[Terrapreta] Fw: if yer not forest...

[Sean K. Barry]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: Sean K. Barry<mailto:sean.barry at juno.com> 
To: David Yarrow<mailto:dyarrow at nycap.rr.com> ; terrapreta at bioenergylists.org<mailto:terrapreta at bioenergylists.org> 
Sent: Monday, September 24, 2007 8:06 AM
Subject: Re: [Terrapreta] if yer not forest...


Hi David,

Your quest to support the re-growth of the natural world is laudable and Nature should love you for it.  But, there is not enough land to grow enough oak trees to supply enough acorns to feed 6 billion people.  Is there?  We cannot get enough sustenance from forests alone.  I think even the indigenous people would admit this.  This is why agriculture for food crops even exists.  Starting maybe twenty five centuries ago and continuing until only 500 years ago, the Amazonian people did not turn an area the size of France into Terra Preta soils to support the growth of the tropical rainforest.  They did it to feed many 100s of thousands of people.
When the tropical rainforest returned, those people had vanished.  Do you support that fate for humans now?

When fossil fuel supplies are exhausted (and God help us, the mining interests are really going to completely exhaust them before they stop digging them up), then this world may have even more than 6 billion people (maybe, maybe not?).  That kind of hunger for food and energy is incredibly demanding on global resources.  Can managed forests supply both all the food we will need and all of the energy?  The energy interests will be the ones who push for fast growing loblolly pine plantations (and maybe Yule Gibbons ancestors).
But humans will not survive on acorns alone.

Survival of forests and of the human population together is an almost intractable problem.   It will not be flowery words or illegal "stump" speeches, that hearken to the days when the world was covered in ancient forest that will solve this, I don't believe.

In 1750 the world population is estimated at having been 791 million (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population>).  In 1620 it was probably closer to only 500 million.  Do you honestly believe that we could re-growth enough "full-featured" forests and still be able to feed and provide for the energy needs of 12-18 times more people (6-9 billion)?

Humans have a way that we think we can rest control of nature, to serve our purposes only.  Unfortunate in this belief is the more likely scenario that Nature, with all of its other diverse life forms, will probably win out in the end.  Nature probably has something completely different in store for us.  Your wish for forests over people may well come true.  But I doubt that it will be at the hands of men.

I once again, find this kind of discussion terribly disheartening...


Regards,

SKB


Below was David's post with world maps of historical forestation levels  ... I respond to this
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