Nature-lovin' nations around the world planted more than 1 billion trees during 2007, meeting a kinda arbitrary goal set by the U.N. last November. The effort, boosted by Ethiopia's planting of 700 million trees, "is a further sign of the breathtaking momentum witnessed this year on the challenge for this generation -- climate change," said Achim Steiner, head of the U.N. Environment Program. And speaking of breathtaking momentum, Indonesia announced today that it will plant 79 million trees in time for the kick-off of the Bali climate conference -- on Monday. Oh, our achin' backs.
source: Associated Press, Reuters, Agence France-Presse
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Comments
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Greta Posted 2:56 am
29 Nov 2007
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Wolverine Posted 5:58 am
29 Nov 2007
Indonesia's bragging that it will plant trees in time for the climate conference is meaningless hypocrisy. Indonesia has destroyed most of its rainforests, which cannot be replanted. (Tropical rainforests have evolved for over 200 million years and once cut are gone forever. They cannot be replanted because the soils are too poor in nutrients to sustain replantings; plants now grow on the remains of dead plants, not out of the ground.)
The point of my post is that we should concentrate on stopping behavior that is causing our ecological problems, not try to convince ourselves that if we just plant a few trees or take other ineffective actions everything will be OK. It most certainly will not.
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simon seasons Posted 6:32 am
01 Dec 2007
Indonesia is not bragging when it says it can replant 79 million trees. Right now their population is about three times that figure. shouldn't be too hard to organise a national 'Plant One Tree Day'. Wouldn't be too hard anywhere for that matter or would wolverine rather walk about saying "do nothing and you'll all die sooner which is really great cause death to you all can't come fast enough". Don't get too impatient or you'll be walking around with a gun!
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Wolverine Posted 5:26 am
03 Dec 2007
I did not suggest that lower population will solve the problem of deforestation. Lower human population will solve or reduce problems caused or exacerbated overpopulation. What I clearly said was that only changing human behavior so that humans stop killing trees will solve the problem. I also said that planting native trees where they have been removed by humans is appropriate and certainly should be done. The problem is that claims that tree plantings will offset deforestation or actions that cause global warming are nothing but greenwashing, which makes people think that by planting trees it's OK to continue killing them and destroying forests.
I did not say "do nothing." What I said was change that we need to greatly simplify our lifestyles and have fewer children in order to actually solve the major environmental and ecological problems. As opposed to doing nothing, significantly lowering our consumption and population would be doing more than what most people are willing to do, which is why environmental and ecological problems are not getting solved. Instead of doing things like planting trees that take little sacrifice but provide very little ecological value as opposed to not killing them in the first place, people need to be told that we need to stop destroying the planet with our unnatural and unsustainable lifestyles. Articles and activities like this one are nothing but greenwashing and do more harm than good by getting people to think that they need not make any significant changes or sacrifices.
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