yet we will let tens of millions of additional immigrants into this country. It is said they want to emulate the American lifestyle. How will that help with preserving resources and reducing pollution?
7
Weak oversight has lead to bad air, foul water, and life without trees. Ikea and Home Depot should demand higher standards from their suppliers. Consumers should make wiser purchases.
13
Just say no. If they want wood, let them de-forest their own country. Don't get colonized by China!
12
I don't get it. Why doesn't Russia require forests to be replanted. Why not require 1 for 1 replanting -- take one tree down, plant one and make sure the new tree grows healthily. Require loggers to pay maintenance fees and hire locals to maintain the new tree farms. China should not cut off the hands that feed them. China must help reforest in every country where it is committing deforesting.
6
One of the best articles in the Times. This article is not about China but about the destruction of the earth forests and environment. In this case, the blame is equally shared by Russia and China.
25
Don't simply blame China. The West in its glory days devastated the planet too. The consumer culture given to the Earth by the West is based on limitless natural resources.
What I would like to tell China is that a world without rhinos, tigers or elephants is a poor legacy to leave for your next generation. They will still see them in books and museums.
China can show greatness by showing care beyond just its nationalism and finance. China is great. Behave great.
18
“It’s not sustainable,” he said.
‘Nothing Will Be Left’
True enough. But let's look at the choices. It now seems obvious that we are on a trajectory, one way or the other, to use up most of the planet's resources, pollute the commons, kill off thousands of species quickly, and more gently parboil ourselves and what other hardy critters remain after the initial onslaught. We are already seeing climate migration to cooler locales.
The discussion now should be over how rapidly to play this out. We can either continue on our current pace of destruction or impose draconian regulatory controls designed to slow the process down. But what will we have actually gained? Maybe push the threshold of catastrophic planetary decimation out another 50 or 75 years?
Is it worth it? Perhaps it is better to have unfettered fun now while accepting our earlier demise, or at least shrinkage, as an inevitable price to be paid. After all, humans are tough and adaptable, so the species is unlikely to be utterly wiped out. Instead of 8 billion humans, the total is likely to slip back to about 1 billion -- approximately where we were in 1800. That would likely be a sustainable level consistent with our actual capacity for discipline and restraint.
The hard problems are species guilt and fear of death. They seem to be what is driving our current epidemic of denial and depression. Maybe the mass lunacy begins to lessen if we deal with environmental degradation as primarily a mental health issue.
5
Where's Russia's responsibility in all this? All they have to do is cease timber exports to China. I don't see an element of coercion or duress in this simple import/export relationship at all.
10
I wish people would stop referring to vital components of the environment as "resources" - as if their only reason for existence is to be used up by the human species.
24
There is an easier fix than to simply project heartburn about all this: Don't export your raw materials to China or import finished goods from them. Yeah, there is an economic impact but life is about making cost / benefit trades. That is a far better outcome compared to hand wringing that leads to loss of protected habitats.
China does the same thing to protected species like the Tiger. It engages in encouraging poaching and killing of these magnificent beasts in places like Siberia, India, Indonesia because there is a market for the big cats genitals in China. The answer to that too is simply a refusal to sell.
Educate your local vendors that they don't need to sell to China. There is a way to dry them out. It is called economic noncooperation.
Hey, we drove the colonial British out of India using that strategy. It works.
9
There is no Plan-et B.
7
IKEA ("We Love Wood") has also been widely condemned for industrial clear cutting of old growth forests in Russia.
9
Strange focus in this article, blaming China for the logging of Russian timber.
“Russia has been a witting collaborator, too, selling Chinese companies logging rights at low cost and, critics say, turning a blind eye to logging beyond what is legally allowed.”
The Russian kleptocracy bears the blame in this instance, not the Chinese.
16
I see some people's long talk. I wonder if his country has imports.👎
1
When my friends and relatives and I grow rich, it's not at someone else's expense. When the neighbor family which looks and behaves differently than me grows, then ofcourse something is wrong - they are growing at the expense of something or someone else. Welcome to the 21st Century - where the subalterns and other races are now consuming the same things you did without nary a concern in the last 2/3 centuries.
7
@SR
Yea, at RATES 1,000,000% greater, and beyond.
1
The amount of discoveries and items that China has given to the world, they now seem to be taking away.
1
The real problem is that china is manufacturing poor quality junk furniture, and other bad quality things, and buyers dispose of it all quickly and must then buy it again. This planet-destroying wastefulness depletes all kinds of resources, and poisons the earth with the chemicals that go into manufacturing. This is a horror. Our country and every other country should construct laws that assure products are made well. China's playing a game. They purposely sell items that break quickly, so they can sell them again and receive western currencies that are then used to purchase basic materials to make more cheap garbage. China must be stopped at once from this planet-ruining agenda.
13
@Robert wonder what happened to the planet saving agenda when all the bison were wiped out or untold misery was visited on the world thanks to America needing cheap oil or when everyone else was poor and could remain poor eh?
12
@Robert The US uses 25 percent of the world's natural resources, and is still in the top three polluters, so please get perspective.
8
@Robert Have you ever heard of "economics"? We and the rest of the world buy Chines junk, because a large segment of the population can not afford anything else.
Pay people better and maybe they can afford real furniture. Have you ever heard of IKEA? They make a fortune selling to us the next level up. I am a wood worker, one reason is it is the only way I can afford nice furniture.
5
This competition for resources is an effect of over-population. Whether wood, potable water, oil and gas, meat, farm crops, ocean fisheries, rain forest depletion or the fouling of the air we breathe, it's a zero-sum game. During the 20th century, the population in the world grew from 1.65 billion to 6 billion. In 1970 there were roughly half as many human beings as exist today. Our average population increase is now estimated at 82 million per year. If the widespread obliviousness to the consequences of our depletion of the planet's natural resources triumphs over science, we face an existential tragedy for all mankind.
15
We have a lot of wood in Maine. Bangor was once the world's largest exporter of wood. China has recently been buying up formally defunct Maine paper mills. To its credit, the state requires those of us who own forest land to manage it responsibly.
11
@Betsy
And Mainers are selling them to the Chinese, why?
5
Yet another case that proves the old dictum from North America's Indigenous population; "When the white man realizes he can't eat money, it will be too late."
I'd like to congratulate those who seek personal riches and profit by raping the mother earth that gave them life. You have proven the timeless worth of Indigenous wisdom but, unfortunately, it is too late for you to learn what to do with it.
16
So US sanctions against Russia has forced Russia to make lousy deals with China. It's a shame Russia has to sell its natural resources since US has sanctioned its financial banks etc and in the end Russia being closer to China will not help the US or the EU.
4
China's vocacious appetite for timber, of course, is fueled in no small part by our voracious appetites for the things they make of those resources. Rapacious capitalism takes two to tango.
36
I hear great things about babmboo flooring these days! Given the rate at which it grows, it seems a better alternative to trees.
15
@Margot lane -- Yes. Bamboo plants, like big trees, have air-cleaning qualities. Bamboo grows fast. It should definitely be used instead of cutting down old forest growth (if there is any left in the first place).
3
Two articles this week in the NYT that document the way the Sixth Great Extinction is accelerating -- this story on the destruction of the boreal taiga (which has been predicted for some years as the follow-on to the destruction of tropical rainforests) -- and the story about the deaths of hundreds of millions of birdsfor which our urban areas are lethal to flight.
There is not going to be a lot left by 2100 except a tremendous biomass of humans. Maybe the prediction of Soylent Green will come true?
12
'drain the resources of a far larger country'
I have read that China has huge coal and other mining resources, but chooses instead to buy from other countries.
interesting as a long-term strategy - 'a wise general makes a point of foraging on the enemy' - Suz Tzu's Art of War.
24
@Frank when they couldn't see across the street or breath they had a few second thoughts but timber wasn't the problem.
This article is wildly unfair to the Chinese.
There is every reason for Peru or Mozambique to regulate logging so that forests are sustainable. Any resource rich country should manage its commercial resources and that management will be abided by. The United States drills and mines in different countries. What is necessary is that the countries in which we drill or mine manage their resources.
Writing as though the Chinese were wantonly abusive is unfair. Russia can and will protect its resources, but Russia benefits from Chinese business.
8
My wife and I crossed Russia on the Trans Siberian Railroad last year and saw some of the deforestation and local resentment towards the Chinese. My wife and I are Chinese/Americans and we felt the resentment of our guide. We shared their feelings because we are tree huggers and believe in conserving the environment. We felt that if the Russians did not want their forests clear cut, they need to take it up with their own government, afterall, the Chinese can only log what is permitted by the Russian government, which unfortunately, is as greedy as their Chinese counterparts.
32
The photo caption refers to lumber but peeled logs are shown. Timber might have beet a better noun.
The earth carrying capacity is limited.
Indeed, the earth is past the sustainable point in consumption - humans are eating the seed corn of future generations
And yet economists continues to argue for more economic growth - with no taking into account of what this would do to the environment
Today's section on "Is the US full ?" being an example
12
China is simply going through its own Industrial Revolution; it is simply copying America's economic past though with some contemporary differences. Major environmental regulation/policy in the US was only established between the 1960s-80s, allowing US industry before this time to exploit American/foreign natural resources with severe environmental consequences. China's revolution is different in that it is occurring within the era of environmental regulation and oversight. Not that China follows international environmental law; it can do whatever it wants. China will protect its revolution just as the US did and at the expense of human and environmental health. But why not exploit someone else's cheap resources and protect your own? While I don't agree with the unsustainable exploitation of natural resources, this makes sense - find countries who are willing to sell their raw resources for dirt cheap, buy as much as possible while prices are hot, make some cheap products, and then sell them to Home Depot for domesticated Americans to consume. So while it is important to be aware of what China is doing - slaughtering forest habitat in countries like Russia - it is also important to remember this tragedy is China's own Industrial Revolution, which is being played out on a global scale. China has learned much from America and Europe's example. It's China's turn now. What comes around goes around I guess. And so our poor earth will continue to burn...
11
“You could not log all of it in 100 years,” she said."
Famous last words.
Not added," but we will certainly try."
41
Interesting article but useless to those of us (like me) without a school-of-forestry-degree level knowledge of the economic structure behind timber commodities. My own family harvests white pine, birch and red oak from our small New England holding and frankly I was surprised to learn where it all went. Wisconsin, Tennessee, Canada, China and Pakistan...not to mention the sawmill’s own small pellet fuel steam plant that powers the kilns. The wood (primarily oak) going to China is primarily for...surprise... to build furniture for the Chinese domestic furniture market.
Fortunately timber is a renewable resource and once felled still functions as a planetary
carbon storage medium so long as the material goes into relatively long lasting products and forests are replanted. Younger trees may actually remove more carbon from the atmosphere than mature ones...depending on species and age.
7
@Woodson Dart No need for any degree to understand that if you corrupt local governments to log at an industrial scale without any concern for the law, you will harm the environment. From the Amazon forest to the jungles in Indonesia (and apparently in China itself a couple of decades ago), this is not really a very new question.
8
Hey...you can even go back to the 18th and 19th Centuries when all of New England’s carefully cultivated (by Native Americans...primarily using fire...to facilitate hunting and travel by foot) old growth forests were cut down to make way for farms...or when the entire upper Michigan peninsula was deforested for the timber that went to build nearly every prairie homestead and town from the Mississippi to the Rockies. Of course less “corruption” was required because there were basically few or no laws.
10
@Bob Robert Disregard for the law? You assume Russia has forestry laws, I believe them to be more like us now, always away around environmental laws, especially with GOP Judges.
The newly wealthy Chinese appetite for some of our most precious natural resources is appallingly destructive. Elephant ivory, Manta gill rakers, Pangolin scales, Rhino horn, Tiger bone, Bear bile...all of these are used in Chinese traditional medicine and believed to have unproven power, like curing cancer in the case of Pangolin scales. These unique mammals are being driven to extinction ( see the Netflix documentary on the Most Trafficked Animal in The World). How do you combat 3,000 years of superstition? Even Mao had trust in Western medicine and rejected traditional Chinese therapies for the most part. China is becoming increasingly totalitarian, and if the leadership had the will, they could stop these practices.
40
Sell opium agin to China and make all Chinese drug addicts so Chinese will buy drugs instead of other produce!
6
I found this article somewhat alarmist and superficial in its analysis. So China is both the largest importer and the largest exporter of wood, and the article even acknowledges it is turning much of it into Ikea and Home Depot furniture. Who do we think is buying all that exported wood furniture, and would the demand evaporate if it were being assembled in Vietnam, Indonesia or Mexico instead of China? Look at your own futons, desks, bookshelves, armoires, etc, people. I'm no defender of China, but the article notes they have long ago restricted logging at home and they seem to be mainly using imported wood to build furniture to meet export demand. There are plenty of empty condo towers and bridges to nowhere in China, but if they're unfurnished and just held as investments, this is not contributing to this lumber demand as much as furniture demand in the west is (those towers and bridges are using more cement, concrete and steel, I understand, while in the west we are filling our McMansions and second homes with more and more stuff). Blaming China for this seems like blaming them for the surge in global smartphone demand, or Mexico for drug use in the US - missing the point. It's possible Chinese demand is driving this, but I don't see any evidence for that presented, nor is that consistent with general trends re: Chinese consumer demand.
15
@UWSer If China was not flouting the law to produce cheap wood to be made into cheap furniture, then the true value of wood would be factored in the price of furniture, and suddenly that sofa that you don’t expect to last more than a year or two would not seem that good of a deal. So yes it does matter that China respects the rules other countries abide by.
If China cannot or doesn’t want to play by the rules (that we can fix at least for our own economies), I can’t see why we should still play with them. As I said in another comment, if the price we have to pay for this is that we don’t have access to cheap wooden furniture anymore, we can deal with this. Especially in the US where there are plenty of timber resources (and actually a glut of pine).
6
I agree with you. I think the article is still a bit misleading -- it's not "China's voracious appetite for timber" that's the issue here; it's the world's voracious appetite for timber and willingness to buy it from the lowest-cost producer and turn a blind eye to the methods that allow China to produce at such low cost. But the rest of the world does share in the blame; it's not just China.
11
I think logging companies in the US - for the most part - do so in a responsible manner.
Replanting trees, cutting trees in a sustainable manner, etc.
It is in their self interest to do so.
You always want to have more trees to cut in the future.
This may be one of the many evil legacies of the Soviet period - without a market economy where prices convey information about value and scarcity , the USSR would routinely devastate and poison their environment in ways that made Love Canal look pristine in comparison.
6
@DennisG
No way, no how.
Not by a country mile.
In my state, once a cutting plan is approved, the logger doesn't have to abide by the Clean Water Act, and any violations accrue to the landowner.
A typical sentiment is found on a bumper sticker I saw on a logger's truck: Cut, Kill, Dig, Drill.
8
@Jay Dwight
The logger's truck bumper sticker should have read "Cut, Kill, Dig, Drill, Die".
4
i enjoy encountering topics that confront my ignorance. so i looked into chinese timber exports and imports.
most of china's wood products are plywood and cheap furniture. nearly half of its exports go to the USA, the EU and japan. so it's our voracious discard consumerism, not china's appetite, that's driving exports.
nearly all chinese imports (mostly logs and sawnwood) come from africa, papua new guinea and the solomon islands. and, yes, russia. but compare the size of siberia to new guinea on a map for a grain of salt.
half the imports to china come from "countries at high risk of illegality," AKA criminal logging. but if we blame china and pity russia, we're twice distracted from the environmental, climate and criminal guilt on that new sofa that really ties the room together. nicer for us that the regulations are so "difficult to enforce."
can logs actually "transform a chinese town"? i don't think so. logs i know tend to just lie around, and the bumps on them are even worse. then what transforms a chinese town? oh, i'll go with profit, also a growing global population, also profiteering (criminal profit), also discard consumer culture. but not logs.
don't like that new sofa after all? no worries, just toss it to the curb, let hospice pick it up. there's hundreds more sofas already on a ship headed to a port, and from the port to a store near you. will that be cash, or credit?
8
@drollere Except that the consumer is very unlikely to know where the wood from its furniture is coming from, and whether it's sourced ethically or not. Buying wooden furniture does not have to be a drag on the environment.
These companies that destroy hectares of forest without replanting a tree however, know very well that they are doing something wrong for money. So are the governments that allow it. So the blame on them is quite obvious.
4
Russia has a responsibility to measure the long term value of its resources and put a lid on corruption. The US can help by realigning policy to keep the dollar export competitive, import less and export more.
1
This article on China's "voracious" lumber consumption that has left Russia "scarred," a place where soon "nothing will be left" feeds into one of the NYT's favorite - and there are so many - alarmist China narratives. Today it's the old trope of Chinese as swarming environment and market disrupting locusts. Doesn't matter if its global tourism, foreign STEM students, real estate, solar panels, international infrastructure, or lumber the NYT is here to tell us there are just too many Chinese and that's not a good thing. Doesn't even matter if China is following the laws or even leading, as it is and frankly must, in forest conservation efforts and green technology development. Even if the problem is largely with mismanagement and corruption in other countries - still - "too much China." It's come to the point where China's simple existence as a rising nation of more than 1.4 billion people with the largest middle class in the world and a tech base that will soon overtake the US has become an existential threat to an increasingly cranky and rudderless America that while endlessly hammering China for the consequences of its growth and successful development all while controlling its population - an achievement which should be celebrated -refuses to honestly address the core issue from which all current environmental challenges including forest consumption stem - an epically irresponsible global population explosion that is not going to end well.
14
@Belasco "Doesn't even matter if China is following the laws or even leading, as it is and frankly must, in forest conservation efforts". That's the point: China isn't following the law. Chinese companies barely follow Chinese laws when operating in China, why would anyone care when they are not respecting the law abroad? The strong and honest Russian governments of these faraway provinces?
That the NYT thinks there are too many Chinese people is your own read, and quite frankly you don't have much to substantiate this claim. China (and by extension its companies) has a very poor environmental record at home and abroad, very poor record in respecting foreign countries' laws, and obviously poor record in respecting human rights that it considers a Western concept. That the NYT reports on these abuses is what is expected of any newspaper, because as you pointed out yourself, what happens in China impacts all of us.
Also you can link Chinese pollution to the global issue of overconsumption all you want, companies flouting the law and destroying the environment for money is still an issue. That you want to address the issue on the consumer side does not mean you don't want to address it on the producer's.
17
@Belasco
How much does 350,000,000+ middle class people matter when they are basically doing it off the backs of 1 billion of their countrymen? That is 78% of the Chinese people in China who are poor. For a little more perspective, the impoverished Chinese account for a little less than 1 out every 7 people, or 13.28% of the people on this planet. Or three times the total population of the United States.
1
@Still Waiting for a NBA Title
You need to read up a bit more on China. The whole population has benefited and is benefiting from its economic rise. Schools and infrastructure benefit everyone. Over the last thirty years all Chinese have become better off some much more some not as much. But wages across the board have increased significantly every year both in white collar and blue collar positions. Just the average nominal minimum wage in China nearly doubled between 2011 and 2018, and wages for workers in state-owned enterprises rose even faster. (For example, Chinese auto workers make more than$10 an hour in Beijing more than their Mexican counterparts.) Check the latest ILO (International Labour Organization) wage report China is the only major country in the world where workers wages continue to go up. Things move fast these days, particularly in China. Old prejudices may be comforting but they do not reflect reality. If that matters.
6
And now the West has large parts of its industry that relies on deforestation in Russia and in other poor countries.
China will never respect the rules because they don’t care about other countries, and therefore don’t care about the environment. As long as you bring money (and thus power) to the central government, you can destroy and kill (in the case of all the fentanyl exports among many other things) all you want. Dealing with them is being complicit.
We should really wean off our dependency to this totalitarian dictatorship as soon as possible. If the cost is less disposable furniture, plastic stuff, and clothes, I think we can stomach it.
28
Agreed. The real issue is not that Chinese consumers are driving this through their own voracious demand. It's that western consumers are skirting blame by interposing China as a middleman to do the dirty work of violating logging rules overseas, or seeking our lumber with no applicable restrictions, and washing their hands of the responsibility while enjoying low prices and continuing on their blissfully (or willfully) ignorant, virtue-signaling paths. Probably tweeting about the horrors on their Chinese-made, environment-destroying iphones too.
7
@Bob Robert -- Yes, we should learn ourselves off. Come to think of it, we should have never have them produce things that we can perfectly manage in our own countries. This does not just for the US but for Europe.
It is my understanding that China ravaged it's forests centuries ago, ergo their long-time reliance on bamboo. Now their appetite for wood products has returned with a vengeance, and lacking their own, the look elsewhere. Now they try to sell us on the sustainability of bamboo, while deforesting our forests. Sad.... Might I suggest rehabing old buildings rather than building new. Very little lasts longer than oak.... And sadly more architectural salvage is going to landfills than to the salvage yards. Sad.... Most pine furniture (ala Ikea and plywood) have limited lives, but conifer forests, like their leafy cousins, help with their environmental qualities, providing us all with oxygen (which has declined 10% or so in the last 100 yrs.) Alas....
6
@Anon (another woman)
China is not "lacking their own" wood. They have the largest plantation forest system in the world. They are just very good at playing the 'long game'. Why would the Chinese government let local resources be used when wood in many other countries is so cheap. Its better for them to use this up first to the extent possible and by then their local resources will be even more valuable. By that point more tree will also be at ideal harvest age so it can be substantively harvested while still meeting their environment goals such as erosion control and carbon sequestration.
4
@Hal S
My source was a Chinese scholar and professor from circa 1976. Perhaps they got wise and started growing forests, but it seems to me that a lot of architecture, like in old temples, are made largely from engineeringly-sound bamboo, and that trees like we have in the New World, where there are still some virgin forests, were at one time non-existent in China. Sounds like maybe they came up with some good solutions, but either way, I do not feel very sorry for them if they do (or if they don't) lack for trees. The Sarahara Desert used to be lush forests, too. And if we keep treating our topsoil like we do now, well, that could be the fate of our farms as well. We'll have to see.... Let's hope it is a very long view.... I do understand the economics of your point, and it is a point well taken
China seems to be at the heart of so much ugliness. Whether it's the logging discussed in the article or their voracious appetite for wild and endangered species for aphrodesiacs, it seems their culture really doesn't care about much else other than themselves. I realize in truth it's a human problem as we're all very quickly overwhelming and destroying our planet, but often China's unnecessary destruction seems beyond horrible.
69
@2mnywhippets
"China seems to be at the heart of so much ugliness." Well, that's certainly the narrative the NYT is so relentlessly pushing. And the narrative so eagerly consumed by so many commentators. Hard to think of a form of xenophobia that is so eagerly encouraged by US media and worn so proudly by its exemplars. As we have seen so often before when your core goals are geopolitical truth and balance goes out the window. Rome had Carthage now the US has China and "China must be destroyed." Or at least vilified every day in the pages of the NYT.
12
Why don't you say anything about the war launched by the United States in the Middle East?🚀
4
@2mnywhippets -- a stronger cancer than most humans.
1
Another day, three more pieces of negative reporting on China. No matter China is on the demand side or the supply side, it's always China's fault. Have the NYT reporters ever taken an Econ101 class that teaches the concept of market equilibrium?
22
@MingST
You Chinese are free to list all of the wonderful things China does. Instead, all you do is point out that someone else once did something that you argue is just as egregious as China’s shameful behavior being highlighted in the article. Perhaps if China did some good for the world, the paper would write about it.
22
@NorthernVirginia
" Perhaps if China did some good for the world, the paper would write about it."
China did and does plentiful good things for the world. Only a narrow-minded person could not be aware of it. China is currently doing tremendous volumes of trades and businesses with African, Asian and Latin American countries that benefit both sides. The MSM in the west usually only focuses on the dark side.
7
@MingST
No it doesn't.
At present, China is busy overpopulating the world at an alarming rate.
1
Russians have abused their natural resources for a century. Now they are letting China do the same. Shame on Russia for selling its soul for next to nothing.
50
@Baboulas
The USA becoming a net petroleum exporter is putting a lot of pressure on Russia. It is natural Russia would turn to exploiting another natural resource to keep money coming in.
2
Epic deforestation is as good a reason as any to stop measuring a country's success by GDP. Constant economic growth requires destroying ecosystems, making the world less livable for everyone and everything, except perhaps those profiting from the destruction. At the very least, economic growth as the golden metric for society should be viewed with skepticism or disgust.
18
A few months ago, Wall Street Journal had an article reporting that the US lumber investors lost their life savings over investments made decades ago on forest and lumber, mainly due to the very low price of lumber today.
Now, it seemed that those losing investors finally can find a customer and get their life savings back.
Also, wild fires last year at CA demonstrated that you need some logging to keep forest safe and healthy for everyone.
3
@zj There is plenty of logging in Butte County, and the surrounding counties. Use Google Maps and see for yourself. But none of the retirees in Paradise want all of the trees around their homes cut down, which is what you would have to do to stop a wind-driven fire event like we saw last year. Climate change is a bigger factor in these fires than Chinese appetite for wood. Denude those towns, and no-one will want to live there. Nice try with your link, though.
7
Don’t tell Trump but one solution to fire risk in California’s rural communities would be to surround them with continuous belts of golf courses...which make excellent fire breaks.
Do that and bury all power lines and you’re almost home.
3
I cannot imagine the planet devoid of forests, which is just as well, because without the forests we will all die. China should be sanctioned for its lack of regulation to protect its workers and the environment. They also have huge concentration camps where they imprison millions of Uighur Muslims. I wish US companies would stop doing business there and move to other countries. We need to demand that US companies stop making products in China and boycott products made in China until the Chinese government stops its environmental and human rights abuses.
23
Rapacious, unsustainable, dangerous and reckless is what we are witnessing. China is on a rampage, and the environment is now the victim, and as the environment suffers, we all suffer. Who will hold China accountable? This is a nation which believes it is above any sort of international law. Consider: what kind of nation builds islands in the middle of international waterways to artificially restrict the flow of trade? China is very dangerous, most particularly in terms of its unbridled arrogance to destroy environmental sustainability and our planet itself as it seeks ever greater industrialized glory.
53
@Hierocles they're riding the capitalism coattails. No one in the west will hold them accountable because large companies are benefiting from cheap lumber and some rich white guy is profiting.
17
@Hierocles - who do you think is China's biggest customer? Yes, China is raping the environment - but at whose behest? Look down at your clothing, your cupboards, your nice furniture and you have the answer.
35
@MMS
Very true! However, I like capitalism, but believe it needs to be checked by progressive laws to protect itself from gross injustice and untrammeled greed. Look at Uber. No way this company and similar companies should have been allowed to kill off the law-abiding taxi and limousine industry, staffed by very hard-working immigrants. What has Uber, Via, Lyft innovated? Absolutely nothing, just the ability to operate with a license and openly flout law and order in unchecked pursuit of an IPO. Sick.
7
Please US timber companies. Don't let greed ruin our forests. Please.
8
@Dan Barthel
Have you taken a look at private timber lands in western Oregon and Washington? They are already ruined.
5
@Dan Barthel
As someone who works in the North American Lumber export business. I can assure you that The US Plants more tree's than it harvests. The US has its lumber resource well under control. There is no Hack and slash policies. Sustainability is king.
4
@mountainone And BC is worse.
2
Always a problem. The Chinese log into our secure websites and the log out of the Russian forests. Hopefully the Russians will learn from American logging decimation of the Redwood forests and other pristine ancient but destroyed forests.
16
There is no way Mother Nature is not going to be affected by more stripping of the timber on this planet; at least as far as living beings are concerned, whether they are krill in the sea up to blue whales, or bacteria, viruses, ants, bees, birds, all the animals in the forest and of course (the worst) humans.
The planet will survive; easily. The rest I listed above, not so much...
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Not one photo of the devastation of the forests in Russia, Indonesia, and elsewhere?
Poor reporting. A picture is worth a thousand words. Please update this article with photos of the affected areas of deforestation.
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Pictures imediately after a harvest are generally going to look like total devastation. Pictures a year or two after a harvest could show if the forest is going to regenerate and if the soil has stabilized. This may or may not be the case. Regeneration is more likely in temperate Russian forests than tropical rain forests.
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