More on deforestation & global warming

Yesterday I wrote how deforestation contributes to global warming. This is a follow-up for yesterday's blog explaining in more detail how deforestation drastically increases global warming.  

It is vital to understand this since many companies make a very lot of money turning virgin forests into toilet paper and therefore will publish some very convincing PR to keep you using their unnecessary product when companies like Seventh Generation are producing an equally as good product not made from virgin forests. 

It is well known that the US and China are numbers 1 & 2 on the list of countries that emit the most carbon into the atmosphere. #3 on the list is a shock, Indonesia. Indonesia has very little industrialization compared to the US and China but it is #3 on the list because it has lost 40% of its forest since 1950.

Here is the scientific explanation from Roger D. Stone's article in the Washington Monthly on why Indonesia is #3 on the list: (please read this slowly and a couple of times until you understand this, its extremely important...you never know when there might be a pop quiz), Plants remove carbon, in the form of carbon dioxide, from the atmosphere and turn it, via photosynthesis, into organic matter: leaves, bark, roots, and so on. This "fixing" process is most intense in dense tropical forests, which cover only 7 percent of the earth’s dry land but store (in the plants themselves and in the rich soils below) about 45 percent of all terrestrial carbon. Chopping down the rainforests removes this carbon-absorbing buffer while releasing vast amounts of stored carbon into the air as the brush is burned off.  

So not only does deforestation remove carbon from the atmosphere but it releases stored carbon into the atmosphere.  One of my favorite analogies to this is the Bush II presidency. Not only do we have to make up for the 8 years he spent removing environmentally protective legislation but we have to make up for 8 years of the benefits those pieces of legislation would have provided for the environment. So we actually have 16 years of beneficial environmental work to make up.  The same goes for carbon: If we continue to practice deforestation we are crushing our atmosphere twice with one blow. 

The bottom line is: Use toilet paper and paper towels made from post-consumer paper!!!!!!  You have absolutely nothing to loose and everything to gain, as in "Saving our Atmosphere", not a bad return for such a simple act.

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