I know other people are tearing this apart in other subthreads, but it doesn't look like anyone's addressing the "orgy of deforestation" nugget, so I will. It literally made me laugh out loud.
Hello, northern California native here - and I don't mean the Bay Area; I mean the real northern California. You know, that massive area between Sonoma and the Oregon border. I know it's easy to forget it exists, but it's really there! Check out a map! There's all these places called Eureka and Redding and did you know Crescent City is actually the most tsunami-prone spot in the continental United States?
Anyway, in this area, there are a lot of coastal redwoods, sequoia sempervirens. And they're harvested for building material and pulp and a whole lot of other useful things, and have been for centuries. Yet the area isn't deforested by any measure of the imagination. How can that be?
Because trees are crops. The companies manage the forests; after they harvest some trees, they go back in and plant new ones, and tend to them as they grow. This seeding and tending means they are actually planted more densely and grow more quickly than they do in unmanaged nature. The lumber companies are businesses, and when there's no more trees, there's no more business, so it is actually in their best interest to grow as many trees as possible, as quickly and as densely as possible. There is no "orgy of deforestation" in the United States.
Of course the further point, that Europe should embrace nuclear energy, is obviously correct, but the assumptions this person made to get there are so, so stupid.
Hello, northern California native here - and I don't mean the Bay Area; I mean the real northern California. You know, that massive area between Sonoma and the Oregon border. I know it's easy to forget it exists, but it's really there! Check out a map! There's all these places called Eureka and Redding and did you know Crescent City is actually the most tsunami-prone spot in the continental United States?
Anyway, in this area, there are a lot of coastal redwoods, sequoia sempervirens. And they're harvested for building material and pulp and a whole lot of other useful things, and have been for centuries. Yet the area isn't deforested by any measure of the imagination. How can that be?
Because trees are crops. The companies manage the forests; after they harvest some trees, they go back in and plant new ones, and tend to them as they grow. This seeding and tending means they are actually planted more densely and grow more quickly than they do in unmanaged nature. The lumber companies are businesses, and when there's no more trees, there's no more business, so it is actually in their best interest to grow as many trees as possible, as quickly and as densely as possible. There is no "orgy of deforestation" in the United States.
Of course the further point, that Europe should embrace nuclear energy, is obviously correct, but the assumptions this person made to get there are so, so stupid.