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Majrelende OP wrote (edited )

Some comments:

One cubic metre of wood requires an annual yield of 0.2 ha of coppice, so we need 12 billion ha or 120 million square kilometers of forest if we want to avoid deforestation. That’s three times as much as we have today, and about 80% of the total land area of our planet (150 million square kilometers).

From a quick calculation based on these statistics, that would mean converting around half of land on earth to forest. And as it is suggested that over 40% (by now) of Earth’s surface area is used for agriculture, that means that we would need to convert around 15% of land that is neither farmland nor forest to an environment that could support forest, assuming all farmland is former forest— therefore, this is probably an underestimate.

This would be an enormous project which could take many years, and I wonder whether it would be at all practical. It would also entail the rewilding of all of the earth’s farmland into forest.

I feel like it is simply not sustainable to cram ten billion humans onto one planet— birth rates will decrease, or there will continue to be death and suffering.

I also have a quibble of the separation of safety and sustainability— that we should pollute the air and ingest carcinogens for the sake of “sustainability”.

This year, I have personally seen the effects of wood pollution— smoke thicker than fog blanketing the landscape, collective coughing, and so on. There are ways to minimise smoke, and they should be considered.

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