makes the spindly firs en masse a "Reforest," which makes an individual spindly fir a "Refir," which means you could say that Weyerhauser, who owns the joint, has Refir Madness, since they think that sawing down 200-foot-tall spruces and replacing them with puling 2-foot Refirs is no different from farming beans or corn or alfalfa. They even call the towering spires they wipe from the Earth's face forever a "crop"--as if they'd planted the virgin forest! But I'm just a fisherman and may be missing some deeper significance in their nomenclature and stranger treatment of primordial trees. from The River Why
- 14 2y ago
  Can’t even have toilet paper without the logging industry. Housing would be pretty savage if we had to build everything out of rocks and mud. I strongly believe that any currently old growth forests should be protected but everything else really is just a crop.
  - samarthr1 2y ago
    If you consider concrete and cement to be rocks and mud, no, outside of NA, most of the world uses stones and mud just fine. ~~atleast an angry drunk can't punch through my wall~~
    - xvector 2y ago
      Having lived in both constructions, for the American environs, wood-built houses are vastly superior to cement ones. Wood construction is better insulating, easier to repair, easier overhaul as the times inevitably change, naturally regulates temperature, adapts better to different weathers, flexes more and thus adapts to stress better, requires fewer and less stringent inspections, fails less catastrophically, has a smaller carbon footprint, is cheaper and easier to source, and is easier to transport.
      - adrianN 2y ago
        That's interesting, can you elaborate? I was under the impression that the main benefit of wood+sheetrock was cost and speed of construction.
        xvector 2y ago
        Updated my comment with details
      - katbyte 2y ago
        Tl;dr, basically it’s just real cheap.
      - abenga 2y ago
        I've been watching a lot of real estate videos on YouTube, and it boggles my mind that people pay seven, even eight digit figures for houses made of wood. It's obviously rational (or so many people wouldn't do it), but it is really, really hard to drop the prejudice coming from my part of the world that Wooden = Flimsy & Cheap.
      - 2y ago
14 2y ago
What would be a better option than wood for construction? Yes now days we have other products I suppose but wood previously and arguable long into the future is simply the best option. Forests for the history of man kind burn down and grow back and logging though could outpace the growing back is vital to society as it exists.
- autoexec 2y ago
  I think it'd be a false dichotomy to suggest that if we weren't clear cutting rainforests and old growth forests with abandon we couldn't have wood for construction and would need to "build everything out of rocks and mud". I think that it's likely possible to harvest wood for construction sustainably and responsibly, but what we're doing today isn't that.
  - 14 2y ago
    Well where do you think we would get the wood from? Where I am from, considered the logging capital of the world, it is sustainable. We also have very regulated industry that is managed by environmental bodies separate from the logging owners. People are so emotional about trees being cut down but I believe it is much like those who say oil industry is bad but continue to use products like plastic wrap and buy cheap plastic made fabrics in their clothing just as logging means housing, toilet paper, the boxes your items are shipped in, the paper we write on, the pallets your appliances are shipped on and on and on. Wood is a vital part of society like it or not and being emotional and disagreeing with that point is equal to head in the sand mentality. Perhaps where you are from logging hasn’t traditionally been managed well but where I am from it is vital to the economy and management is absolutely critical that it remains long term viable business. Even after over a hundred years of logging in my area I am still surrounded by endless forests that one could get lost in and never found. That is not by fluke it is by the fact that like any other crop, forests are too a crop.
    - mandmandam 2y ago
      > forests are too a crop. “When you understand that under capitalism a forest has no value until it's cut down, you begin to understand the root of our ecological crises.” - Adam Idek Hastie
tbrownaw 2y ago
> It’s always “well we plant new trees, so what’s the problem?” This is a perfectly reasonable response to complaints that are about the overall amount of forest rather then about "this particular forest is beautiful and unique and shouldn't ever be touched... just like every other forest".
- Nursie 2y ago
  Not really, secondary forest is known to be less diverse in terms of both plant, animal and fungi species. It's not just that you can't exactly recreate the original, it's that what you're recreating is often just a shadow of the ecosystems that were destroyed. Better a shadow than nothing, of course, but better not to have destroyed it in the first place.
tuatoru 2y ago
James Scott writes at length about Germany's experience with "scientific forestry" in an early chapter of Seeing Like A State. I highly recommend the book to ... well, everyone.
exp1orer 2y ago
if anything is fungible, surely mushrooms are...

tbrownaw 2y ago

When the thing being avoided is more important then the thing being preserved because "what if", this same reasoning is called FOMO.

godelski 2y ago
We need to consider them and do our best. Neither should hypotheticals stop us nor should they be dismissed.

Kaijo 2y ago

It's an especially acute problem for fungi. Fungi defy easy collection. With most animals and plants one can envisage conservation strategies to preserve lineages in artificial conditions. Breeding programmes, seed banks, tissue culture... But whole swathes of the fungal kindgom have such complex ecological requirements and sensitivities that isolating and growing them outside their natural habitat presents huge technical challenges. Even if you can coax them into culture, getting them to complete their life cycle is another matter entirely. And even with our best preservation methods, cultures that are not maintained as breeding populations have an expiry date. I have had a lot of frustration retrieving fungi of conservation interest from culture collections, supposed repositories of biodiversity, that turned out to be hopelessly senescent.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

peatmoss 2y ago

I think the upside of industrially grown wood is better than the upside of industrially grown meat. The biological services of an old forest are more than the material they yield. Imagine cultured sheets of perfect n-ply plywood, quartersawn timber of any size, 3d lattices that create chairs and other furniture with no joinery... Lumber grown at sea on barges, taking water and nutrients from sea water, chasing the equatorial sun.

rad_gruchalski 2y ago
https://fullgrown.co.uk/ https://fullgrown.co.uk/
ctoth 2y ago
I want to read this book please.
freilanzer 2y ago
> better than the upside of industrially grown meat. Sure, besides ending the suffering of many millions of animals, wood is nice.
- peatmoss 2y ago
  Habitat destruction for wild animals? Lab meat would also be nice.

BillTthree 2y ago

I think its equally likely something would be toxic to humans