The high cost of IKEA furniture | Hacker News Reader

The high cost of IKEA furniture

newrepublic.com

Article subtitle:

> Since 2007, Romania has lost between half and two-thirds of its virgin forest. The environmentalists and activists trying to protect it keep getting killed.

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Whatever the reason for this attrition of forest, it's alarming.

Everything is dying, all the time, everywhere lol. It's hard to keep up anymore... people using up resources way faster than they can be replenished, and it's only getting worse...

Yeah, we're in for a bumpy ride, that's for sure.

At some point, there'll be the sufficiently direct negative feedback from nature to humanity which will slow and eventually halt the destruction ... but ... it'll probably take a while until then.

I'd say 2035-2040 until we see politicians in the democratic states make decisions that are painful for citizens and effective enough to notably slow the destruction. (I have a feeling that China will get there earlier, say 2030 or so.)

> I'd say 2035-2040 until we see politicians in the democratic states make decisions that are painful for citizens and effective enough to notably slow the destruction.

I sincerely doubt there will be any meaningful democracies left by 2040 :) People always trend towards strong leaders and authoritarianism in the face of crisis, and there will be oh so many crises...

I don’t doubt you, but I’d like to know the history of your statement. Which democracies became authoritarian regimes, and for which crisis?

Mussolini, Hitler, Trump (almost), Venezuela... and of course, Russia.

Additionally, much of the modern conservative movement (around the world) is centered around personality worship and anti-democratization of power structures and are trying very hard to move their democracies toward autocracy favoring a cultural or ethnic in-group.

Wikipedia has a much more extensive list, along with various things that contribute to it:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_backsliding

How does IKEA specifically compare to other places? Do they especially do a lot of illegal logging or just the industry baseline amount?

I would think that, given the same source, IKEA would be better than just about anyone, since their products are mostly just air and yet somehow seem to last a rather long time.

In fact, I would almost suspect that our obsession with "Real quality" is a bigger issue than ikea, because ikea stuff often doesn't ever wear out, it is discarded before that because we are taught that we should be aiming to upgrade and eventually own quality things, despite the tech having progressed beyond the need to use solid woods in a lot of cases.

> Those forests are extremely important because they’re not only the most effective carbon capture method on the planet—the old-growth forest captures carbon at this incredible rate that’s not seen in logged and replanted forest

I'm wondering where they are getting this from. Most sources I can find say the exact opposite.

All the non-tree plants that get destroyed during the logging process I assume. Bushes, shrubs, ferns, grasses, ivies, etc. all get really destroyed during the logging process and will only return after a number of years when the ecosystem becomes favorable and seeds have re-propagated to the area.

I think this is a topic of continuing research. Probably the New Republic doesn't dive too deep into climate research?

One original article from 2008 made the case that they suck up a lot of CO2: https://www.nature.com/articles/nature07276 (or https://sci-hub.hkvisa.net/10.1038/nature07276)

But this finding was challenged in 2021: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/03/210325150055.h... (or https://sci-hub.hkvisa.net/https://www.nature.com/articles/s...)

Edit: Dunno if climate is really the best argument there anyway. The old-growths have high biodiversity value, and are hard to regrow. Carbon is more or less a fungible commodity that can be sunk in a billion other ways.

Well it can be sunk in some other ways but those trees were already doing it before they got logged. The most efficient way of CO2 sink is the one that's already there because it takes no resources to keep it.

Most of that carbon is in the wood, and is still sequestered in houses even if you log it and turn it into furniture.

If you burn it for fuel though, it's back in the atmosphere.

Please note that I am NOT advocating that we log old-growth forests, just that the carbon math isn't simple or, well, clear-cut.

It's in the wood yes but once you log the tree it stops capturing more carbon.

Yes, but when you plant new trees they capture more carbon. More or less than the old growth would've? I'm not sure off the top of my head. Do you know?

I'm guessing it probably varies by species and soil and climate and such. It's not a given that old growth will keep sequestering more than replanted forest. Old growth, according to that followup study, eventually reaches a carbon equilibrium. They don't grow to infinity and keep sucking up carbon. If you take those trees and move them into furniture you've essentially freed up soil and canopy (light) for more wood to grow.

If they just replace the old growth with rangeland or development, then yes, it's much worse.

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