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May 03, 2006
| Prosperity's Ax | Development Environment |
We wonder what the Easter Islanders thought about as they cut down the last few trees on their island. Who can say? Perhaps they were no more conscious of the consequences of their actions than we are of ours. NYT:
The Indonesian government has signed a deal with China that will level much of the remaining tropical forests in an area so vital it is sometimes called the lungs of Southeast Asia.For China, the deal is a double bounty: the wood from the forest will provide flooring and furniture for its ever-expanding middle class, and in its place will grow vast plantations for palm oil, an increasingly popular ingredient in detergents, soaps and lipstick.
The forest-to-palm-oil deal, one of an array of projects that China said it would develop in Indonesia as part of a $7 billion investment spree last year, illustrates the increasingly symbiotic relationship between China's need for a wide variety of raw materials, and its Asian neighbors' readiness to provide them, often at enormous environmental cost. [...]
From Indonesia to Malaysia to Myanmar, many of the once plentiful forests of Southeast Asia are already gone, stripped legally or illegally, including in the low-lying lands here in Kalimantan, on the Indonesian side of Borneo. Only about half of Borneo's original forests remain. [...]
Over all, Indonesia says it expects China to invest $30 billion in the next decade, a big infusion of capital that contrasts with the declining investment by American companies here and in the region.
Much of that Chinese investment is aimed at the extractive industries and infrastructure like refineries, railroads and toll roads to help speed the flow of Indonesia's plentiful coal, oil, gas, timber and palm oil to China's ports. [...]
The decision to award a $1 billion [wood] concession to China will "increase the deforestation of Papua," a place of extraordinary biodiversity, said Elfian Effendy, executive director of Greenomics, an Indonesian environmental watchdog. "It's not sustainable." [...]
Indonesia's environmentalists, and some economists, say chopping down as much as 4.4 million acres of the last straight-stemmed, slow-growing towering dipterocarp trees on Borneo would gravely threaten this region's rare ecosystem for plants, animals and people.
Maps for the project have aroused fears that it would encroach into the forest in Kayan Mentarang National Park, where the intoxicating mix of high altitude and equatorial humidity breeds an exceptional diversity of species, second only to Papua's, biologists say.
The area is the source of 14 of the 20 major rivers on Borneo, and the destruction of the forests would threaten water supplies to coastal towns, said Stuart Chapman, a director at the World Wildlife Fund in Indonesia. [...]
For years, Mr. Anyie, the Dayak elder, said he had resisted offers from commercial contractors to cut down the forest around his village. [...]
He worked hard, too, to keep the old ways of life. [...]
But now it is time for change, he said. "People have told me, 'Wood is gold, you're still too honest,'" said Mr. Anyie, a diminutive man with brush-cut black hair.
His own grown children have deserted the village for big towns, and the villagers left behind are tired of traveling everywhere by foot (three days to neighboring Malaysia where jobs in palm oil plantations are plentiful) or by traditional long boats powered by anemic 10-horsepower engines. [...]
Until now, the forests at these higher elevations have been protected by their sheer inaccessibility. To get back to the coast from the research station, for instance, takes a 15-hour journey along a 350-mile stretch of the Bahau and Kayan Rivers in a wooden longboat powered by three outboard motors.
In contrast, the forests in lowland Kalimantan, where roads have been hacked into the land already, are so ravaged by logging that they will have disappeared by 2010, the World Bank says.
As the roads start penetrating the area of Mr. Anyie's clan, the upland forests will begin to disappear here, too. The solution is to adopt sustainable management plans, Mr. Wulffraat said.
Such plans allow logging only in specially certified areas, he said. But so far, he said, they have proved a losing proposition.
"In about 30 years," Mr. Anyie said, "the forest will be gone." [Emphasis added]
The NYT's headline for the article is "Forests in Southeast Asia Fall to Prosperity's Ax." It's a mighty strange notion of prosperity, when what is happening is so clearly unsustainable. It's a one-shot deal that'll all be over in a few decades. Then what?
We need a notion of prosperity that isn't built on stealing from our descendants. Prosperity for posterity.
Posted by Jonathan at May 3, 2006 04:29 PM
Comments
Are there any serious efforts to reduce the population of humans? Our planet can only sustain so many of us and over population is a problem that no technology can solve. It is entirely up to us to humanly address and overcome this crisis (man, evolved).
All natural resources are finite. Regardless of how slowly we pluck them from the earth's crust, someday they will all be gone [mucho emphasis added]. At that point we can recycle and reuse, but only for a while. In the end the only thing we'll be left with is every aspect of our lives being sustainable, coming solely from just plants and animals. The castration of such a large swath of forest is sheer ignorance with regards to our planets finite natural resources and what will be required to sustain human life indefinitely (man, not quite fully evolved).
We can all use a good dose of The Long Now ( http://www.longnow.org/about/ ).
Finally, try these on for size:
> Prosperity without materialism.
> Prosperity without wealth.
> And prosperity without privatization
(Man, has that turned into a four-letter
word for me). I think our planet earth
is void of any concept of ownership.
Posted by: Jeff at May 3, 2006 09:36 PM
Jeff said: Are there any serious efforts to reduce the population of humans?
What we can do as individuals is decide to not procreate. See: http://www.vhemt.org/
Voluntary Human Extinction.
To me, this is not misanthropic.
Thanks for the Long Now link. What a cool project, and with Brian Eno as a board member!
Posted by: Clay at May 4, 2006 09:20 AM
Clay,
We’ll self-extinct by remaining on the same course we're on now. Deliberate self-extinction is unnecessary, and over the top. I was thinking more along the lines of for a period of one century allowing people to have only one child. This would humanly cut the population in half in one hundred years. After that, each person can have two children that would maintain the population at a constant.
Sounds simple until you introduce politics and economics, and begin asking questions like 'how many people are allowed in each country?’
This problem will require the combined leadership and consensus of all nations. But first we have to end our wars and give up our prejudices (man, evolved).
Posted by: Jeff at May 4, 2006 10:08 AM
I regretfully agree, that we will probably make ourselves extinct. It's happening allready with the have nots on our planet, and in small ways we can see it in our own lives.
I live in a small town in Oregon, and every day, I see flatcars full of scrap metal heading to Portland, where they will be shipped to China.
The "Healthy Forest's Initiative" has enabled the cutting of more timber than we have seen for a long time. Timber used to fuel the "Ownership Society", and to enable a building boom. Thousands of new home owners are in hock to their eyeballs, while the Republicans claim that the economy is doing great.
I guess what we really need is a profound revelation...Like...Every seventh year the land should lay fallow...
Posted by: linus at May 4, 2006 11:16 PM
The problem with the "passive" self-extinction path that we are on is that it affects more than the fate of Homo sapiens. What we have here is a hostile, hostage-holding mass murder/suicide unfolding. The voluntary renunciation of procreation could go a lot quicker than the S-curve of extinction we are following, and be a lot kinder to all the other species on Earth. I'd prefer a voluntary program, Jeff, rather than your hundred years of compulsory prohibition. What VHMNT and other counter-procreation groups are attempting is to create a culture where not having babies for the good of the planet becomes honorable, admirable, or at least something people aren't afraid to talk about.
Posted by: ivieee at May 5, 2006 02:48 PM
Ivieee,
I'm not suggesting 100 years of compulsory prohibition, but infinite prohibition with the first 100 years limited to 1 child and thereafter 2 children. I'm sure there are other ways to effectively deal with over population. The solution I came up with is humane, would have an immediate effect as soon as it's implemented, would allow people to continue to have children, and most importantly would keep our population diverse, in all respects.
Conscious self-extinction is a failed concept; no species would knowingly irradiate itself entirely regardless of its nobility or the species ability to rationalize the idea. Besides, there's no reason for all humans to self-irradiate as the planet can support a limited number of us. Further, to propagate and sell the concept of ”voluntary” self-extinction will only guarantee our planets demise.
People who are concerned about our world, and believe it’s over populated, and are willing to make a sacrifice as profound and noble as not having children for the sake of the planet are exactly the kind of people we want hanging around and procreating. These are the people who have the best chance at saving planet because they care.
The people most likely not to buy into this idea are the Bush’s, Cheney’s, and Rumsfeld's of the world; leaders in both government and business who upon observation place a higher value on money and themselves then they do the on the planet. These people have no incentive to volunteer for this kind of movement and therefore would continue to procreate. Most of their kids will grow up with the same belief system as their parents and continue to destroy the planet.
Finally, we’re not on a path of passive self-extinction because most of us are unaware or don’t believe it could happen. Voluntary self-extinction is a passive act because it is performed consciously by submitting to the concept without resistance. People should be afraid of this idea because it will untimely lead to the most harmful humans to the planet remaining as the majority. Population reduction, not human extinction should be the topic, and it should be viewed as honorable, admirable, noble and required.
Posted by: Jeff at May 6, 2006 09:34 AM
Oooh, goood, a eugenics program but with a twist: you have to be noble to be selected to breed! Let me be the decider!
Nobility anhililates itself if it decides that noble people are more worthy than "the most harmful humans" and that we should get into a breeding race with them.
China had a population reduction program, remember? They didn't win any "noble" peace prizes over it.
I am afraid that we are probably incapable of regulating our fecundity, ultimately for the same reasons that we are unable to voluntarily reduce our numbers.
Posted by: ivieee at May 10, 2006 01:11 PM