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Comment by jb613 | Hacker News Reader

Capitalism may also offer answers. For example, as tree supply diminishes, each tree will become more valuable (assuming wood demand stays stable) thereby incentivizing tree farmers to plant trees over other crops.

The world changes and humans need to along with it. I'm sure cavemen once sat around the fire worrying about how all the good caves were being used up.

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I think you're missing the point. The vast majority of the ecosystem is only economically useful indirectly by maintaining an equilibrium and once that is destroyed, it is almost completely irreversible except for bio- and geoengineering on a scale that humans have never done wittingly. In your example, the delay between the tree getting cut down and replanted is such that the local environment supported by the trees largely disappear and restoring it becomes practically impossible. The consequences of this destruction are easily visible even in forests replanted by the logging industry decades ago.

In an information theory sense, the information disappears and cannot be recovered, no matter how many trees you plant. Entire local evolutionary trees disappear or permanently migrate, land erodes under the rain without old root networks to hold it, once diverse micro- and macro-biomes get taken over by opportunistic members better suited to human industrial/agricultural environments, and fertile lands wither without the balance developed over stretches of time far beyond what we as societies or individuals are capable of dealing with.

Our Earth cannot be "used up" but it can become unusable through the slow but irreversible destruction of even small parts of the monolithic, heavily interdependent system.

"I think you're missing the point."

Ditto. I know exactly what you're saying - tree's take long time to grow, the world is complex and subtly nuanced, once we lose that it's gone, etc. FYI I get all that - or for the purpose of this conversation pretend that I get it and try to look past that and at what I'm saying.

We can either fight change or adapt. Cavemen once complained about demand of caves outstripping supply too. The cost of fighting change is likely far greater than the cost of adapting.

Secondly, if you're going to worry about the Amazon (not saying we shouldn't worry about it) then why aren't you worried about the lost biodiversity once under Silicon Valley? Or NYC? Or Paris? Or Johannesburg? Or Beijing? It just seems we're getting involved in other people's business when we have a lot to cleanup ourselves.

"Cavemen once complained about demand of caves outstripping supply too."

Got a citation for this?

This has to be a person who has never been to a rainforest or you wouldn't say this kind of shit. I also suspect that you rarely connect with nature.

The rainforest isn't just the woods on an empty lot. It's not even just an old growth forest, though those are pretty damn important too. I do care about the forests and as an inhabitant of the Pacific Northwest I go out in them regularly.

Nobody can bring back the Forests that are under where people live now but we can sure preserve the most important remaining ecosystems with the Amazon Basin at the top of the list but protect the last of the Old growth on the West Coast is on the list, too.

Please have some respect for people who care about this if nothing else. I find your attitude offensive to the core. I am pretty sure it's not intentional and that you're not just a mere troll but I just want to mention it. I guess I'm wondering if this is even a topic that you and others who think about it this way have given it much serious thought?

I'm advocating for changing wisely and carefully because fighting change necessarily means dooming billions of people to a life of poverty. As a civilization, I don't think we can in good conscience restrict the development of the rest of the world but we can strive to help them do it in a way that doesn't harm the environment more than is absolutely necessary (although objectively pinning down what that point is probably impossible). Even if our actions are passive like driving down the cost of wind or solar through R&D spending and economies of scale, we have the ability to make massive global industrialization safer for the planet without placing an undue burden on the economic growth that will vastly improve the lives of billions.

I do care about the loss of biodiversity in the Bay Area, NYC, Paris, Johannesburg, and Beijing. So do many people and that's why environmental impact assessments are a standard part of any nontrivial construction or infrastructure project in many nations. The effectiveness of each countries legal and regulatory framework varies but we have made massive strides in the last hundred years and continue to improve. Our shortcomings don't mean that we should just "shut up and mind our own business" on an issue that has global impact and potentially catastrophic consequences for every living thing.

Regardless of how we do it, we will all be forced to sacrifice for the environment whether it is paying more for clean water, air, and lumber later or in regulatory costs now. Like with health and so many other things, its a hell of a lot cheaper to take preventative measures now than to repair broken things later.

Not expensive. It will be impossible to repair the damage later. What will be lost will be lost forever.

This is such a massive misunderstanding of the concepts of ecosystems and biodiversity as well as the short term profit orientation of unrestrained markets. It is what caused deforestation in the first place.

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