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Comment by Bobylonian | Hacker News Reader

Congo is one of the countries, that is already receiving foreign aid, so claiming, that it is not receiving any is simply a lie.

>>> They (we) would have to pay to Congolese people a competitive price for each tree saved from cutting.

The biggest issue of all of the foreign aid is corruption. The output of aid in most cases makes few mega rich billionaires from Africa and total poverty for rest.

There is hypocricity in the whole "save the forests" idea, because the only way to save forests is by dramatically reducing population - I don't see reappearance of forests(where squirrel can run wild and free without the need to touch the soil) in United Kingdom, where money should not be the issue. DRC has population >100 million - that fact alone is making unsustainable maintenance of forests, for a population, that has basic needs, that include roof above their home, clothing and food.

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> Congo is one of the countries, that is already receiving foreign aid, so claiming, that it is not receiving any is simply a lie.

> The biggest issue of all of the foreign aid is corruption. The output of aid in most cases makes few mega rich billionaires from Africa and total poverty for rest.

One must be careful with this narrative. Foreign aid received by developing countries is dwarfed (more than an order of magnitude) by unequal exchange, illicit trade flows and trade misinvoicing in the opposite direction, often allowed by these corrupt leaders to their own benefit and that of multinational corps, and enforced via rigged systems such as the IMF/World Bank/WTO.

Other comments have responded robustly to your depopulation comment.

>>>Other comments have responded robustly to your depopulation comment.

Were you refering to yourself when created this new account?

Nope, just a long-time listener, first-time caller kinda deal... was just surprised that everyone seemed to agree with your first comment, but took such issue on depopulation.

I think, that agreement here is about foreign aid, where op was offering it as a solution.

Depopulation of overpopulated countries is the only viable solution if rich overpopulated countries are demanding to other countries to save their forests. That is also a chance to show solidarity in preservation of forests. Claims, that forests are long gone and nothing can be done are childish - they can be restored and regrown back to their natural original glory. One of the commenter here had a very "sensible" solution to cram population of those overpopulated countries into some small areas and free up rest of the land for forests...

And by the way - did you read that article or are you here only because of comments, that you had to do something about them? Oh, those comentators - you can't let them roam free...

The affluent nations are beginning to depopulate. It's the developing nations that are seeing population explosions.

The problem going forward is not primarily populations in affluent nations, it's the rapid population expansion in developing nations. The US for example is something like #135 in population growth as a percentage and its domestic population is between stagnant and contracting already.

The next two billion people added to the present 7.9b tally is not coming from affluent nations. And those two billion people will be ravenous consumers. Those billions of added consumers in developing nations will want those trees cut down and they care a lot less about it than the rich world does.

And then there's China. They're already the world's biggest consumer, and are very rapidly expanding their consumption. Given what we know about their economy, it's likely their consumption is even higher than we already believe it to be. 20-30 years from now their consumption - as with their emissions output already - will drastically tower over for example what the US or affluent Europe are guilty of by comparison. What's the plan for dealing with that? Well, there is no plan, nobody is going to do anything about it, nobody can do anything about it, nobody will dare to speak in China's direction out of dread - exactly as with their catastrophic emissions problem.

There's no saving the forests in nations like Congo, that's the truth. Unless one plans to immediately put a total halt to all population expansion in developing nations (the only nations seeing significant population expansion). Otherwise the future outcome is very obvious: those billions of added people will all become intense consumers and their demand will place enormous pressure on ecosystems in places like Congo.

Most of the Black people in my section of the u.s. were stolen from Congo/Angola. To be precise, those of us whose ancestors came through Charleston, SC enroute to other areas in the southeast.

The devastation upon thriving, sustainable Indigenous economies — because we’re talking about peoples who made rainforests “work” before any human arrived in Europe or Asia — wrought by the trans-Atlantic slave trade from the 1500s onward and European colonialism is documented in Walter Rodney’s “How Europe Underdeveloped Africa” among hundreds of other analyses.

The level of eugenics and racism in the comments, let alone ignorance of the last 500 years of human history is incredible.

If you feel that you belong to that corner of Africa, why you are still in US and not on the route to your homeland? No one is barring you from leaving US! Though, I wonder - what are the people you are going to identify with - descendants of slavers, that massacred tribe of your long gone ancestors?

Not long before Europeans appeared in Congo basin, most of the local natives of area were robbed of their lands by new arrivals of taller black people. Their co-existence with these new masters is nothing less than slavery even in modern times. I wonder... how deep is that box of Pandora, that you want to open? Are you ready to pay for sins of your ancestors or is this exclusive thing to Whites only? Are you even aware, that significant part of Europeans in US initially were brought to US as slaves?

Europeans did not brought slavery to Africa and neither to US, where locals were happily enslaving each other. 500 years ago before arrival of Europeans with rare exceptions, any society in Africa had slavery. History is unpleasant, but that has hardly anything to do with ongoing war, that has reached heat in modern US. Btw, Hitler also eradicated Jews with the exactly same ideas about Aryan race, but you might need to get past 500 years in your history book to realize that.

Your refusal to acknowledge the difference between prisoners of war and the institution of chattel slavery is a disgrace and a consequence of the American education system that manufactures consent for imperialism and colonialism.

Maybe to put it in techy terms, Europeans did slavery at scale. We live in the aftermath of that and the threads are still visible (former colonies are still captive markets that export raw resources, more often than not to their previous colonial master's). We don't live in the global hegemony of the Corsair pirates, so if you want to discuss bondage on the African continent maybe address the context that it didn't form the basis of the global order we live in today.

Hitler is widely regarded as one of history's worst humans for just taking the colonialism European powers did at the time and applying it to Jews and other "undesirables" in Europe. While we're on the topic of America and how it didn't invent racism or slavery, might be worth noting how the Nazis got their idea for lebensraum and racial purity? I'm sure manifest destiny and one drop rules, or the fact that Long Island was the "eugenics capital of the world" played a part.

> Your refusal to acknowledge the difference between prisoners of war

Prisoners of war? They were loot.

We should understand the institution of slavery a little better.

The economy of much of the ancient world was based on slavery. E.g. fighting wars to capture people who could then be used as slaves domestically and sold for trade. The objective of these wars was to capture this human bounty.

Especially in Africa, this was why the wars were fought as slavery was one of the pillars on which the local economies rested, and this is true as far back as we have recorded history -- which is basically the chronicles of Arab slave traders buying slaves from Africa in the 7th Century on.

The richest man in Africa - Mansa Musa - earned his great wealth via slavery, himself owning thousands of personal slaves but capturing many orders of magnitude more and then trading them for gold and other riches during the middle ages. And not only Mali, but all of Africa's great empires were slave societies based on the principles of fighting wars to capture both slaves and territory.

To try to pretend that slavery was a modern invention only practiced in order to sell slaves to Europeans in the 18th Century and later is to ignore the entire (known) economic history of Africa.

> the only way to save forests is by dramatically reducing population

You seem awfully sure of that, yet i would argue there's many other strategies to deploy:

- criminalize planned obsolescence so something that is built once will last (if Ikea execs/engineers risked jails, they may produce more reliable products)

- ban products tied to deforestation (eg. avocados, palm oil) unless they're locally sourced from organic farms

- run public policies to reduce animal exploitation, as cattle is a top 3 factor for deforestation and 30-60% of global cultivated land is only cultivated to feed cattle: start by removing subsidies for animal exploitation and stopping public money going in this industry (eg. via school/office lunch), maybe even tax meat/dairy to subsidize more ecological production?

- ban or tax wood pallets for heating: they are currently presented as the "green" alternative to gas, but it's definitely not green and the forests involved are huge monocultures of certain tree species, where no proper ecosystem can develop

I'm sure there's many other points i'm missing.

Overall, the "overpopulation" point is not entirely wrong. It's just vastly overplayed by Global North elites who don't like us asking inconvenient questions about why they're the ones polluting everything, and profiting financially from destroying our environment. We have an abundance of resources to feed and house everyone, if we stop this bourgeois non-sense lifestyle some people like to entertain.

> If if Ikea execs/engineers risked jails, they may produce more reliable products

Ikea furniture is reasonably durable. Electronics and home electric appliances is what don’t last long and difficult or impossible to repair.

> Ikea furniture is reasonably durable.

Pre-Ikea furniture lasted centuries, not years. By that standard, Ikea is really not durable. Also it's well-known that Ikea kits are full of forever chemicals that we could (and should) do without.

> Electronics and home electric appliances is what don’t last long and difficult or impossible to repair.

And yet there's nothing preventing it in theory. Just pure capitalist greed. If some governments and corporations really wanted to do something about climate change, they have the power to do so. We as citizens are left only with the duty to sabotage their profiting of the entire situation because they are not going to do shit about it.

Agree with your points, to an extent. But how the hell do we get China etc. to agree?

Don't mean to be rude, but who cares? Just because someone else is doing something wrong doesn't mean you shouldn't make it right?

Also, it's worth pointing out that 3rd world countries are tired of global north hypocrits like us tech people pointing the finger at them for pollution while our european/north-american societies are the ones who fucked up everything for everyone: "we" colonized all territories, stole all resources, employed slave labor from mines to factories to sell shitty products to billions of people worldwide. And our countries are very much expected to be the least impacted by climate change, which is precisely why our governments are doing nothing about it beyond buying themselves a clean conscience by funneling public money into private pockets in "green new deal" setups. If you expect others to follow, leading by example is a pretty reasonable course of action, don't you think?

To be clear i'm not advocating to ban chinese imports overnight. But you could very well for example use the repairability index setup by the EU last year, so that only items with 10/10 scores can legally be imported and sold. And if you really wanna make a green new deal, then subsidize people buying solid materials: just because cheap/dirty stuff has been outlawed doesn't mean locally-produced alternatives are much cheaper. I'm not saying i have the best answers: there's so much we could do and the powers that be are not doing because they couldn't care less. These people are fucking psychopaths and until we start putting heads on spikes will never listen.

This is very true. All the problems of poverty in the world are bad governance / bad social structures, not lack of resources. Industrial countries produce enough to pull everyone out of poverty already, to fill every cauldron, were many cauldrons not so badly perforated.

Industrial countries of modern age are also China and India and most of countries that are manufacturing goods for export.

If China is "exploiting" DRC, it clearly is not going to pay for trees, that it can't get. Prosperous countries can give money to save some tress and locals will accept it and will also sell the tree to China - that's double profit ftw!

DRC is not governed by colonizers and is doing this on their free will. My people were oppressed by Russian Empire longer than DRC was colonized by Europeans and when they gained freedom, they in short time gained prosperity. It is an insult to the Congolese people, to consider them unable to think for themselves and make their own choices and sacrifices for their better future and that someone from US, who is not living in DRC has better understanding what is best for them.

Trees are not only producing oxygen, but they are also consuming it, so in total oxygen production value of trees around equatorial regions is 0. Threes might produce more oxygen further away from equator, only where days are longer, but they have never been a reason why on this planet there is an oxygen.

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/why-a...

The big thing about trees is that they absorb CO2 - of which there is too much in the atmosphere - not that they produce oxygen, which we are at no risk of running out of.

Oh dear - this is also laughable issue, because combating CO2 is depriving trees of their food. Whole Sahara has become greener from climate change and CO2 avaibility - maybe it is worth to grow trees in Sahara. Forests of Sahara - what a great name!

You should probably take some read at what neo-colonialism is. Just because on paper your country acquired independence does not mean it stopped being pillaged by foreign companies with the help of corrupt overlords.

Hell, even when your country pretends to be a democracy, and is responsible for colonizing other countries throughout history and massacring countless people (like France/USA/UK/China/Russia/Turkey has), you don't have free will as a people and you will still be exploited by psychopaths who run the show.

If you heard about DAPL in USA, or NDDL in France, you may know it takes a certain amount of people and anger (and arguably molotov cocktails) to stop corrupt corporations and government officials from stealing your land and polluting everything.

> The biggest issue of all of the foreign aid is corruption.

The biggest problem is the concept of aid because it is not resilient to corruption. The economy needs to factor in the outside environment, otherwise we're doomed. CO2 certificates are a good start but they need to be correctly priced and more is needed. Probably something like negatively priced Forest certificates that the country and the people can profit from by keeping the forest every year in a good state. The same problem but with a richer country exists in Brazil.

> aid because it is not resilient to corruption

Good point. That's why we in the global north should fix our shit and not send raw money to the corrupt overlords our industry and secret services have placed in power overseas.

For example, subsidized food production from the EU is weaponized to destroy local markets in Africa, and that's a shame!

> The biggest issue of all of the foreign aid is corruption. The output of aid in most cases makes few mega rich billionaires from Africa and total poverty for rest.

Very right

>the only way to save forests is by dramatically reducing population

Very very wrong. If you made LA county the same density as Paris, you could house every American. Stop eating meat, 41% of American land goes back. That's a lot of nature preserve my dude.

Obviously not a practical or feasible solution but there's a whole lot of spectrum between mega Paris + no meat and what we have now!

More UK specific, you have a housing crisis brought on by building restrictions, meaning people have to build out not up (despite the desire of young non-homeowners). There is a huge rewinding movement and the government is paying expenses to convert unproductive farm land to forest. They're also rebuilding wetlands along the South East

>>>If you made LA county the same density as Paris, you could house every American.

Where they will get water? How they will get food? How many roads and transportation and wasted energy will be required to deliver these bare necessities? Where they will dump their shit and garbage? I sure hope - not in the Ocean! My wild guess, dude, is that you will still need rest of USA to feed and support that concentration of population. Not to mention need for mental health support, because of encroaching of personal and communal space. People might be very social animals, but they are not sardines.

>>Stop eating meat

Consumption of meat - in particular, cooked meat, only in 3 million years made primates into humans. In that light, abandonment of meat also can lead to evolutionary changes and lack of protein, that meat is providing will affect brains.

Not raising cattle mostly shifts land usage to single culture crops, which are no better for environment and lead to impoverishment of arable lands. The main reason why animals are raised is economy - it takes less effort and energy to raise animals, compared to money you would earn from raising crops - to reach the same amount of money by raising crops, you need more arable lands and resources to maintain them - not to mentioning, that raising that amount of single crops will decrease their price value(because of open market) that will affect all crop growers and in the end they will be impoverished - not some dude in CA, who dos not have to tend crops.

>>>More UK specific

In UK many highrises from 1970s are razed to the ground and in their place are rebuilt family size houses, because highrises are extremely expensive to maintain, not to mention, that in crisis situations they are unmanageable - if there is a fire, then death is in 10s - even hundreds, if there is a single crime, then affected is not just one household and neighbouring families but the whole highrise.

UK is transforming some of the lands of defunct mines into forests, because it is dangerous to build house in place, that can suck it up with all the inhabitants. Wetlands are contantly exposed to tides from sea - also not viable place to build a house. Well, you can build house anywhere - in space, on the botom of the ocean, even on the active volcano, but it all comes of unsustainable costs for most of us out there. No one is holding you back to do what you preach - on your own expense.

"Housing crisis" in UK is not about lack of houses in a market, but lack of social welfare houses, that can be offered to people, who are living on welfare - and the main crisis here is that such people share in UK has reached significant share among population.

How did you miss...

>Obviously not a practical or feasible solution but there's a _whole lot of spectrum_ between mega Paris + no meat and what we have now!

Your understanding of economics and agriculture is as strong as your understanding of English grammar.

> lack of protein

Total FUD. Plants can provide some of the highest concentrations of protein found anywhere edible.

I don't think it's necessary to dramatically reduce population. Why not just have significantly more dense urban areas (urbanization especially in Africa is taking care of this naturally) and more sustainable energy sources (this I think should be subsidized by the West or at least supported with tech transfer to African nations who are unfamiliar with building hydro-power and nuclear)?

But can you think and provide any reasonable solution on how to restore historical uninterrupted forest, that once covered most of Europe and which now is highly urbanized area?

And I would suggest to read the article - the main issue that locals are concerned about is not preservation of trees, but receiving profit share from cutting these trees. Fate of trees is not uncertainty - they will be gone to give place where to grow crops.

Most of CDR population does not use electricity, but if they were using electricity, they would have even more needs and trees would be cut out in even bigger rate, to sustain that lifestyle.

You probably can't restore a truly "uninterrupted" forest in Europe, as you said people live in most places now and there isn't much you can do about it.

Having said that - Europe's forest coverage is increasing rapidly[0], and growing every year[1].

For another example, UK's forests are already up to "medieval" levels, and growing[2].

[0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2014/12/04...

[1] https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/07/forest-europe-environ...

[2] https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/woodland-back-to-medieval...

>>>Europe's forest coverage is increasing rapidly[0], and growing every year[1].

bushes

Statistics include under "forests" also bushes and young trees. There is also issue with understanding of what forest mean - forests are not trees, but includes soil, that is built up by trees over millenia and animals - without them forest is just a plantation - animals need older trees to use them for their habitat or for gathering food. Single species of trees, that are planted in inpenetrable rows are devoid of life of what natural forests have.

> UK's forests are already up to "medieval" levels

That is not a very high standard; as far as I recall, Britain has been a cultured landscape at the very least since the Iron Age. (Related to that is the fact that medieval population of Britain has also been roughly at Iron Age levels, or vice versa. There were apparently around four million people in Iron Age Britain.)

When you said in your initial comment "save the forests" I did not imagine you talking about restoring the historical forest from thousands of years ago, rather the forests of recent decades.

Yes, I did read it and see that they wanted a cut (also, assuming people didn't read the article because they don't agree with your take is super lame). Can't say I blame them, why should they starve while the rest of the world has already gotten theirs and burned all the coal and timber they wanted. I think your idea of having historical uninterrupted forests is unrealistic and unnecessary barring all humanity dying or leaving earth for some other planet,]. I personally can't stand this degrowth mindset that would bring us back to the hunter gatherer era as it's unrealistic and unhelpful in tackling humanity's current problems. The genie is out of the bottle, no one is going back to a pure hunter gatherer lifestyle.

Edit, grammar error and changing "forests today" to "forests of recent decades" to be more precise

>>>I personally can't stand this degrowth mindset that would bring us back to the hunter gatherer era

Your derogatory language towards forest-gatherer lifestyle means that you have not read article - that article is about hunter-gatherers who live in forests. Where else they can get their grubs, to cook? Where they can gather meat and wood?

I'm sorry, do you think they are literally only hunting and gathering now? Have you traveled much in sub-saharan Africa? I'm just back from 6 weeks doing business in Cameroon. These people maybe gathering some food and engaged in low productivity agriculture but often they also are having cell phones, many go to cities to trade, they're using motorbikes and vehicles, etc., many more young people go to cities to work and send money back home. These are not like uncontacted Amazonian tribes doing traditional hunter gathering work, the article talks about them using the ForestLink solution!

That's not really an excuse to use derogatory language. What else are you thinking about those people?

Are you referring to my comment about not liking the degrowth mindset and wanting to go back to hunter gathering? I'm not sure why that's derogatory. Do you think most of the people referenced in the article would not trade their current lifestyles for a middle class life in the US or Europe today? I also was talking specifically about "degrowth mindset" which is not referring to the people actually living in the conditions described in the article but rather westerners who want to drag the world back from technological progress in a misguided attempt to save it. I think Tyler Cowen had a good talk/article about it in Marginal Revolution a few weeks back, and Noahpinion (Bloomberg columnist) had a good post about it. The things I am optimizing for generally in my worldview are 1) increasing quality of life for the most people possible, 2) preventing x-risks. I mention this so you can understand where I'm coming from. I just don't think that a malthusian/degrowth mindset will help anyone. And no, I don't like hunter-gathering as an idea in general for the world (although some days after I'm sick of all the tech and nonsense around us I do dream of it) but for the long term sake of humanity reverting to this seems short-sighted... what if we need global coordination on a problem like asteroid avoidance or a supervolcano and humanity is extinguished because we don't have the requisite technology to tackle it?

https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/people-are-realizing-that-...

>>>Do you think most of the people referenced in the article would not trade their current lifestyles for a middle class life in the US or Europe today?

I'm very realistic about this and trees will be chopped to insure that these people advance towards that lifestyle. Either that or they will migrate.

My take is that everyone has read in that article what they wanted to read. Even if presented here as a "saving tree" issue, this article is hardly about saving trees - at best that is a story about developing country, that has similar problems that US and previously Europe endured. Also, in the light of COP26(that everyone here has long forgotten), where rulers of Earth arrived in private jets, it really starts to show that most of people are mindless parrots and not individual thinkers, that Humans could be.

>>>but rather westerners who want to drag the world back from technological progress in a misguided attempt to save it.

I'm sure that no one wants to give up their lifestyle to do so. But that doesn't mean that they can't preach it to others...

>>>1) increasing quality of life for the most people possible, 2) preventing x-risks. I mention this so you can understand where I'm coming from.

That is a noble task and the only price for that is punishment of a Saviour. Though, I'm slightly sceptical about members of ex-colonizers providing help to ex-colonies, as from the common memory of my people, centuries old hatred does not wane if "oppressors" are still lingering around with their help...

>>>I just don't think that a malthusian/degrowth mindset will help anyone.

Neither is helping a denial about crisis. Malthusian theory is scientific attempt to describe common pattern of growth and collapses of societies. Unfortunatelly there does not seem to be anything better to describe those. Also, despite your claims, it seems, that you have that same mindset you are so dreaded about as the whole article about disappearance of trees belongs to the same doom scenario that can happen in future. Well, I for one am very deeply disappointed in those, because according to UN in 1980s, Kiribati had to be under water by 2000 and it is still there... I know, I know - the speed is not fast enough and Kiribati will face it's doom in about 100(not 50) years, but I have exactly the same attitude to other doom scenarious. Yeah, by that time people will learn how to breathe CO2 and it is outrageous, that there is an idea to deal with that, too...

>>>what if we need global coordination on a problem like asteroid avoidance or a supervolcano and humanity is extinguished because we don't have the requisite technology to tackle it?

Honestly, not our problem. Worrying about something that is not preventable is not very sane and constantly living in fear is not healthy. Anyway, if there will be such event, get your best drink and enjoy it while it lasts.

Hey Bobylonian,

Thanks for the very evenhanded reply. I am crushed and won't have time to respond point by point for a bit but just wanted to say thank you for engaging in an interesting conversation. I do not agree with your viewpoint but respect it. If you have any articles/posts that elucidate it further I'd be happy to add it to my reading list.

Well, I hope this all is once in a blue moon event :D

I've let myself astray and not concentrating on the tasks I really have to concentrate and not this type of entertainment.

Because each person still uses about 10 full wardrobes in their lifetime, 100,000 prepared meals, a few dozen smartphones and other electronics, a mountain of disposibles like diapers and napkins and takeout containers and masks. People need a lot of resources for even a modest standard of living.

No, the biggest issue is that the aid "developing" (exploited) countries receive is orders of magnitude less than the wealth that is extracted from the continent. How is that wealth extracted?

Debt. Haiti is still paying France for daring to secure their independence.

Industrialization. African slave labor and raw colonial resources paved the way for the European industrial revolution while relegating developing countries to a captive market status. You still don't see industrialization for the most part in these former colonies.

Destabilization. Maintaining the petrodollar and regional interests is more important to the US than stable, autonomous, multicultural democracies. We could have an entire course on how Americans and Europeans play foreign ethnic groups against one another and destabilize democracies in the process.

If you want to know why all these countries are so corrupt, maybe look at how those ruling classes came to power. More often than not we played a part in installing them and shielding them from consequences.

>>The biggest issue of all of the foreign aid is corruption.

It's worse than corruption. It buys entire ruling class of poorer nations paying peanuts in dollars/euros. It's subversion of poor countries by propping up oligarchies.

Congolese population density is only 10% higher than the US, which is currently gaining forest coverage. So I don't think population levels are relevant to this particular issue.

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