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Comment by noddy1 | Hacker News Reader

sadly capitalism seems to be an incredibly effective and efficient way to completely destroy the rainforests.

there does not seem to be any solution.

I would like to remind you it's not capitalism, it's any economic system. In the USSR, they used to use (and still use) track vehicles to harvest wood and what have you natural resources in the Siberian tundra --heavy track vehicles crack and damage the permafrost[1] resulting in terrible enviro damage. Once the permafrost is cracked it does not heal.

The motto for the Soviets was pretty summed up as "git er done" no matter the cost. That meant lots of enviro damage --look at the Aral sea for another example.

[1]http://images.sciencesource.com/p/14185350/Damaged-tundra-de...

Native Americans practiced setting fires as a forest management technique for thousands of years and the forests of the Pacific Northwest survived. It took less than a hundred years of logging by the USA following the Indian Wars of the 19th century to wipe all of those forests out.

The Caledonian Forest of Scotland was destroyed in roughly the same amount of time during the 19th century by the English following the Highland Clearances.

Obviously there are economic and political forms of organization that do not result in massive environmental destruction. Saying that "it's not capitalism because the USSR did it too" when clearly the example of the current situation in Brazil is capitalist is disingenuous.

Right, I also recall how the Mayans depleted their forests and farmlands which resulted in droughts and famines and eventual social collapse. It happened rather quickly too. You are so right.

Brazil likes to think of itself as socialist --the Worker's Party (o partido dos trabalhadores) was in power for pretty long till recently (during which lots of the rainforest plundering took place). So even in Brazil, the leftists didn't care about the enviro.

I could also bring up a litany of Chinese projects, North Korean projects, Vietnamese, Former Soviet repubs. I think you get the picture. Much of the degradation was due to utilizing outdated technology, other times, just complete disregard for nature in the name of progress --three gorges dam, for example.

Capitalism saved the forests in North America, Brazil has a lot of state power and the corruption that comes with it. If the people of Brazil value the rainforest at all, it is a lower priority than whatever they are dealing with in their day to day life.

In North America, there is more forest cover than there was 200 years ago, thanks to private ownership and maintenance of woodlands.

Because of how productive these private woodlands are, there's largely no reason to cut down old growth forest.

"If the people of Brazil value the rainforest at all, it is a lower priority than whatever they are dealing with in their day to day life."

You assume Brazilians are represented by their government. In theory, yes. In theory.

No, I'm saying that if they're going to fight for anything in their government, it's not going to be this first.

There's barely any old growth forest left to cut in the US.

I'm not sure why you're downvoted because you're correct. But I suppose microcolonel's point is that capitalism has converted them to private forests for harvest.

I should note that growing forests consume 10-11 times more CO2 than old growth forests, and the US is excellent at keeping growth rates as high as possible or a given tract of land.

when a forest grows, it consumes c02, when it dies, it returns it. its zero net.

Not necessarily, if one make bio-char from the wood the carbon is stable for ~10k years, even if buried in the soil (terra pretax). This can be done successfully during the gasification process for producing heat, syngas and electricity. Also any items made from the wood that do not rot will not release their CO2 for the lifetime of the product.

There are large old growth forests in the Canadian boreal regions that are currently being destroyed by logging companies like Resolute. Since Canada has a strong government, Resolute can do things like file malicious lawsuits against non-profit organizations that are exposing this destruction:

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/industry-...

Brazil, in contrast, has a very libertarian government, so companies simply hire private hitmen to assassinate non-profit environmental group activists:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jul/13/environm...

Almost all of the old growth forest in the United States was destroyed by capitalism prior to World War I. For an extremely depressing photographic account I recommend the book Kinsey, Photographer: A Half Century of Negatives by Darius and Tabitha May Kinsey. It is a photo book of hundreds of photographs of the Pacific Northwest's giant tree forests being destroyed. The scale of these trees is almost impossible to comprehend today (only a few scattered patches of Giant Sequoias remain in California), and most of them were cut down to be made into small siding and roof shingles.

There are a handful of old forest groves left on private lands, and there are a few land trust organizations trying to save them. For example, I donate to the Save the Redwoods League, and their big project now is acquiring Mailliard Ranch.

I think that is true for wood/ pulp for paper, but agriculture is a big component. In the US, we really didn't have to wipe out forests to make room for agriculture.

also, although unpopular, its easy to bull doze over our forests, do our thing, and let it grow back.

where i grew up every 15~ years tractors and such go through wiping out many of the trees and reshaping the landscape, but it doesnt take very long before you never would know they were there.

that doesn't apply as well in many parts of the Amazon

The solution is simple - buy up all the rainforest and preserve it. It's annoying that the US, EU, Asian nations etc don't do this.

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