[lbo-talk] Narmada, damn!

[John Thornton]

James Heartfield wrote:
> John Thornton, not Malthusian, just in error:
>
> "If the current rate of bringing land into development and conserving
> land as wild, as has been practiced over the last 20 years, were
> projected forward the two lines would never intersect, meaning
> development will always out pace conservation until 100% of the landmass is 
> consumed."
>
> In the thirty years between 1950 and 1981 the grain harvested area globally 
> increased from 587 million hectares to 732 million hectares. Since then, 
> however, the grain area has shrunk to 690 million hectares with a rising 
> population that is increasingly better fed.
>
> The main reason is increasing yields per hectare, or the productivity of the 
> land (due to motorisation, high yield grains and the original 'Green 
> Revolution').
>
> In the United States forestland is growing 588,600 hectares on average every 
> year, adding to the one-third of the US already covered by forests, or just 
> over 300 million hectares. In the European Union forests are growing 486 
> million cubic metres every year.
I'm not in error you are just confused as to what a forest is among 
other things.
I never claimed farmland was growing at any particular rate. I am well 
aware of the recent short-term development in loss of farmland.
Development means just that, developed land, not agricultural. New areas 
of wildlife are being destroyed to make way for farmland but farmland is 
also being abandoned due to salinity problems caused by over irrigation. 
The situation is not a rosy as you paint it, but you're only using the 
pallet of half-truth and omission to paint your picture.

As far as "forests" growing in hectares you may consider a sterile tree 
covered field, a plantation in reality, to be a forest but it is not.
A forest has a diversity of wildlife as well as a diversity of flora. 
The recent "forest" growth contains none of these. A clear cut planted 
back as a mono-culture of fast growing white pine is not a forest and 
when the Govts. around the world label them as such they do us a 
disservice as well as cover their complicity in the loss of forests.
You should know better than to repeat both of these well disproved 
tropes about the state of the planet.

John Thornton