TL;DR: Viscose is the context. It's a fabric that's made from the cellulosic fibers in wood pulp, so pretty much most trees would do probably. It's made somewhat similarly to paper, since that also uses the cellulosic fibers in broken down wood pulp. The problem is, that a lot of said wood pulp is not made from sustainable new wood but a significant amount comes from ancient forests in Brazil, Canada and Indonesia.
[https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/article/2024/jul/01/surely-we-are-smarter-than-mowing-down-1000-year-old-trees-to-make-t-shirts-the-complex-rise-of-viscose](https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/article/2024/jul/01/surely-we-are-smarter-than-mowing-down-1000-year-old-trees-to-make-t-shirts-the-complex-rise-of-viscose)
That is crazy. Where I live used to be a major logging state. For a while it produced a large amount of the lumber used in the US and was even exported. After the original forest was cut huge amounts of pines were planted to be cut again years down the road. Before much of it was cut the logging industry slowed down in this area. This mean there are now thousands of acres of mature pine trees planted in rows all over the place. My grandfather bought some property that was full of these trees and used them to build a very nice log cabin.
I don't see why these trees aren't used for wood pulp instead of ancient forest. As a kid I would play in these places where the trees were grown. it was so wild seeing huge trees growing in perfect rows that went on what felt like forever. Mu uncles would hunt deer there because you could set up a blind in one of the rows and have a clear sightline as far as your gun or bow could shoot. you just sit there and wait for a deer to walk onto your row.
It would make sense to cut these trees and replant them again. Try to have a sustainable tree farm instead of cutting wild trees.
You need to use the Zatoichi method of hunting. Let the deer hit you with its antlers. He has gotten in close to attack, but now you know where the deer is, you know where its weapons are. When the deer hits you he has left himself wide open to attack, and in that moment you finish him with one decisive strike.
The deer knows where it is at all times. It knows this because it knows where it isn't. By subtracting where it is from where it isn't, or where it isn't from where it is (whichever is greater), it obtains a difference, or deviation.
Australian old growth forests being bulldozed to be used for viscose. Happens in Brazil and Indonesia more than Australia but with koalas losing habitat, it’s not an acceptable use for forests.
And bamboo is just better... I'm completely encased in it right now: underwear, pj bottoms, sheet set, duvet cover... The socks are also great but socks in bed is heresy.
There are problems with cotton too.
Our ecosystem isn’t water rich, so every cotton farmer in Australia is taking water from non-renewable resources. Killing the land for profit is the Australian way.
Cotton isn't an inherently bad crop.
Lots of Australian cotton is grown entirely without irrigation, so there is little practical difference between growing cotton or growing some other crop in the same place.
Also, characterising water in a catchment as "non-renewable" is self-evidently false.
Irrigation isn't necessary for cotton to grow - it just substantially increases the yield for a given area of cropping, which is effectively optimising for space efficiency rather than water efficiency.
When people characterize catchment water as non renewable they mean the rate of use exceeds the rate of renewal by a significant margin. Oil can be made too, its only not renewable for the same reason that water tables are not. Renewal takes an unrealistic length of time.
If they are right about the cotton that is grown without irrigation, then that is a fair point, except you would have thought a priority should be put on food production and not textiles.
They are probably right in that cotton isn't inherently bad, they are just delusional or heavily misinformed when they describe all catchment water as renewable.
Cotton isn't easily farmed. The fact is that the fibre demand has been increasing for years but we basically can't grow more cotton than we currently do due to area demand and water demand. Imagine the difference in weight of cellulose you get per km² from cotton and wood. It's far more efficient to produce cellulose using wood and then turn it into man made cellulose fibres, than it is growing cotton. That being said, it should of course be done sustainably, which it is in a large part of the world.
Great question. But for context, I can add that this image is [from 2010](https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/1dtfc3g/its_2024_surely_we_are_smarter_than_mowing_down/lba43qu/).
Deforestation is an immensely important issue. So is misinformation.
https://theintercept.com/2019/08/27/amazon-rainforest-fire-blackstone/
It’s always the same handful of players though.
It takes a certain traceable lack of foresight or empathy to clearcut old growth. But after a few years you can pretty much pick the chronic offenders out of a lineup.
Yup. Once you see the methodology, you can use it to trace the dark money.
Brazilian agriculture is a key component in the world stage right now.
But sustainability against corruption is key. A few weeks before the invasion of Ukraine, Brazilian President and Trump loyalist Jair Bolsonaro visited Putin. Then when his own attempted coup failed he hid in the Hungarian embassy for 2 days before scurrying to Mar-A-Lago Florida.
https://time.com/6148311/bolsonaro-putin-visit-ukraine/
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/25/world/americas/jair-bolsonaro-hungary-video.html
bolsonaro had proclaimed that this election would find him “in office, in jail, or dead”.
When you backtrack his business dealings you find a number of crossovers at Blackstone (Stephen schwartzman) and The Trump family of which Schwartzman was an inner circle contributor.
https://theintercept.com/2019/08/27/amazon-rainforest-fire-blackstone/
The Amazon is the worlds lungs above the waterline, so, to put it mildly, sustainable agriculture is an imperative.
Brazils major food export partner China offers a cautionary tale of what happens when strict care is not taken to keep the earth clean and happy.
https://www.gov.br/planalto/en/latest-news/2024/03/an-additional-38-brazilian-meat-plants-have-been-cleared-for-exporting-to-china
During the late 90’s and early 2000’s the central party decision in China was made to prioritize industrialization but without any real environmental policy. Over the course of 3 decades that blistering fast industrialization destroyed approximately 40% of Chinas arable land.
https://isj.org.uk/chinas-environmental-catastrophe/#:~:text=Agricultural%20land%20is%20also%20poisoned,dumping%20of%20toxic%20waste%20on
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25514502/#:~:text=Recent%20nationwide%20surveys%20show%20that,with%20heavy%20metals%20and%20metalloids.
This has turned into a major stumbling block for the central controlling party because one of the keystones of their staying in power is not allowing famine for the 1.4B Chinese people that like to eat semi regularly.
Exports are effected when heavy metal accumulation like lead and methyl bromide get transferred to roots like garlic which are then exported world wide.
https://www.reddit.com/r/ADVChina/s/TRF5Xfo61b
https://www.agentnateur.com/blogs/agent-tips/why-chinese-garlic-is-bad#:~:text=According%20to%20the%20UN%2C%20it's,and%20the%20list%20goes%20on.
Point being, we only have one chance to preserve the earth. Everything after is an increasingly exponentially expensive mitigation or conquest process because at the end of the day the entire world is 3 missed meals always from chaos.
Ukraine fed 1/5 of the world before the war. Mostly sub Saharan africa, the Middle East and China now, but it was called europes breadbasket before that for a reason.
It’s a critical piece of farmland.
[Here](https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/deforestation-in-the-amazon-royalty-free-image/123252122) is the source of this image. Per there:
> Deforestation in the Amazon - stock photo
> Deforestation in the Amazon - detail of an area
> Credit: [luoman](https://www.gettyimages.com/search/photographer?photographer=luoman)
> **Upload date: January 12, 2010**
The shame is that wool production is currently so sabotaged a lot of places find it not profitable to sell and it artificially raises price of yarn and wool products.
Acrylic yarn being cheaper than real one makes it harder for crafters to make clothes that don't shed micro plastic fibres.
But what are we supposed to do then? If the demand is high, then the supply has to be high also.
Not trying to justify what they do, but is there another solution that is actually profitable and keeps the companies afloat?
Tree farming is a thing. They can replant the trees after cutting. Then in 10 years they can cut the same land again, producing a renewable cycle. The problem is often the land is owned by the government and politicians which won't be in office in 10 years don't care about the future, so they don't require replanting.
Such is the nature of living on a planet dominated by an industrial civilization. But it isn't all that bad. Animals already have the instinct to move due to forest fires. So the animals from the areas being cut this year move to repopulate areas that are regrowing after being cut five or so years ago.
Can you actually get enough trees within 10 years?
Starting this process would probably take a 100 at the very least to get proper tree farms rolling.
Thanks for the reasonable answer!
Tree farming is a science. They choose the species to plant and there are numerous harvesting techniques to keep it sustainable. But, if the price of wood isn't high enough to sustain these techniques, then clear cutting and either abandonment or transferring into other uses is the only profitable activity.
Long ago when wood was a primary fuel farmed trees were "coppiced", cut off a specific way to regrow from the stumps, which produces much more firewood sized timber than replanting. This seems perfect for pulp/viscose/OSB but it must be labour intensive?
Too bad there aren't a whole bunch of people who need jobs or anything
There are abandoned tree farms all over the place where I live. thousands of acres of mostly pine planted 50 - 100 years ago when the area was a major logging center. The logging industry has mostly moved on, and these tree farms have now been sold off to private owners. People use them for hunting, or cut them down to build housing on the land. SO many of them are still standing.
We are going to strip the world bare. Soon there won’t be many other plants or animals left. Since we depend on having a diverse and functional biosphere, soon after that there won’t be any of *us* left.
https://youtu.be/9GorqroigqM?feature=shared
Hopefully, that posts. It's not exactly a solution, but this lady named Annie does a whole series on commodity chains, overproduction, and the massive amount of waste that we produce.
She does talk a little about solutions in this video and other videos, from what I remember. One such solution is products that are designed to be fixed. She does mention that at each point along the commodity chain, there are places where we can intervene.
It's not specifically agriculture products, but a commodity chain is a commodity chain.
It’s hardly a “crackhead” take though, for humanity to change its current course and the effects of climate change would require (in my opinion) a complete change of how the modern world works, how humans live their everyday lives and change every for-profit organisation to be content with much smaller salaries at the top for executives and CEOs and tiny tiny profits (it’s most probably far too late really, but let’s pretend there is still time to make a difference).
Probably also requires everyone to give up the convenience and ease of power generation and travel from fossil fuels. It’s just a mammoth undertaking. I’m far from convinced we can even stabilise at +2.5 degs as we’ve blown past +1.5 degs and no one seems to give a shit (especially at the media or government levels), and I’m confident we’ll see radical attempts to stabilise things (e.g. chemicals in the atmosphere like with CFCs to try and cool the planet) rather than actually changing how the world works.
Just my two (and the some) cents as it sounded like you wanted a ‘fuller’ answer.
Its not a take when I asked a question and they responded with
"World is getting hit by an asteroid!" or "Nothing can be done anymore! Its over!"
Hierarchy is something thats bad for humanity, but we cant get rid of that. There will always be rich people and changing the human minds is not possible, unless we somehow force purchasing quotas on people, which is dystopian.
Why would you think things are better in 2024? Things are going to get worse every single year. More and more of our environment is going to be destroyed. I just don't understand why you think we're better than that now. What rock have you been living under? I would seriously love to live in such naivity.
Gotta make the shareholders happy. Who cares about long-term sustainability. Oh right the poors do, well if they cared so much then they shouldn't have been poor
They used to be able to do it. Britian grew trees specifically for shipbuilding. They would plant them a century before they were needed in some cases.
It's not though, those ecosystems can't just be regrown over a few decades. They are incredibly complex and harbor an insane variety and complexity of life that can't just be easily reintroduced in the vast majority of cases. Enough land has been de-forested, they can start sustainable wood harvesting areas on that. Biodiversity should be a lot more important than some t shirts.
There have been cases of companies claiming they've replanted forests elsewhere and simply not doing it.
I'd rather just keep them from cutting in the first place
This photo is at least from 2016, since I used it in a deforestation ppt for my students then. Not saying it's not still happening, but OP makes it seem like this photo was just taken.
It’s from 2010, it was used as propaganda then and is being used as propaganda now. And the masses eat it up. This was thoroughly debunked 14 years ago, yet here we are. The general public is so easy to manipulate it’s not even funny.
Even better: cutting down the last natural forest und Europe (Romania) to make wood pellets, ship to Central Europe and burn it for „natural, co2-free heating“.
We aren't mowing down 1,000 year old trees to make t-shirts. We are mowing down 1,000 year old trees to make a small handful of people wealthy. There will always be a core group of sociopaths who will watch the world burn if they can get ahead, that's why we need strong institutional guardrails - trusting human nature is the road to ruin.
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Exactly! With all our technological advancements, surely we can find sustainable alternatives to preserve ancient forests. Let's prioritize ethical fashion choices in 2024!
The problem is people are judging a third world country for trying to reach our level of wealth.
They grow up watching out media and go, we want THAT. So they put their natural resources to use and we in the richer nations wag our fingers.
We want it protected, we need to put our money where our mouth is. They need jobs, resources, and capital, if we can provide an alternative that's better suited for their needs, we could protect these bio-interests.
it's 2024 and the only thing we can agree on is infinite growth - just not for trees or anything living that stands in the way of rapid money multiplication
And -this- is why I want to throat punch guitar hoarders. The worlds' already running out of rosewood, hence the replacement with Pau Ferro - which will eventually be depleted as well. If you're a PLAYER, with 5-6 guitars, great. If you're one of these people with more money than you know what to do with and have 100 guitars stacked in a closet, check your head. You have a problem, and you're messing with mama earth.
I would be surprised if they are chopping a 1000 year old tree down and turning the entire thing into Viscose. That tree is worth so much more being milled into giant timbers than anything else.
If we were smarter we would stop mowing down trees to create agricultural land so we can feed it to the animals that we'll kill to eat. Huge waste of space and clean water
(*Edit for correction of morning math. I was originally making my point using different percentages and didn't turn on my editing brain when I settled on 99.9% and 0.01%. I'll note that my point stands using 8 million as an example. The presumption that only one in a thousand people are shitty is pretty conservative, and 8 million shitwads is still a kind of terrifying number)
Business is driven by the worst of the worst of humanity.
Even if 99.9% of the human population was presumed to be good-natured, at 8 billion people, there would still be *8 *million* fuckwads distributed throughout the world to mess with our shit.
Business rewards shrewd and greedy behaviour. If a million people decide to leave a forest intact, but they remain modestly middle class, the forest will still get cut if one guy starts removing trees and monetizing the product. That guy will compound his initial investment and get fabulously wealthy, allowing him to buy more forests and cut those too.
Essentially we are controlled by the worst of our people. Unless you legislate things to be illegal or boycott the bad faith actors out of existence, or both, they will do this every single time.
Unfortunately our world "leaders" our feckless. The UN should be pushing back hard against this shit and also pushing back against US/Russia/China having disproportionate power over other countries but they don't and won't without major reform.
Heard Bill Gates wants to cut down and bury thousands of trees to "combat global warming?" If that's the case, what an idiot for some who created Microsoft or whatever
Whats the context? What are these trees that are used to make tshirts?
TL;DR: Viscose is the context. It's a fabric that's made from the cellulosic fibers in wood pulp, so pretty much most trees would do probably. It's made somewhat similarly to paper, since that also uses the cellulosic fibers in broken down wood pulp. The problem is, that a lot of said wood pulp is not made from sustainable new wood but a significant amount comes from ancient forests in Brazil, Canada and Indonesia. [https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/article/2024/jul/01/surely-we-are-smarter-than-mowing-down-1000-year-old-trees-to-make-t-shirts-the-complex-rise-of-viscose](https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/article/2024/jul/01/surely-we-are-smarter-than-mowing-down-1000-year-old-trees-to-make-t-shirts-the-complex-rise-of-viscose)
That is crazy. Where I live used to be a major logging state. For a while it produced a large amount of the lumber used in the US and was even exported. After the original forest was cut huge amounts of pines were planted to be cut again years down the road. Before much of it was cut the logging industry slowed down in this area. This mean there are now thousands of acres of mature pine trees planted in rows all over the place. My grandfather bought some property that was full of these trees and used them to build a very nice log cabin. I don't see why these trees aren't used for wood pulp instead of ancient forest. As a kid I would play in these places where the trees were grown. it was so wild seeing huge trees growing in perfect rows that went on what felt like forever. Mu uncles would hunt deer there because you could set up a blind in one of the rows and have a clear sightline as far as your gun or bow could shoot. you just sit there and wait for a deer to walk onto your row. It would make sense to cut these trees and replant them again. Try to have a sustainable tree farm instead of cutting wild trees.
Follow the money.
Follow the deregulation…= money too.
True, but that also leaves you vulnerable to attack by the deer.
You need to use the Zatoichi method of hunting. Let the deer hit you with its antlers. He has gotten in close to attack, but now you know where the deer is, you know where its weapons are. When the deer hits you he has left himself wide open to attack, and in that moment you finish him with one decisive strike.
The deer knows where it is at all times. It knows this because it knows where it isn't. By subtracting where it is from where it isn't, or where it isn't from where it is (whichever is greater), it obtains a difference, or deviation.
But doesn't that mean the deer has no idea how fast he is moving?
Good.
Profit. It takes years for a tree to grow and greedy ppl don’t want to wait. Under capitalism, a tree as no value until it is cut down
Michigan?
Australian old growth forests being bulldozed to be used for viscose. Happens in Brazil and Indonesia more than Australia but with koalas losing habitat, it’s not an acceptable use for forests.
Thanks for this. Very sad though since fabric can be made by using cotton which is easily farmed
It can be made from bamboo, which you practically can't stop from growing out of control.
And bamboo is just better... I'm completely encased in it right now: underwear, pj bottoms, sheet set, duvet cover... The socks are also great but socks in bed is heresy.
There are problems with cotton too. Our ecosystem isn’t water rich, so every cotton farmer in Australia is taking water from non-renewable resources. Killing the land for profit is the Australian way.
Cotton isn't an inherently bad crop. Lots of Australian cotton is grown entirely without irrigation, so there is little practical difference between growing cotton or growing some other crop in the same place. Also, characterising water in a catchment as "non-renewable" is self-evidently false. Irrigation isn't necessary for cotton to grow - it just substantially increases the yield for a given area of cropping, which is effectively optimising for space efficiency rather than water efficiency.
When people characterize catchment water as non renewable they mean the rate of use exceeds the rate of renewal by a significant margin. Oil can be made too, its only not renewable for the same reason that water tables are not. Renewal takes an unrealistic length of time.
So u/Lurker_81 is an apologist for growing a water intensive crop on the second driest continent in earth after Antarctica?
If they are right about the cotton that is grown without irrigation, then that is a fair point, except you would have thought a priority should be put on food production and not textiles. They are probably right in that cotton isn't inherently bad, they are just delusional or heavily misinformed when they describe all catchment water as renewable.
Cotton isn't easily farmed. The fact is that the fibre demand has been increasing for years but we basically can't grow more cotton than we currently do due to area demand and water demand. Imagine the difference in weight of cellulose you get per km² from cotton and wood. It's far more efficient to produce cellulose using wood and then turn it into man made cellulose fibres, than it is growing cotton. That being said, it should of course be done sustainably, which it is in a large part of the world.
Koala's can fuck right off, they deserve it.
Great question. But for context, I can add that this image is [from 2010](https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/1dtfc3g/its_2024_surely_we_are_smarter_than_mowing_down/lba43qu/). Deforestation is an immensely important issue. So is misinformation.
Reddit post titles have become horrible in the last 6 months
Context is mods don't do their job and this sub and reddit has gone downhill
It's not a job if it's not paid
We need t-shirts. I dont see what all the barking is about.
[удалено]
You vastly and grossly underestimate the power of greed and ambivalence.
https://theintercept.com/2019/08/27/amazon-rainforest-fire-blackstone/ It’s always the same handful of players though. It takes a certain traceable lack of foresight or empathy to clearcut old growth. But after a few years you can pretty much pick the chronic offenders out of a lineup.
They're big republican donors. Shocking...
Yup. Once you see the methodology, you can use it to trace the dark money. Brazilian agriculture is a key component in the world stage right now. But sustainability against corruption is key. A few weeks before the invasion of Ukraine, Brazilian President and Trump loyalist Jair Bolsonaro visited Putin. Then when his own attempted coup failed he hid in the Hungarian embassy for 2 days before scurrying to Mar-A-Lago Florida. https://time.com/6148311/bolsonaro-putin-visit-ukraine/ https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/25/world/americas/jair-bolsonaro-hungary-video.html bolsonaro had proclaimed that this election would find him “in office, in jail, or dead”. When you backtrack his business dealings you find a number of crossovers at Blackstone (Stephen schwartzman) and The Trump family of which Schwartzman was an inner circle contributor. https://theintercept.com/2019/08/27/amazon-rainforest-fire-blackstone/ The Amazon is the worlds lungs above the waterline, so, to put it mildly, sustainable agriculture is an imperative. Brazils major food export partner China offers a cautionary tale of what happens when strict care is not taken to keep the earth clean and happy. https://www.gov.br/planalto/en/latest-news/2024/03/an-additional-38-brazilian-meat-plants-have-been-cleared-for-exporting-to-china During the late 90’s and early 2000’s the central party decision in China was made to prioritize industrialization but without any real environmental policy. Over the course of 3 decades that blistering fast industrialization destroyed approximately 40% of Chinas arable land. https://isj.org.uk/chinas-environmental-catastrophe/#:~:text=Agricultural%20land%20is%20also%20poisoned,dumping%20of%20toxic%20waste%20on https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25514502/#:~:text=Recent%20nationwide%20surveys%20show%20that,with%20heavy%20metals%20and%20metalloids. This has turned into a major stumbling block for the central controlling party because one of the keystones of their staying in power is not allowing famine for the 1.4B Chinese people that like to eat semi regularly. Exports are effected when heavy metal accumulation like lead and methyl bromide get transferred to roots like garlic which are then exported world wide. https://www.reddit.com/r/ADVChina/s/TRF5Xfo61b https://www.agentnateur.com/blogs/agent-tips/why-chinese-garlic-is-bad#:~:text=According%20to%20the%20UN%2C%20it's,and%20the%20list%20goes%20on. Point being, we only have one chance to preserve the earth. Everything after is an increasingly exponentially expensive mitigation or conquest process because at the end of the day the entire world is 3 missed meals always from chaos. Ukraine fed 1/5 of the world before the war. Mostly sub Saharan africa, the Middle East and China now, but it was called europes breadbasket before that for a reason. It’s a critical piece of farmland.
Cotton is a perennial.
https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/article/2024/jul/01/surely-we-are-smarter-than-mowing-down-1000-year-old-trees-to-make-t-shirts-the-complex-rise-of-viscose
[Here](https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/deforestation-in-the-amazon-royalty-free-image/123252122) is the source of this image. Per there: > Deforestation in the Amazon - stock photo > Deforestation in the Amazon - detail of an area > Credit: [luoman](https://www.gettyimages.com/search/photographer?photographer=luoman) > **Upload date: January 12, 2010**
"But there's _profit_ to be had!"
Even with all the technology humans have, we still don’t have a cure for human greed.
The problem is the alternative is clothes made from synthetics... which means oil...
Or wool, cotton or linen.
Or bamboo
Hemp
Oh true... I forget Wool is out there and its got a bad reputation. Cotton still needs a lot of water to process.
The shame is that wool production is currently so sabotaged a lot of places find it not profitable to sell and it artificially raises price of yarn and wool products. Acrylic yarn being cheaper than real one makes it harder for crafters to make clothes that don't shed micro plastic fibres.
But what are we supposed to do then? If the demand is high, then the supply has to be high also. Not trying to justify what they do, but is there another solution that is actually profitable and keeps the companies afloat?
Tree farming is a thing. They can replant the trees after cutting. Then in 10 years they can cut the same land again, producing a renewable cycle. The problem is often the land is owned by the government and politicians which won't be in office in 10 years don't care about the future, so they don't require replanting.
That's great for farming trees but any kind of ecosystem that lives in the forest will never have a chance to thrive :-/
Such is the nature of living on a planet dominated by an industrial civilization. But it isn't all that bad. Animals already have the instinct to move due to forest fires. So the animals from the areas being cut this year move to repopulate areas that are regrowing after being cut five or so years ago.
Can you actually get enough trees within 10 years? Starting this process would probably take a 100 at the very least to get proper tree farms rolling. Thanks for the reasonable answer!
Tree farming is a science. They choose the species to plant and there are numerous harvesting techniques to keep it sustainable. But, if the price of wood isn't high enough to sustain these techniques, then clear cutting and either abandonment or transferring into other uses is the only profitable activity.
Long ago when wood was a primary fuel farmed trees were "coppiced", cut off a specific way to regrow from the stumps, which produces much more firewood sized timber than replanting. This seems perfect for pulp/viscose/OSB but it must be labour intensive? Too bad there aren't a whole bunch of people who need jobs or anything
There are also tree breeding they can do like any plant. One lady make a type of tree she thinks could work on Mars :)
There are abandoned tree farms all over the place where I live. thousands of acres of mostly pine planted 50 - 100 years ago when the area was a major logging center. The logging industry has mostly moved on, and these tree farms have now been sold off to private owners. People use them for hunting, or cut them down to build housing on the land. SO many of them are still standing.
We are going to strip the world bare. Soon there won’t be many other plants or animals left. Since we depend on having a diverse and functional biosphere, soon after that there won’t be any of *us* left.
Understandable, so can you give a rational solution to this?
https://youtu.be/9GorqroigqM?feature=shared Hopefully, that posts. It's not exactly a solution, but this lady named Annie does a whole series on commodity chains, overproduction, and the massive amount of waste that we produce. She does talk a little about solutions in this video and other videos, from what I remember. One such solution is products that are designed to be fixed. She does mention that at each point along the commodity chain, there are places where we can intervene. It's not specifically agriculture products, but a commodity chain is a commodity chain.
Give the kids different values so they are not constantly wanting to buy random stuff that doesn't even make them happy.
It’s rather like a huge asteroid has just struck the planet. What is there to do?
What the fuck are you on about? Can you just answer like a normal human being?
There’s no way to unburn hundreds of billions of tons of carbon, unfortunately. Thermodynamics are harsh.
Unfortunately society lets crackheads access the internet.
It’s hardly a “crackhead” take though, for humanity to change its current course and the effects of climate change would require (in my opinion) a complete change of how the modern world works, how humans live their everyday lives and change every for-profit organisation to be content with much smaller salaries at the top for executives and CEOs and tiny tiny profits (it’s most probably far too late really, but let’s pretend there is still time to make a difference). Probably also requires everyone to give up the convenience and ease of power generation and travel from fossil fuels. It’s just a mammoth undertaking. I’m far from convinced we can even stabilise at +2.5 degs as we’ve blown past +1.5 degs and no one seems to give a shit (especially at the media or government levels), and I’m confident we’ll see radical attempts to stabilise things (e.g. chemicals in the atmosphere like with CFCs to try and cool the planet) rather than actually changing how the world works. Just my two (and the some) cents as it sounded like you wanted a ‘fuller’ answer.
Its not a take when I asked a question and they responded with "World is getting hit by an asteroid!" or "Nothing can be done anymore! Its over!" Hierarchy is something thats bad for humanity, but we cant get rid of that. There will always be rich people and changing the human minds is not possible, unless we somehow force purchasing quotas on people, which is dystopian.
Why would you think things are better in 2024? Things are going to get worse every single year. More and more of our environment is going to be destroyed. I just don't understand why you think we're better than that now. What rock have you been living under? I would seriously love to live in such naivity.
disgraceful, companies should be forced to grow any forests they chop down.
1000 year old trees isnt something you can just replace
Yes it is. It wild take exactly 1000 years. You said it yourself.
Over time it is. Companies these days not having a milenia term plan is what's causing us problems.
State governments can't even plan over 20 year periods, never mind companies. Millennia? Get the fuck out of here. It's all about that next quarter!
Gotta make the shareholders happy. Who cares about long-term sustainability. Oh right the poors do, well if they cared so much then they shouldn't have been poor
You have righteous anger my friend. Where should we put it?
Put it in a glass bottle with a little rag hanging out and throw it at the Supreme Court.
Wish I knew I'm just a guy who works night shift security and spends too much time on reddit cause the nights are slow.
They used to be able to do it. Britian grew trees specifically for shipbuilding. They would plant them a century before they were needed in some cases.
It's not though, those ecosystems can't just be regrown over a few decades. They are incredibly complex and harbor an insane variety and complexity of life that can't just be easily reintroduced in the vast majority of cases. Enough land has been de-forested, they can start sustainable wood harvesting areas on that. Biodiversity should be a lot more important than some t shirts.
I would have thought the bit where I talk about companies putting in place a 1000 year plan would have made it clear I was joking quite a bit.
Yeah, but they're often not ecologically the same as the ones we cut down, and often less diverse.
There have been cases of companies claiming they've replanted forests elsewhere and simply not doing it. I'd rather just keep them from cutting in the first place
Aren't... They? Depends where you live I suppose
How about stop fucking cutting them down at all.
And when Swedish gov made a forest in the XIX century to let it grow for a new fleet 200 years later they cant chop them
Hemp would be a fine alternative
This photo is at least from 2016, since I used it in a deforestation ppt for my students then. Not saying it's not still happening, but OP makes it seem like this photo was just taken.
It’s from 2010, it was used as propaganda then and is being used as propaganda now. And the masses eat it up. This was thoroughly debunked 14 years ago, yet here we are. The general public is so easy to manipulate it’s not even funny.
Who are you quoting!?
I get the distinct impression we are in fact NOT getting smarter at all. Hope I'm wrong.
That pic looks like a meat pie....
Chinese companies use bamboo to produce fabric, what's more cheap and renewable than that?
Even better: cutting down the last natural forest und Europe (Romania) to make wood pellets, ship to Central Europe and burn it for „natural, co2-free heating“.
We aren't mowing down 1,000 year old trees to make t-shirts. We are mowing down 1,000 year old trees to make a small handful of people wealthy. There will always be a core group of sociopaths who will watch the world burn if they can get ahead, that's why we need strong institutional guardrails - trusting human nature is the road to ruin.
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I believe it’s psychology of damn people. We’ll never stop doing this. We are the worst animals on the entire planet
As long as there is greed and opportunity, no, humanity is not smart.
Nope
I remember when people were so worried about the Amazon. Now we have a corporation by that same name setting records for pollution. Oh, the irony!
All 2024 heard was you call it Surely. It asks you don’t do that.
Exactly! With all our technological advancements, surely we can find sustainable alternatives to preserve ancient forests. Let's prioritize ethical fashion choices in 2024!
Hold my beer!!!
OP looks down at t-shirt.
Ok listen...theres a need for T-shirts that says stuff like "ok boomer" or "fart loading" and you cant make art without killing forests.
That would mean there is something more valuable than money, and that sounds like commie talk
If you can make money by kidnapping little girls and trapping them in rape dungeons, someone will do it. Trees don't stand a chance.
Those are like 30 year old trees
Nope.
This looks like bacon
Nope. Sorry, we are not.
Arguably it's more useful than a vineyard in Europe. Clothes are more imposant than alcohol.
Nope. 74 million Americans who prefer a convicted felon, rapist confidence grifter out front should have told you.
The problem is people are judging a third world country for trying to reach our level of wealth. They grow up watching out media and go, we want THAT. So they put their natural resources to use and we in the richer nations wag our fingers. We want it protected, we need to put our money where our mouth is. They need jobs, resources, and capital, if we can provide an alternative that's better suited for their needs, we could protect these bio-interests.
We should be using hemp for anything possible
Now I want some Baklava.
Trees cause pollution -Bill Gates
it's 2024 and the only thing we can agree on is infinite growth - just not for trees or anything living that stands in the way of rapid money multiplication
If it is not grown, it has to be mined. You can "wish" a tshirt into existence.
Greed will always win out over long term preservation
You would think.
Is this a wood farm/plantation. Literally planted to be cut down. Faster growing and returning the necessity of cutting down native forest
And -this- is why I want to throat punch guitar hoarders. The worlds' already running out of rosewood, hence the replacement with Pau Ferro - which will eventually be depleted as well. If you're a PLAYER, with 5-6 guitars, great. If you're one of these people with more money than you know what to do with and have 100 guitars stacked in a closet, check your head. You have a problem, and you're messing with mama earth.
I would be surprised if they are chopping a 1000 year old tree down and turning the entire thing into Viscose. That tree is worth so much more being milled into giant timbers than anything else.
Leave Surely out of this ......
Those don't look like 1000 year old trees.... Maybe 100 year old ones.
Most deforestation is done to make room for cattle land
If we were smarter we would stop mowing down trees to create agricultural land so we can feed it to the animals that we'll kill to eat. Huge waste of space and clean water
You're a vegan, I presume?
Yes i am. but even if I wasn't that would not mean my statement is wrong
If you stop buying it, they stop making money. Shop responsibly.
Now I wasn't a T-shirt that says "no more killing trees to make tshirts. Starting now...."
Tshitrs or more eyesore farmland.
Previous generations just wanna loot the planet and split and I think we need to make it a criminal offense.
Do they make plastic out of wood? I genuinely don’t know, but your shirts are probably made out of plastic.
The wood is made to produce dissolving cellulose which in turn is used to produce man-made cellulose fibres such as viscose and lyocell.
(*Edit for correction of morning math. I was originally making my point using different percentages and didn't turn on my editing brain when I settled on 99.9% and 0.01%. I'll note that my point stands using 8 million as an example. The presumption that only one in a thousand people are shitty is pretty conservative, and 8 million shitwads is still a kind of terrifying number) Business is driven by the worst of the worst of humanity. Even if 99.9% of the human population was presumed to be good-natured, at 8 billion people, there would still be *8 *million* fuckwads distributed throughout the world to mess with our shit. Business rewards shrewd and greedy behaviour. If a million people decide to leave a forest intact, but they remain modestly middle class, the forest will still get cut if one guy starts removing trees and monetizing the product. That guy will compound his initial investment and get fabulously wealthy, allowing him to buy more forests and cut those too. Essentially we are controlled by the worst of our people. Unless you legislate things to be illegal or boycott the bad faith actors out of existence, or both, they will do this every single time.
0.1% of 8 billion is not 800 million
You are correct. Morning math me was not being careful. Corrected
happens to us all and you're not exactly wrong in what you were saying otherwise
... 800 million is 10% of 8 billion. I think you meant 8 million.
Morning math is not my friend. But yes, 8 million
"Smarter"? You mean the generation that eats Tide Pods for social-media likes?
These people are too old to be tide pod eaters I'm sorry.
>eats Tide Pods No, the generation who *believes* that there are people out there who eat Tide Pods.
I'd like to point to any news media and quickly prove we are not.
Unfortunately our world "leaders" our feckless. The UN should be pushing back hard against this shit and also pushing back against US/Russia/China having disproportionate power over other countries but they don't and won't without major reform.
and yet, here we are.
But... but... money...
You underestimate people
We aren’t: short sighted corporate greed fucking us up bad
Money.
nope
Heard Bill Gates wants to cut down and bury thousands of trees to "combat global warming?" If that's the case, what an idiot for some who created Microsoft or whatever
I'm pretty sure that still is the cheapest form of carbon capture up to this date.
Looks like bacon 🥓
Why not hemp?
We are a virus on this planet and we don’t deserve to be here
So then I can safely assume you have never worn a t-shirt before because that would be a little hypocritical of you.
Man, I wish trees were a renewable resource that grows back all by itself over time. And now they've gone and made them extinct. Booh.
Who is this "we" nonsense. You got a problem with this go talk to the people profiting off this rather then posting inflammatory nonsense.
Should the stored carbon in trees be left to rot and return to the atmosphere without use?
We could have been using Hemp fibers for a while but we can't because Jesus or something...
"I'm sorry, what did you say? I couldn't hear you counting all my grotesque profits." -Wall St
Mmmmmmmmmmm bacon
Yeah but, [checks notes] capitalism! 👎