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“Where they have burned books, they will end in burning human beings.”


Friday, November 17, 2006

Paved Paradise, put up a parking... Oh! Hey! Are those trees?

According to a new study, the world is gaining forests:

the report offered a ray of hope after two weeks of ominous warnings about global warming. Forests act as pollution sinks, mitigating to some degree the effects of man-made carbon emissions.

It also suggested that downward environmental spirals could be reversed with a combination of policy and luck. Twenty years ago, most scientists believed that deforestation was an inexorable result of industrialization and that the Earth would be denuded of trees.

[snip]

In many countries the reversal of deforestation over the past 15 years is partly the result of social changes that occur as countries develop and become wealthier, like the movement of rural dwellers to cities, the study said. A reduction in the number of people in the countryside decreases the cutting of trees and destruction of forests for things like heating and building, they said.

But in nations like China, India and Turkey, the shift also involved a strong measure of public policy, including restrictions on clear cutting, tree-planting campaigns and promotion of more efficient agriculture, which has meant that less land needed to be cleared for growing food.

"On a global level, deforestation will be reversed if we maintain this trend, which has involved a lot of different factors: a shift to highly productive agriculture in some places, as well as people like you and me reading newspapers on the Internet, so that forest is not destroyed," Ausubel said.

Yes, it does take trees to pull me out of my post-wedded bliss and start blogging again.

This is wonderful news. For once, I can feel optimistic about the way the planet is turning. For more optimism, listen to this week's Science Friday from NPR; not only do they discuss the study, but also a RAND study that says renewable resources will be a lot more affordable to conver to than first thought.

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posted by Mary, 7:30 PM