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February 22, 2021 - 11:39am
The ‘new optimists’ are a loosely affiliated group of researchers, wonks and journalists who believe that, broadly, the world is getting better. On some very important metrics — like literacy and child mortality — they’re broadly correct. Perhaps human progress is real after all.
However, on other issues — especially our impact on the environment — they take the upbeat narrative too far. Consider a favourite new optimist talking point, which is that counter to eco-doomster concerns over deforestation, rich countries are experiencing afforestation.
This is true, tree cover in the rich world is increasing — and has been for about thirty years. But just look at this good news story in context. The following chart comes from an article by Hannah Ritchie for Our World in Data:
As you can see, the net expansion of temperate forests since 1990 is dwarfed by the continuing loss of tropical forests. The comparatively good news is that this is taking place on a less devastating scale than in the 1980s when we chopped down 151 million hectares of forest — which, says Ritchie, is “equivalent to an area half the size of India”. Over the 2010s, the global net loss was down to 47 million hectares — or “an area the size of Sweden”.
In this regard the world is still getting worse — though not on quite the same scale as earlier decades. Then again, tropical forests have been pushed back so far into inaccessible areas that it’s not surprising that peak deforestation hasn’t been sustained. In fact, it’s precisely because so much forestry has been destroyed already that we should be increasingly worried about ongoing destruction. To reduce a habitat is bad enough; to wipe it out altogether means mass extinction.
Furthermore, westerners shouldn’t be too proud of our modest tree-planting efforts. One of the reasons why some of our farmland is being returned to woodland is because we’re importing the products of intensive agriculture from countries like Brazil and Indonesia. Just look at how many supermarket products now contain palm oil — produced from plantations where tropical forests once stood. In importing cheap food, we export environmental destruction.
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SubscribeThe elephant in the room. There are too many people on this planet, consuming too much and global oligarchies have too much power. If Covid does anything positive it will remove the idea that globalisation is always a great thing and that self-sufficiency, as much as possible, should be the aim of sustainability goals as much as more ethereal ones like ‘reduce carbon emissions’ (we need CO2 in the atmosphere for plants to breathe). If you reduce consumption, if you reduce the numbers, carbon excess comes down as a by-product. Globalisation encourages JIT supply chains criss-crossing the planet. MASSIVE carbon footprint – and for what? Big companies ship food all over the country by lorry to save THEM money but the cost to freshness and our congested polluted roads is a far bigger cost – that they don’t pay.
I simply don’t understand why economists are still banging on about increasing populations as a requirement.
Apart from your comments above, robotics are coming on at a vast pace, AI will take jobs, what then? We can’t keep inventing jobs to keep people occupied. More people, fewer jobs, more inequality, more conflict.
Oh, and we don’t need lots of young people to look after the ‘old’ people. Robots are already doing that.
It is certainly true that the economist are wrong about the need for more people, but economists will always be wrong about everything. That is their job.
But capitalism/freedom of enterprise will always create more jobs. And if that fails, the state can always create more non-jobs.
Jobs are simply one person doing something useful for someone else. If the work gets automated, individuals switch to exchanging other things that people find useful such as entertainment or care. People need people. That’s how agriculture gave way to manufacturing, manufacturing to services, and services to who knows what – the experience economy maybe. Twenty years ago, who would have thought anyone could end up making a living sharing videos from their living room?
So we were wrong to stop Covid killing more people? Is that what you mean?
“equivalent to an area half the size of India”. Over the 2010s, the global net loss was down to 47 million hectares — or “an area the size of Sweden”.
What about Wales? Isn’t it a media law that all such losses, gains or effects have to communicated in terms of the size of Wales, or multiples thereof? I, for one, cannot picture any such losses, gains or effects unless they are communicated in this way.
Well said. Everybody can visualise the size of Wales. I have no chance with hectares.
I have always used the fact of two red, double decker, London busses weigh the same as a Grey whale to help in visualizing things like how heavy Elong’s Space X rocket is, so yes, I agree with you.
Yes, reminds me of a Brain of Britain quiz question … ‘What do olympic swimming pools, jumbo jets, London buses, the Eiffel tower and Wales have in common?’
Wales is closed for covid, therefore not available as an equivalent measure, wile Sweden remained open, and so is valid as a unit of measurement. You have to keep up with changing ways in these covid times.
The person who “can’t see the wood for the trees” is the author of this article, who like many with a saviour complex is clearly distressed by good news. After all, it makes him rather surplus to requirements and, as the saying goes, “you will never persuade a man to believe something when his livelihood depends on him not believing it.”
If you want the ‘big picture’ you need to look at the imagining data from the satellite era, which is the biggest, best and most complete picture we have. It shows the Earth greening. There is regional variability, but that doesn’t change what’s happening to our planet overall.
Furthermore, it is possible to identify the problem regions, and to understand the specific reasons why they have been moving against trend. The problems are relatively mundane and local, and need mundane and local solutions. There is no need to re-engineer the global economy, usher in a new human era, build a ‘new’ man, or any other such nonsense, which is why people like the author of this piece would sooner die than address them.
Those with illusions of grandeur are only interested in solutions on a similar scale to their conception of themselves, which means throwing everything they didn’t personally devise into the bin to be replaced by Genesis V2 with them in the lead role. Their sense of their own self-importance won’t settle for any less.
Sorry, but your cherry picking is sheer desperation. Get lost!
I should think that 99.99% of people in the UK think that they shouldn’t chop down trees in the Amazon rainforests. What those people also would think is that there is no reason to change our lives in any way, I get a bit bored with Sir David A telling us what they should not do – prefer to hear what we should do, if anything.
Yes, if we did not demand ever more cheap food and plastic tat this stuff wouldn’t be supplied.
it’s always “them,” isn’t it.
I think you have, inadvertently, just solved the problem of the origin of the Covid virus.
It must be the tree bats from Brazil!!!
Place an embargo on all raw materials, including fosil fuels, coming from outside The West?
Three images which picture in very stark terms the unstoppable “logic” of the humanly created Invisible Mega-Machine. Images which were created in 1934. Two of them including #13 were featured in the 1972 book by Lewis Mumford titled The Pentagon of Power The Myth of the Machine. Myth being the all-powerful invisible psychic force-field which patterns and controls Western civilization (the Western death-machine).
The Invisible Mega-Machine was a term used by Mumford to summarize the message of his book.
http://www.dartmouth.edu/~spanmod/mural/panel13.html
http://www.dartmouth.edu/~spanmod/mural/panel14.html
http://www.dartmouth.edu/~spanmod/mural/panel21.html