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Comment by DarthGhandi | Hacker News Reader

France destroyed basically all of their forest in the last few centuries. It's a funny claim. It's like a homeless man saying his wealth increased by 100% in one day.

There's a real problem with conservation in the West where we lecture developing countries about the environmental destruction we ourselves did long ago for pure monetary gain.

It's hard to have a proper conversation about it and find solutions when there's a real hypocrisy that is quite blatant to one party and not the other.

I see this with the EU and palm oil in SEA, what exactly does Europe want them to do? If they can't sell palm they'll still farm something else (probably far less efficient too, palm oil per kg needs 4x less space than European canola).

It's not an easy issue in the first place and borders/nationalism/trade protection makes it even harder.

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> France destroyed basically all of their forest in the last few centuries. It's a funny claim. It's like a homeless man saying his wealth increased by 100% in one day.

Sure but the point is that it's not directly related to the "Wildlife in catastrophic decline since the 70's".

I'm not sure I follow the rest, there is no time for philosophical debates about wether the West has the right to lecture developing countries, the earth cannot afford developing countries going down that path, period.

My point was that adapting our diet in the west looks useless to stop that catastrophic decline happening now, but maybe it could be a powerful act of solidarity to lead by example? To be clear I'm not discussing the merits of eating less meat (I'm vegetarian), just pointing out that it doesn't look like a short term solution for the very issue in TFA.

> there is no time for philosophical debates about wether the West has the right to lecture developing countries

I'm quite involved in conservation movements and this really is a huge issue if not the biggest. You can't simply just turn up and lecture them. It's incredibly counterproductive and everyone on the ground knows this while people sitting comfy in their home in Europe and the States nod approvingly at these justice warriors telling others far removed from their existence to reign in their ways.

Let reverse it:

Will the US reduce its per capita emissions to say the level of China? That would involve the average person reducing their carbon footprint by half, which is going to dramatically impact quality of life if done today.

How do think that would go down if some country told Americans to do that? How would the average person react to having that imposed on them?

"France has destroyed practically all of its forest in recent centuries." It's false, it's the opposite: over the period of 1000/1500 there was much less forest in France than today because wood was the only energy for heating.

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