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Loading...Deforestation: Fast-Tracking Our Own Extinction
Care2 Earth Month: Back to Basics
This year, Care2 decided to expand Earth Day into Earth Month, since there is so much to explore when it comes to the environment. Every day in April, we’ll post about some of the most important topics for the environment, exploring and explaining the basics. It’s a great tool to help you get started with helping the environment — or help explain it to others. See the whole series here.
Trees are one of the human race’s most valuable resources, and yet we cut and consume them at the rate of 3-6 billion a year. What other thing, natural or man made, can absorb carbon dioxide, produce oxygen, clean the soil, prevent erosion and control noise pollution, using only free solar energy?
Somewhere in our quest for industrialization, we decided that we needed quilted toilet paper and daily newspapers more than we needed these free oxygen factories. Deforestation is one of the planet’s most dire environmental issues, and few people realize that by eliminating our forests, we’re actually signing our own death sentence.
The term deforestation refers to the slow but steady elimination of the Earth’s mature forests. There are many reasons for cutting down trees, but most are felled for profit or to make room for massive commercial agricultural operations. Depending on the species, it can take many decades for a tree to reach maturity. Clear cutting is a traumatic process whereby all the trees in a given tract of land are felled and removed. Although the area may be reseeded with young trees, it can take decades before those trees are absorbing carbon dioxide and emitting oxygen at pre-clearcut levels. According to the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the 33 million acres of forestland that are lost annually around the globe are responsible for 20 percent of human-caused greenhouse gas emissions.
But according to the NRDC, clearcutting can destroy an area’s ecological integrity in a number of other ways, including:
- the destruction of buffer zones which reduce the severity of flooding by absorbing and holding water;
- the immediate removal of forest canopy, which destroys the habitat for many rainforest-dependent insects and bacteria;
- the elimination of fish and wildlife species due to soil erosion and habitat loss;
- the removal of underground worms, fungi and bacteria that condition soil and protect plants growing in it from disease;
- the loss of samall-scale economic opportunities, such as fruit-picking, sap extraction, and rubber tapping; and
- the destruction of aesthetic values and recreational opportunities.
As human carbon emissions continue to skyrocket, the need to preserve our global forests becomes even more urgent. Here are some steps you can take to reduce deforestation, and expose the industries currently exploiting this essential natural resource:
Buy Recycled: According to the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) Forest Products Annual Market Review, the U.S is the world’s largest producer and purchaser of paper. Making a point to buy things made from and packaged in 100 percent post-consumer recycled paper, as well as metal, plastic and glass uses less energy, creates less waste and decreases the need for new raw materials.
Go Paperless: In today’s digital world, there’s little to no need to for hard copies of anything. Buying ebooks or borrowing books from the library, switching to electronic billing statements, and opting out of junk mail and phone books are great ways to reduce the demand for paper.
Think Before You Eat: Raising meat for human consumption is one of the primary causes of deforestation. Humans consume an immense amount of meat, especially in the form of fast food burgers, so meat producers are always looking for a way to make beef cheaper. As a result, trees in the Amazon and other forests are cut down to make room for cattle herds. Reducing your meat consumption and choosing to buy only locally, sustainably-raised meat goes a long way in helping to combat deforestation.
Related Reading:
Earthquake Highlights Haitian Deforestation
Forest Destruction Endangered Orangutans
Tour The World’s Largest Intact Forest
Read more: agriculture, care2 earth day, causes earth day, clearcutting, conservation, deforestation, earth day, forest, rainforest, trees
Image via Thinkstock
Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may
not reflect those of
Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers.
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When i was a teenager almost 40 years ago we were already going through campaign against deforestation and what have done the politicians about it just the opposite of what was advised. Has it gotten any better no much worse!! It is up to everyone of us to get involved NOW in thinking thoroughly every action we take, every choice we make. Let's think green every second of our daily life.
Very, very, sad.............
I totally agree with Diany Y. comments... "What you can do for the planet": Have no more than 2 children…Help the planet by having fewer children....***Deforestation has to STOP for all our sakes…It’s a reality, please act now before it’s too late! Please, please, please, STOP Deforestation.
Deforestation is bad for us and the planet. And yet humanity still fails to get it.
I agree with most of this, however: The author says humanity is on a fast-track to disaster caused by a fatal lack of wisdom. On the other hand, she asks us to trust humanity's systems to never fail us, for the power to never go out for good, and for solar radiation or pulse-generating detonations to always leave our personal computers and networks intact. Which is it? No hard copies, or a "death sentence" which connotes total system failure? Anybody who's experienced computer backup failures knows better. Meanwhile, the IRS won't accept scanned copies of receipts when they audit you. Printed documents can be kept much safer and some of them are required to sell a home, a boat, a car, etc. Mankind's (still rather primitive) toys and systems are not failsafe and neither is the net. Wasteful use of paper is indicative of careless attitudes toward the planet which can be solved through education (if it survives this rightward swing of the pendulum). But we still need hard copies.
Why is it that in these lists of "what you can do for the planet", one never sees the most important item: have no more than 2 children (or adopt). When will we connetct the dots? Will we wait until it is too late?
Why did they fail to add "... and don't have more than two children" to the list of things that we can all do to help reduce deforestation?
If you add more people to the planet than there were when you were born (that is, more than one child for you and one child for your partner), more resources are going to be used.
Save the planet by having fewer children....
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