Your personal experience may have nothing to do with the national average. For instance, only 14% of American women have college degrees, yet easily over half of my female friends have college degrees. I do not know enough 80 year old women, and poor Hispanics, and inner city slum dwellers, to bring my own circle of friends more in line with the national average. How about you?
As to regrowth of the forests, I've often heard the numbers cited, with variations, all arguing that we've far more woods now then we had in 1900. Supposedly around 1900 most of the east coast was stripped bare as the wood was needed for ships and fuel.
> Within my lifetime
> I've seen "lots of places" turned into wall-to-wall housing developments,
or
> 5 acres + house, that in my childhood were miles and miles of woods. I
can
> only assume that other people have had the same experience.
Balance that out with all the farms that have gone bankrupt and the land, once plowed, that now has trees on it. In my home town in New Jersey there are miles of woods in which, every half mile or so, you can see a broken down house, once some farmers home, but now sagging and ruined, with trees growing up inside of it, and pushing outward and breaking the walls.