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Comment by christophilus | Hacker News Reader

Eh. Forestry can be sustainably harvested. If incentives are set up correctly, I could see this being a net win.

Where I live, sustainable harvesting includes spraying with glyphosate-based herbicide to control Aspen growth, and then replanting with GMO pines. This creates conditions for massive forest fires since Aspen is a natural firebreak species.

Eh, no. That's exactly what the advocates of pulping industry would like you to believe.

Leaving aside the pollution of the rivers and the land and the air over the years, replacing a forest like the Amazon (example) and the ecosystem within cannot be measured in terms dollar incentives to an industry.

Sustainable harvesting is much like clean coal. The math doesn't actually work, but the advocacy sure does. ;-)

If we can convert current pastureland into forests and use the forestry products for building materials, you have effectively created an economically incentivized carbon capture system. Pulp plantations are not forests in the ecological sense, but pulp plantations are not the entirety of modern forestry. Current forestry practices lead to a new increase in tree counts (and eventual carbon capture...) and due to these practices the amount of trees in the USA has been trending upwards since we stopped using trees for charcoal.

You can have wood without cutting down the Amazon. Besides, I'm not sure if any of the wood I use comes from the Amazon and I think soybeans (and other crops/livestock), lax laws, and lack of enforcement is a much bigger threat to such areas.

Responsible wood farming is quite possible, and it can be forced by strong regulation with the ability to enforce some rules and stop imports of things not meeting rules.

Forestry competes with soy and beef for Amazon land use. Prohibitions of forestry lead to clearing the land for cattle.

CITES has been effective at sustaining forests through maintaining their economic value while reducing production to sustainable levels. Shannon Rogers podcast on the lumber industry has several episodes dedicated to this if you want to learn more.

> …I'm not sure if any of the wood I use comes from the Amazon.

Wood comes from a place where a forest (like Amazon) once stood.

> …can be forced by strong regulation with the ability to enforce some rules and stop imports of things not meeting.

I doubt that any of the above is possible. Businesses can always weasel their way out and do what they need to do to make money.

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