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Keep in mind that alongside to our numbers, we have our lifespans too. The longer we live, the longer we'll stay here and consume. Another thing to notice is that the lifespans and populations are sort of inversly proportional to the world. You have places like the USA and Canada who live around 70-80 on average but there's like on average 2-3 kids per family. People in places like Uganda and Somalia live around 40-60 and they have on average 6-7 kids. So it;s not just the rainforests that are getting impacted. Most of the resources end up to the developed countries, while the less wealthier people of the world who bear higher populations don't get as much.
They're probably not all doomed. Judging by my World Almanac India and Guyana are stable or rising in forest cover. I believe they have rain forests. I imagine there are rain forest preserves in Hawaii that are fairly safe.
Back in the 90s, you always heard about the rainforest. I don't hear so much about it anymore, even though the deforestation has got even worse? Does that mean that there's really nothing we can DO about it?!
There was a recent long article in "Le Monde diplomatique" (a French monthly periodical) about the threat to Brazil's rainforests posed by massive new eucalyptus tree plantations in the southwest of the country.
As the Great Eastern Woodlands disappeared so will the rainforests.
School children in the north east US are taught about the disappearing rainforests while their new house and soccer fields stand on land that supported eons of field and forest succession.
A 200 year old tree has become a rare commodity here in the land that leads the charge to save the rainforests.
Loss of plant and animal diversity demonstrates that adaptive evolution only exists for a moment in the dynamic world of a celestially dependant nature. Man can scamper, jump and twist so he'll be around a bit longer but his niche is disappearing too.
Actually the USA has more trees today than it did in year 1500.
At one point in the 1700's into the 1800's almost all of Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and parts of Vermont and New Hampshire were bare assed naked and devoid of trees due to farming. You can take a cessna and fly low in the winter over those states and see the patchwork of old farm fields divided by stone walls, those fields now forests again.
Same where I live now in PA. Back in the 1800's they cut just about every tree down everywhere. Recently there were some environmentalists expressing shock that surprise!, over 100 years the forest grew back and we now have a massive extensive forest north of I-80 covering the northern tier of the state.
I remember 20 years ago in school, there was panic over the rain forest in Brazil. But the rain forest is still there. Sure I think for a while the Brazilians went a little crazy with development, but as it turns out, in the sum total of it all, not enough to end it all.
we need a world war, a new round of the Black Death or some such to bring things back into managable proportions but government interference into population control is a slippery slope..... I think we are doomed as a planet.
Back in the 90s, you always heard about the rainforest. I don't hear so much about it anymore, even though the deforestation has got even worse? Does that mean that there's really nothing we can DO about it?!
People have a tendency toward fads or toward losing interest if a problem isn't solved fast enough. Plus rainforest destruction is mostly about nations that aren't in North America or Europe so we may have felt there isn't that much we can do. I think the issue is still alive in Brazil and Southeast Asia.
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