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August 26, 2021

Deforestation in 21st Century - Where Have All the Trees Gone?

Deforestation in 21st Century
BY: TARTLE

Planting Seeds

Here’s a bit of a head scratcher – there are multiple forms of deforestation. Wait? Isn’t deforestation just about cutting down trees? You’d think so, but it isn’t necessarily that simple. Deforestation isn’t simply loggers cutting down trees to be turned into houses, furniture, and paper. It is also clearing out trees for farms, both crops and cattle. Cattle farming for instance accounts for a lot of the deforestation occurring in the world, especially in Brazil. The crops the forest might get cleared out include rubber trees and cocoa plants, both of which are major cash crops in South America where much of the world’s rainforest is located. All of it takes away a significant part of the world’s oxygen producing trees. 

There have been lots of victories though. There are people who remember that once upon a time, vast swaths of forest were cut down, with no plans to replenish them. Back in the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, it’s easy to see how Europeans would see the vast forests of this seemingly endless continent and act as though the supply of wood were endless. As we know, we learned differently. Fortunately, most logging companies in the West have some sort of replanting program. It takes time to replenish, especially when cutting down full grown oaks and other slow growth trees. They can take forty years or more before reaching full growth. Various pines grow faster but the wood isn’t as desirable for a variety of reasons. Some of those plans were not the best either. Part of FDR’s New Deal was a number of government programs designed to get people back to work. 

One of those programs was a replanting effort. One of the areas that it helped reforest was Northern Michigan. While it certainly accomplished that goal, anyone who has spent any time there will tell you a lot of the forests aren’t all that pretty. They’re full of jack pines planted almost in rows or scattered and clustered in ways you don’t see in an old growth forest. That’s because the people doing the planting didn’t know what they were doing. They were either throwing seeds randomly on the ground or trying to plant them in a mechanistically efficient way. The results aren’t what one would hope.

Still, all of those replanting initiatives – government and business alike - were a step in the right direction and it came about at a time when it was possible for environmentalists, businesses, and government to find middle ground. The environmentalists could be made to understand that trees meant homes for people and the businesses could be made to understand the need for replanting, and governments and businesses could be made to see that doing things like cutting all the trees next to a river led to problems later as erosion accelerated immensely without the tree’s root systems to both use the water and hold the soil. 

Unfortunately, times are different now. The positions are more extreme and every side is more intractable than ever. Yet, it is clear that some kind of middle ground has to be found. As vast as the South American rainforests are, they are not infinite. We have to figure out some way to get the resources we need to house, feed, and clothe nearly 8 billion people while still leaving something for future generations. Part of that will likely be simply consuming less. Rather than buying a new piece of furniture, it might be worth refurbishing what you have. Or build new out of scrap like pallet wood. A few less hamburgers wouldn’t hurt either. That means less forest is cut down to make room for more cows. 

Finding the best solutions that will keep people working and not living in a van down by the river while also protecting the planet as a whole will not be easy, it will take a lot of data. Data that you can share and purchase on TARTLE. Data on what conservation efforts are most effective, data on the effect of various practices and policies, data that can point the way to solutions for everyone. 

What’s your data worth? Sign up for the TARTLE Marketplace through this link here.

Summary
Deforestation in 21st Century - Where Have All the Trees Gone?
Title
Deforestation in 21st Century - Where Have All the Trees Gone?
Description

Deforestation isn’t simply loggers cutting down trees to be turned into houses, furniture, and paper. It is also clearing out trees for farms, both crops and cattle. Cattle farming for instance accounts for a lot of the deforestation occurring in the world, especially in Brazil. All of it takes away a significant part of the world’s oxygen producing trees. 

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Feature Image Credit: Envato Elements
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For those who are hard of hearing – the episode transcript can be read below:

TRANSCRIPT

Speaker 1 (00:07):

Welcome to Tartle cast with your hosts Alexander McCaig and Jason Rigby, where humanity steps into the future and source data defines the path.

Alexander McCaig (00:24):

Yep. Hello, hello. Welcome back. I'm tired of that intro. Need a new intro.

Jason Rigby (00:29):

Yeah. We're working on one.

Alexander McCaig (00:30):

I just want the [crosstalk 00:00:30] redo, I don't want to be talked to anymore.

Jason Rigby (00:31):

Yeah. Yeah. We're going to change that.

Alexander McCaig (00:36):

That's it get your attention.

Jason Rigby (00:37):

Yeah. It's easy.

Alexander McCaig (00:38):

That's all I need. You just know it's like a calling. You know Like the church bells are ringing?

Jason Rigby (00:42):

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Alexander McCaig (00:44):

When the didgeridoo plays you know we're going to talk.

Jason Rigby (00:45):

Hello. What was the movie where the... Oh, Lassie.

Alexander McCaig (00:53):

Lassie.

Jason Rigby (00:54):

Remember Lassie and she would always save people out of the well.

Alexander McCaig (00:58):

Oh yeah.

Jason Rigby (00:58):

Like Timmy's in the well.

Alexander McCaig (00:58):

Yeah.

Jason Rigby (01:00):

Yeah. Then just like dog heroes.

Alexander McCaig (01:04):

Hold on, let me-

Jason Rigby (01:04):

What was the dolphin-

Alexander McCaig (01:07):

I don't even know if the camera's recording. Well, hold on. Stay here.

Jason Rigby (01:10):

Well, today guys, we have a world economic forum article that is... At least we got the camera going.

Alexander McCaig (01:17):

Yeah. Camera's going.

Jason Rigby (01:18):

World economic forum off...

Alexander McCaig (01:22):

Dude this was me last night, I couldn't even talk. I was trying to say Excitebike Arena, something with Mario Kart, I couldn't even get it straight.

Jason Rigby (01:28):

You were saying, Hey Macarena, what?

Alexander McCaig (01:30):

No.

Jason Rigby (01:31):

Hey Macarena.

Alexander McCaig (01:33):

No. Excitebike Arena. I couldn't even get it out of my mouth.

Jason Rigby (01:35):

Oh, Excitebike Arena, yeah, that's hard to say, actually.

Alexander McCaig (01:37):

It's tough to say, yeah.

Jason Rigby (01:38):

World economic forum. This article is this is how much different commodities contribute to deforestation.

Alexander McCaig (01:42):

Do you know that song, Where have all the good people gone?

Jason Rigby (01:45):

Yes.

Alexander McCaig (01:45):

Where have all the good trees gone?

Jason Rigby (01:47):

The trees or just, I mean, it's gone.

Alexander McCaig (01:50):

Dude, I was looking at satellite imagery of Amazonian deforestation. A lot of it's happened in 2020, the largest chunks just taken out of it.

Jason Rigby (02:00):

Yeah and there has to be a decision that has to be made globally on this because the article talks about the seven agricultural commodities account for 26% of global tree cover loss from 2001 to 2015. So whenever I see statistics, I always like to dive into them a little bit more. So it's a 26% of global tree cover loss. What is the other 74%? because I mean, I would say, is it population growth? What-

Alexander McCaig (02:32):

Agricultural commodities, right. Seven agricultural commodities.

Jason Rigby (02:38):

I get all of these and we're going to go into each of them. I get that but I want to know-

Alexander McCaig (02:41):

Oh, cattle? Oh, yeah, they're right here.

Jason Rigby (02:44):

Yeah. Cattle, oil palm-

Alexander McCaig (02:44):

Oil palm, soy, cocoa, rubber, coffee and plantation wood fiber. What the hell is plantation wood fiber?

Jason Rigby (02:50):

I think it's where they make pellets or they make pressed wood.

Alexander McCaig (02:54):

Oh.

Jason Rigby (02:55):

Do you think that's what... You know how they have the... What's that board that they put up that's all pressed together with [crosstalk 00:03:00] on it.

Alexander McCaig (03:00):

Oh. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I know your top five [inaudible 00:03:03] plywood. But so if these seven things accounted for 26% of trees... So people are lopping down this tree coverage to find space so that we can grow more rubber trees, more cocoa plants, more soy, more palm oil. Indonesian rainforests are getting lop down for palm oil, it's terrible. We do it all the time.

Jason Rigby (03:25):

And we don't even need it.

Alexander McCaig (03:27):

We don't need it. It's a joke. I don't want it on my pre-pack with popcorn.

Jason Rigby (03:30):

I get the rubber, the coffee. I mean, there's got to be a different way that we can do this but cocoa I get that, soy-

Alexander McCaig (03:38):

Did you know that a full grown oak tree-

Jason Rigby (03:39):

Oil Palm we don't really need, in cattle you don't really need, we don't need to eat as much meat as we're eating the cows.

Alexander McCaig (03:44):

[inaudible 00:03:44] a full grown oak tree supports breathable oxygen for 12 adult human beings.

Jason Rigby (03:52):

Yeah. Think about that.

Alexander McCaig (03:52):

A full grown oak.

Jason Rigby (03:53):

Yeah.

Alexander McCaig (03:54):

I'm going to sneeze.

Jason Rigby (03:54):

Uh oh, here we go.

Alexander McCaig (03:56):

Whoa. All right, good.

Jason Rigby (03:58):

Yes. On air.

Alexander McCaig (03:59):

Explosion. You know what it is? I don't have a tree in here cleaning the air, so I have to sneeze.

Jason Rigby (04:05):

Yeah. So these agricultural commodities replaced 71.9 million. They have it like acres, I think.

Alexander McCaig (04:12):

Someone's going to capture that in a still frame.

Jason Rigby (04:14):

Yeah. And then put it like [crosstalk 00:04:15].

Alexander McCaig (04:16):

Yeah, make a meme out of it. Great.

Jason Rigby (04:17):

Yeah. That's Awesome. An area of land more than twice the size of Germany. So my question is why are we consuming so much that we have to go to the earth and say, you have this resource? What is the value exchange?

Alexander McCaig (04:40):

Wait, what-

Jason Rigby (04:41):

We're taking but isn't the responsibility to give back.

Alexander McCaig (04:45):

Aren't we supposed to be stewards.

Jason Rigby (04:47):

So, okay. I get it. Okay. I'm from Washington State. So whenever they've gone through lots of years, there was always a dichotomy of Weyerhaeuser and the lockers and they hated environmental people. And then you had environmental people going out there and they're hugging trees and all that stuff. But there was always that back and forth and so you always had the free enterprise environmentalist. But it worked even though there was a rub they began to, for instance, they decided and they both agreed on, we shouldn't cut trees right near the river.

Alexander McCaig (05:24):

That makes sense because that erodes all that soil and dumps in the water and then you have no-

Jason Rigby (05:28):

Yeah, exactly. And then-

Alexander McCaig (05:29):

... no banks.

Jason Rigby (05:29):

Yeah. And then you've got mud in the waters. It messes up salmon spawning, all kinds of stuff.

Alexander McCaig (05:34):

It makes sense.

Jason Rigby (05:36):

And then Weyerhaeuser came along and said, shout out to Weyerhaeuser. They came along and they started hiring college kids during the summer times to go out and plant trees. So it was like, okay, we're not just going to-

Alexander McCaig (05:47):

Up and down, we got to give back.

Jason Rigby (05:48):

... lop it, we got to give back and then they found Douglas fir and stuff like that. They grow really fast, their very strong trees.

Alexander McCaig (05:55):

Yeah.

Jason Rigby (05:55):

I get that part. I mean, I understand we need wood, we need lumber. I love the part that they're coming... And then also it's actually a good thing because it allows the area to clean up. It's like a far, it's like a fire in the forest it cleans and everything else, yeah.

Alexander McCaig (06:12):

Yeah, we need to have those.

Jason Rigby (06:13):

So, I mean, coming in, as long as you have minimal impact.

Alexander McCaig (06:16):

Well, can you explain to people why that's required? So there's resin in the cones of coniferous trees and they can only release the seeds if there's heat actually applied to those cones or the pioneer, whatever that might be. So it can recede into the ground. You actually have to melt away the resins so that... So forest fires are required.

Jason Rigby (06:33):

Yeah. And I don't know why they don't do that. I mean, I don't know why when they come in and log a big area, why they don't just burn it afterwards and then the next year come and plant the trees.

Alexander McCaig (06:42):

They do that here in New Mexico.

Jason Rigby (06:43):

Yeah. They do that here in New Mexico. Yeah, there's a [inaudible 00:06:45] North Carolina when I was stationed in the Marine Corp, they were always doing... They had signs out on the roads.

Alexander McCaig (06:50):

Yeah.

Jason Rigby (06:50):

They were always burning different parts of the forest to keep the brush down and all that. But I get all that, I understand that. But why do we feel because we go to Indonesia that we don't, because it's not in the United States or in our country that we can feel like we can do that to Indonesia.

Alexander McCaig (07:07):

Well, it's so far away.

Jason Rigby (07:09):

And why does that company-

Alexander McCaig (07:10):

Low regulation.

Jason Rigby (07:11):

Why is that palm oil company turn around and say, yeah, well, we're just going to take all these resources from these people and we're not going to give back to the... Are you replanting?

Alexander McCaig (07:19):

No, it's too expensive to give back.

Jason Rigby (07:22):

And then do you have scientists that are on the ground that are talking about how we can put this halfway back to normal.

Alexander McCaig (07:30):

Have you seen palm oil plantations?

Jason Rigby (07:32):

I know that's what I'm saying.

Alexander McCaig (07:32):

They're insane, it's like this big geometrical pattern that goes [crosstalk 00:07:35].

Jason Rigby (07:35):

It's something that still looks like it's from the 1920s.

Alexander McCaig (07:37):

It's ridiculous.

Jason Rigby (07:38):

And we're in 2020. That was a 100 years ago.

Alexander McCaig (07:40):

Yeah. Well guess what, more human beings means more cattle. More human beings means they want more coffee, more cars that people are driving means you need more rubber.

Jason Rigby (07:50):

So I want to speak to this, so these corporations that are allowed to just take from the earth, take from people, how are they doing that with our data?

Alexander McCaig (08:00):

They do. They rake it all day long. They just lop down the fields, they're like cluck, cluck, cluck, cluck, cluck, cluck, cluck, cluck. Is anything given back in return, was any financial gain given back in return? Were these companies, when they were taking your data, the money they generated from it, were they donating a portion of it? No. No, they weren't. It's the same thing that happens with a tree or data, right. It's this weird psychological idea people have about this zero sum game and not giving back. If you got to be a steward for the environment and you got to be a steward for data. And even though the population is increasing and we're consuming more stuff. Well, then that should tell you, wow, if we're consuming more, we need to do something to offset that consumption, not take more out. How long does it take for a tree to grow? 50 something years for it to get full size.

Jason Rigby (08:53):

Yeah, a lifetime, yeah.

Alexander McCaig (08:54):

A lifetime. You're dead by the time it gets back to big. Back to big, I want a shirt that says that, back to big. And that's half that issue is that if you don't appreciate the life cycle because you haven't looked at the stewardship of this specific thing. You haven't actually appreciated the value and what it means when you cut it down, how long it takes for that to actually repurpose itself. Like a coral reef, all easy for me to come in there and just net the water and take everything that I want. But how long is it going to take for that coral reef to come back? Seven years, 15 years. But you're not thinking about because, oh, I got the fish right now. I got the tree right now.

Jason Rigby (09:33):

But what we don't realize is that... Florida did this and I think I talked to you about for-

Alexander McCaig (09:39):

Florida.

Jason Rigby (09:39):

They made areas where you couldn't fish and they penalized it really heavily. What they thought would take 50 years for it to come back in those areas. They had big circles, swathes. It took seven.

Alexander McCaig (09:49):

That's why I'm saying stop cutting trees down.

Jason Rigby (09:50):

Look at the alligators. They thought that they were almost extinct. Now they've got over... Nature's very resilient and we'll come... I think we'll bounce back quicker than we think. We're so pessimistic about it but then every time that we give it a chance and we create value, it gives us tenfold back.

Alexander McCaig (10:08):

Yeah it does. It's almost like thanking us.

Jason Rigby (10:10):

Yes.

Alexander McCaig (10:10):

I know some people at Weyerhaeuser. I think what would be cool is if Weyerhaeuser says, I know we're in the tree game, I know we owned all this tree land or at least lease it from people. We found a better option than cutting down trees. We are going to start to transition 5% every single year to this new thing for building material, not trees. Don't you think that's a proper thing to do?

Jason Rigby (10:38):

Yeah, yeah [crosstalk 00:10:39].

Alexander McCaig (10:39):

It's like consider this, people are like, okay, I don't want to eat, I want to take [inaudible 00:10:43] one day a week I won't eat meat. Well, all right. So you've transitioned to beyond meat, now transition it to two days a week, three days a week, four days a week, five days a week. And now we've inverted that and now we've actually chose something that is now more sustainable, right, than rather taking away life. Don't you think that's beneficial?

Jason Rigby (11:02):

Yeah, no, I think it's a 100% and I think we have the ability and the science to be able to accomplish that.

Alexander McCaig (11:07):

We do.

Jason Rigby (11:08):

Because there's something amazing when humans put passion and intention into something.

Alexander McCaig (11:13):

I love it.

Jason Rigby (11:14):

We always are so creative in everything that we do.

Alexander McCaig (11:17):

Right. And we have tons of options out there, we're just not using them. If these guys are leading the market Weyerhaeuser, right. Just like, okay, you want to know something, we are going to transition everybody because we have the ability to do that. Here's a better product you can use for building. If you're going to frame a house, frame it with this. Change the way we build, don't just keep using trees because contractors don't want to evolve to a new way of setting up new developments. We're not going to do that anymore. Choose something else.

Jason Rigby (11:47):

But that's our responsibility.

Alexander McCaig (11:48):

We got to tell them.

Jason Rigby (11:49):

It's our responsibility to take back our data. It's our responsibility to take back our earth. We can't rely on governments to make those decisions.

Alexander McCaig (11:55):

No, it's our earth, not the governments earth.

Jason Rigby (11:57):

Everybody's all excited because our president has this big summit that's coming up for environmental and stuff. But Joe Biden is not the answer to any type of climate change.

Alexander McCaig (12:09):

Can I say something? Is Joe Biden sucking down 71.9 million hectares of forest for cattle, oil palm, soy, cocoa, rubber, coffee [crosstalk 00:12:19]. No, we are.

Jason Rigby (12:20):

Yeah, we are. Yeah, exactly.

Alexander McCaig (12:21):

People are doing that all together as a collective.

Jason Rigby (12:25):

He's just a representation of the government and corporations.

Alexander McCaig (12:27):

Yeah. There's not a reason you [crosstalk 00:12:29].

Jason Rigby (12:28):

Yeah, I know.

Alexander McCaig (12:30):

You represent yourself.

Jason Rigby (12:31):

Yes.

Alexander McCaig (12:32):

Yeah. So let's keep it that way and let's plant some trees and let's take back our data.

Speaker 1 (12:47):

Thank you for listening to Tartle cast with your hosts, Alexander McCaig and Jason Rigby, where humanity steps into the future and source data defines the path. What's your data worth?