WELCOME TO THE FIRST ISSUE.

Welcome to the first issue of Doom, Doom, Doom and Doom. Part One of this work consists of a compilation of the facts and figures about the damage being inflicted upon the Earth’s Photosynthetic capacity i.e. the Earth’s life support system. Most scientists and environmentalists focus their research/campaigns on pollution, whether atmospheric or aquatic pollution, attempting to determine the quantity of pollution released, its toxicity and the threat posed to human health, wildlife and ecological habitats. Very little work has been done on measuring the scale of the Earth’s Photosynthetic capacity or the damage being inflicted on it. This is bizarre given that the increasing devastation of the Earth’s life support system jeopardizes the survival of the human race and, perhaps, all life on Earth. Part Two looks at the damage which pollution inflicts on the Planet’s Photosynthetic capacity.

Part Three outlines the five main contributors to the destruction of the Earth’s Photosynthetic capacity. An attempt is then made to highlight the Earth’s geophysiological/ecological limitations and then determine how close humans are getting to surpassing these constraints. If the scale of the Earth’s Photosynthetic capacity, the Earth’s Photosynthetic limitations, and the rate of Photosynthetic destruction, was known it would be possible to predict roughly when the ooman race would perish. Unfortunately, there is not enough information available at the moment to make such predictions. The abysmal state of ignorance concerning the Earth’s life sustaining processes indicates humans’ attitude toward the only Planet in the universe on which they can flourish.

The final Part of this work shows why humans are not merely heading in the direction of an geophysiological disaster but why they will fail to avoid this calamity.

This work is quite different from other works on the environment. Most books on green issues are written by optimists. There are two sorts of green optimist - those with integrity and those without. The latter believe that dramatic changes are not feasible (sometimes not even desirable) and that it is wrong to distress people with dire warnings about the state of Earth’s life support system. They argue there is no scientific evidence that the Planet is under threat - conveniently ignoring the fact that their lack of concern is the main reason why there is so little scientitifc research being carried into the issue. The fact is that they have no scientific evidence to back up their claim. Even worse, they ignore many of the worst facts and figures and use only the most optimistic ones to prove that dramatic policies are not required. On the other hand, the former highlight ecological destruction as diligently as possible in the belief that as soon as the public becomes aware of the scale and threat posed by an ecological disaster, politicians will be forced to take action to curb the destruction. These greens are optimistic that once sufficient doom laden facts and figures can be found humans will be both capable, and willing, to take action,

This work, however, is not based on either type of optimism. The human race is not merely destroying the ecological basis of its own existence it is unwilling to halt ecological destruction - let alone create a sustainable Planet. Having highlighted the scale of global ecological devastation, this work does not finish with a string of recommendations for saving the Earth but, on the contrary, presents a number of theses on why humans are not going to survive.

This ‘doom and gloom’ attitude will be dismissed by many non-greens as typical of the green movement. After the most recent explosion of interest in green issues had died away, it became increasingly common for people to respond to any statement about the deteriorating condition of the Earth with a dismissive "this is just doom and gloom" and then switch off. This knee-jerk reaction seems to have become so commonplace it has even been refined into an alibi so that people can ignore all environmental issues. The benefitof resorting to this alibi is that it enables people to go on ravaging the Planet and participating in the mass slaughter of Animals. There is now almost a stigma attached to talking about the environment let alone ecological devastation. It is quite easy for people to talk about sexual perversions, incest, female (and, more often these days, male) rape etc., without anything more than residual embarrassment but mention the environment or ecological destruction and suddenly a silent revulsion descends with all the oppressiveness of a taboo.

Contrary to public opinion, the vast bulk of the green movement also dismisses ‘doom and gloom’. The environmental taboo is a good opportunity for reformist greens to shift the debate from a need for a dramatic transformation of society to cosy reforms of a specific number of industries; from long term policies to create a sustainable Planet to immediate day to day issues; and from challenging the Earth-rapists to gentle persuasion. The car owning, double income, holiday home, greens also condemn this ‘humans are doomed’ view because they see such a view as counter-productive to their efforts to obtain more funds from the public to preserve their well paid jobs. After all, it is argued, people will not try to save the Planet if they are convinced that an ecological disaster is imminent. And, of course, the last thing which green activists want to do after spending large amounts of time and effort trying to convince people about the need to protect the Earth is get depressed about the hopelessness of the green cause. The aim of green activists and green careerists is not to tell the truth about what is happening to the Earth but to fill people with hope about the prospects for a beautiful green society. It is now difficult to find greens who can talk about green issues as opposed to those who appear to be members of a green glee club dedicated to singing the virtues of green progress, sustainable development, and green consumerism. Green activists have become hope-addicts intent on spelling out the good news about a new green world. So intent have greens become to avoid talking about ecological destruction, and even giving the slightest hint of gloom and doom, they not merely focus on ‘good news’ but actively suppress the gloomy news. They ostracize and silence those greens who publicize the facts and figures about ecological destruction. Anyone who joins the green party to highlight the dire state of the Earth’s life support system, challenge the Earth-rapists, and save the Earth, is in for a real shock. Once someone has entered the green party they’ve got to forget such nonsense. The purpose of the green party is to win votes, get people elected, and attain power. This means ignoring the facts, promoting insipid (and even ecologically destructive) policies, and earning the trust of the Earth-rapists in the utterly preposterous attempt to win their vote. It means never talking about the scale of ecological destruction in case it depresses green activists and makes them feel less likely to participate in electoral campaigns. It becomes clear soon after joining the party that what inspires people to join the green party is entirely redundant within the green party. Neither the public nor the green movement want to listen to gloomy news about either the Earth or the appalling way in which vast numbers of humans are treating the Earth. The faster the pace, and the greater the scale, of ecological destruction, the less interest there is in what is happening. The worse the ecological destruction becomes, the more that greens cover it up, and the greater the ecological destruction is allowed to grow.

Few people seem prepared to descend into the deepest depths of doom to find out just how bad the state of the Earth and how unlikely it is that humans will change their Earth-wrecking activities. This work, however, seeks to provide as much evidence as possible about the pending destruction and about the scale of human opposition taking care of the Earth. It throws doom laden news and views around like confetti at a wedding - or, more appropriately, like the garbage which is to be found in the Himalayas, in outer space, the depths of the oceans and every other remote spot on Earth, as well as at a green gatherings and travellers’ camp sites. It is almost certain that humans will fail to stop the collapse of the Earth’s life support system. It is quite possible they’ll never even realize that it is collapsing before it collapses. The public will still be demanding scientific proof about an ecological disaster and greens will still be saying there isn’t enough scientific proof about an ecological collapse, when the Earth’s life support system disintegrates. It is almost certain that humans won’t ‘Save the Earth’. It certainly won’t be saved by pretending that it doesn’t need to be saved.

Part One examines the destruction of the diverse ecological phenomena which compose the Earth’s Photosynthetic capacity. It is not concerned about the causes, only the scale, of destruction.

ONE: THE DESTRUCTION OF THE PLANET’S PHOTOSYNTHETIC CAPACITY.

i) Forests and Deforestation.

I: The Global Scale of Forest Cover after the End of the Last Ice Age.

After the retreat of the last ice age some 10,000 years ago, the world was gradually covered in Forests. Some regions which are now deserts, like the Sahara, were once luxurious Forests teeming with a wide array of Wildlife, "Before the dawn of agriculture, some 10,000 years ago, the earth boasted a rich mantle of forest and open woodland covering 6.2 billion hectares."; "Before humans invented agriculture there were 6 billion hectares of forest on Earth."; "Forests once covered about 90% of the surface of the Earth."

II: The Historical Scale of Forest Cover by Continent.

A: Africa.

a) North Africa.

.. "the original forests that once stretched from Morocco to Afghanistan even as late as 2000 BC ..."

B: The Americas.

a) Costa Rica.

"Costa Rica was once almost completely cloaked in tropical forest." (Alan P Durning 'Ending Poverty' in 'State of the World 1990' A Worldwatch Institute Report on Progress Towards a Sustainable Planet' Unwin Paperbacks, London 1990 p.146).

b) The United States of America.

"In 1790 .. forests covered about one million miles of the United States."

C: Asia.

a) China.

"In China .. it is estimated that natural forests originally covered three quarters of the land."

b) Pakistan.

"What is now the Thar desert in Rajasthan and the Punjab, an area extending over about 100,000 square miles, was still an impenetrable jungle 2,000 years ago."

D: Europe.

"By 1200 Europeans had cut and ploughed their way across the continent with such thoroughness that they threatened to create a treeless desert. With a few great exceptions, Europe’s great forests date from the late Middle Ages."; "One thousand years ago, 80% of central Europe was forested."; "Forests originally covered about 95% of western and central europe. By the end of the great period of medieval colonization this had been reduced to about 20%."

a) France.

"France, once 80% forested, by 1789 had trees covering only 14% of its land." (JS Maini ‘Forests’ in C Mungall & DJ Mclaren ‘Planet Under Stress. The Challenge of Global Change’ Oxford University Press, Toronto 1990 p.168).

III: The Historical Scale of Forest Cover by Forest Type.

A: Tropical Rainforest.

"Two thousand years ago, the tropical rainforest alone extended over 5 billion acres, covering 12% of the earth’s land surface."

IV: The Current Scale of Forest Cover.

A: The World’s Forest Cover by Country.

"Recent FAO data indicate that seventeen countries account for about 75% of the global forest cover, and, of those seventeen, five countries, namely Russia, Brazil, Canada, the US, and Zaire, account for nearly 55%."; "Latin America possesses 57% of the world’s tropical forests."; "The forests of Siberia cover more than 5 million square kilometres, the size of the continental United States. They account for over half the world's coniferous forests, and over one-fifth of all forest, being twice as large as the Amazon rainforests."

B: The World’s Forest Cover by Forest Type.

a) Tropical Forests.

"Running like a girdle around the equator, tropical forests cover some 900 million hectares. They are divided between South America (58%), Africa (19%), Asia (10%) and Oceania (10%). Brazil contains almost 33% of the total, and Zaire and Indonesia each has 10%. Papua New Guinea, Bolivia, Colombia, Venezuela, Peru, Gabon and Burma each has over 2000,000 square kilometres of tropical forest. Thus, Brazil, Zaire and Indonesia jointly own more than half the world's tropical forests. Those of the Ivory Coast and of Nigeria are now virtually gone."

b) Temperate Forests.

"Temperate forests include deciduous woodlands such as those dominated by oak or beech as well as the great coniferous forests of Russia and Canada and corresponding southern latitudes. The definition also includes the montane forests of the Andes, south east Asia and Africa and the pine forests of India, Pakistan and China. The logging companies have now set their sights on Russia which contains 95% of the timber reserves of the former Soviet Union and 42% of the world’s temperate forests. Several multinational timber companies including Mitsubishi of Japan and Hyundai of South Korea are already active in Russia."

c) The Boreal forests (Taiga).

"The boreal forests (taiga) .. comprise one-third of the Earth’s forests and cover one-thirteenth of the Earth’s land surface. They are estimated to cover 4.3 million square miles, equivalent to three Europes. Some 70% are in Siberia and 22% in Canada and Alaska, most of the rest being in Scandinavia. Siberia’s sector is three times as large as the Brazilian Amazonia. It contains ..one-fifth of all trees and one quarter of the world’s wood. This means it harbours .. 30 billion tons of carbon, according to Dr. Anthony Scott. We have rough estimates of how much carbon is there. An alternative estimate is that boreal forests harbour around one-sixth of the Earth’s terrestrial carbon above ground and one-fifth of the below ground stock, making a total of more than 400 billion tons. Unlike tropical forests, two-thirds of the biome’s carbon is stored in forest litter and the soil. About half of it is released in the wake of logging ... In addition, logging in permafrost areas causes the frozen ground to melt .. Melting permafrost also releases methane. Dr Vladislav Alexeyev calculates that Siberia’s forests absorb almost 10% of human-made emissions of CO2. Dr Rosanne d’Arrigo put the total for all boreal forests at a whopping 30%."

C: Global Forest Cover.

It is not known precisely how much of the Earth is covered in Forests. There are two problems. Firstly, governments’ tend to inflate the scale of their countries’ Forest cover because this enables them to permit higher logging rates than would be the case where a country had been scalped of Trees. Many governments claim that an area is covered in Forests even after it has been clear-cut. This is because thegovernment intends to Reforest the site. But, if Reforestation doesn’t take place for a few months, a few years, a few decades, at what point is the land reclassified as Treeless?

The second problem concerns the distinction between Woodland and Forests. This gives rise to a number of difficulties. It is sometimes difficult to be precise about Forest cover because whilst some commentators might classify an area as a Forest others might classify it as Woodland. Some estimates of Forest cover also include Woodland which boosts the amount of land covered by Forests, "The FAO Production Yearbook publishes each year figures for the area of forest plus woodland in each country .. (which) .. occupies nearly one third of the world’s land surface." Newman’s own calculation is that .."just under a quarter of the world’s land surface is forested."

There are a number of estimates of global Forest cover, "One third of the Earth’s total land surface is covered by forests, of which 45% or two billion hectares are tropical."; "Estimates (of forest cover) vary from as high as 10 billon acres (FAO) to under 2 billion (John Todd)." It is not surprising that the estimate of the un food and agricultural organization is so high. It includes Woodland; it relies on government estimates; and the fao is dominated by multi-national corporate interests which seek to hide the degree to which they are clear cutting the Earth’s Forest cover.

It has to be concluded that there is no accurate measure of the current scale of the Earth’s Forest cover.

V: Deforestation Per Country.

The Planet is increasingly being scalped of its Tree cover. All over the world, deforestation is being carried out at a frightening rate which will have a huge impact on the global climate.

Australia.

"Since the first settlements in Australia at the end of the 18thC about half of the original forests have been destroyed."; "When European settlers first arrived (in Australia) in the mid-19thC there were approximately 200 million acres of forest. 150 years later, 100 million acres had been removed. A third of the original 160 million acres of scrubland was also wiped out."; "Japanese loggers are preparing to move in on almost all of Australia's remaining forests. At present approximately 20,000 hectares of Australian forest are logged every year. The one million hectares of forested land not currently protected in declared reserves would become ‘permanent production zones’."

Brazil.

"The Brazilian Carajas project [is] one of the greatest man-made ecological disasters this century. All the evidence shows that an area of Amazonian rainforest larger than Europe has been deforested or flooded in the last 10 years partly to provide EC industry - including British Steel - with cheap ore."; "The Grande Carajas project in the north east of Brazil will affect one-sixth of the Brazilian Amazon (an area the size of Britain and France combined) with a series of plantations, ranches, mines and heavy industry. 11,500 square miles of forest will be cleared for cattle ranching and 21,000 square miles for plantations to grow export crops. A bauxite mine will produce 8 million tons a year (mainly for Japan) and the estimated 18 million tons of iron ore in the region (some of the highest grade left in the world) will form the basis for an iron-smelting industry. No pollution controls are planned and the smelters will be fuelled by cutting down the forest to make charcoal - an estimated 10 million acres every year."

Canada.

"In Canada, 14.6 million hectares of forestland have been cleared and converted to farmland since the arrival of the Europeans .. ."; "The canadian boreal forest covers nearly 3.5 million square miles - almost the size of the Brazilian Amazon. Almost all of Canada's most productive forests are locked up in twenty year logging leases. Clearcutting, the method used on 90% of Canada's annual harvest, is devastatingly efficient. The remaining 10% of Canada's forests are the temperate rainforests of British Colombia. Over 250,000 hectares are cut every year. There are around 6 million hectares of temperate rainforest left in British Colombia."

China.

"In China .. it is estimated that natural forests originally covered three quarters of the land. By the early 20thC forests were restricted to the inaccessible and mountainous areas and now cover not much more than 5% of the country - about 50 million acres were deforested between 1950 and 1980."; "China has lost 3/4 of its forest."

Colombia.

"In Colombia 350,000 hectares of forest are felled every year."

Costa Rica.

"Costa Rica was once almost completely cloaked in tropical forest. By 1983, after two decades of explosive growth in the cattle industry, pastures covered roughly half the nation’s arable land."; "At current rates of destruction, Costa Rica’s commercially productive forests will disappear over the next decade."

Cote d’Ivoire.

Aside from highly depleted Forest reserves, "there will soon be no significant forested areas left in .. Cote d’Ivoire)."

Dominican Republic.

"In the Dominican Republic, only 10% of the original forest remains."

Ecuador.

"In Ecuador 350,000 hectares of forest are felled every year."

El Salvador.

There has been an ecological calamity in El Salvador because of the civil war, "For a country that depends on firewood for 60% of all its energy needs, the deforestation of the country is a crisis far more profound than the carnage of the civil war. From the coastal mangrove swamps to the heights of the mountain cloud forests, virtually every vestige of El Salvador’s original ecology has been destroyed. The guerillas take refuge under forest cover so the military has tried to crush them by burning the forests down with phosphorus incendiary bombs and napalm."

Ethiopia.

"One hundred years ago in Ethiopia, 40% of the land could be classified as wooded; today only 3% can be designated that way."

Ghana.

"Ghana’s forests consist almost only of forest reserves that have been so severely depleted of commercial species as not to be able to attract large foreign investors."; "The Forest Department of Ghana believes that in that country, where 80% of the forests have disappeared, only 15% of them were harvested before the land was cleared."

Guyana.

"Barama, a joint company formed by Korea's Sunkyong and Malaysia's Samling Timbers, has bought the rights to over 4,000,000 acres of forest (in Guyana) on the Venezualan border."

Haiti.

"On Haiti .. less than 10% of the original forests remains." (Clive Ponting 'A Green History of the World' Sinclair-Stevenson Ltd 1991 p.255).

India.

"India’s forests have decreased by 50% since independence."; "By the end of the century India .. could be treeless."; "Official figures show huge forests emerging while the earth remains barren and degraded."; "In India, satellite pictures have shown that the country has been losing forests at the rate of 3.25 million acres a year. 45% of its land surface is officially classed as wasteland suitable for reforestation."

Indonesia.

"Indonesia contains the most rainforest after Brazil and World bank officials estimate that the country is destroying about 2.4 million acres of forest a year."; "Asia’s worst fires have engulfed more than 250,000 acres of tropical rain forest in Indonesia. 74% of the 360 million acres of Indonesia’s sprawling archipeligo are covered by rain forests. The fires appear to have begun in intensively logged places which are strewn with highly inflamable debris."; "FAO studies suggest that the country was being deforested at a rate of 5,500 square kilomeres by 1980 and 7,000 by the mid-1980s. According to Norman Myers, the figure now stands at around 12,000 square kilometres per year. This is more forest than is being destroyed in any other single country except Brazil."; "In Indonesia, the country with the second greatest extent of tropical forests in the world, vanishing at the rate of some 1.2 million hectares a year, no fewer than 305,370 square kilometres - 16% of all the country’s forests - are slated for clearance."

Ivory Coast.

"The Ivory Coast, where forest cover has Decreased by 76% since 1960."

Liberia.

Aside from highly depleted Forest reserves, "there will soon be no significant forested areas left in .. Liberia."

Malaysia.

a) Sarawak.

"At current rates of logging the whole of Sarawak will be denuded by 1997."

Nepal.

"Nepal has lost perhaps half of its forests during the last 20 years."

New Zealand.

"When New Zealand officially became part of the British empire in 1840, over half the country was forested. By the 1980s half the country’s virgin natural forests had been destroyed."

Nigeria.

"In Nigeria, forest reserves .. are practically the only forests left in the country today. .. deforestation continues at the rate of 350-400 square miles a year and mainly affects forest reserves."; "In Nigeria 400,000 hectares a year were deforested in the 1980s .."

Pakistan.

"What is now the Thar desert in Rajasthan and the Punjab, an area extending over about 100,000 square miles, was still an impenetrable jungle 2,000 years ago."

Peru.

"In Peru 300,000 hectares of forest are felled every year."; "American Drug enforcement agencies are spraying 50,000 acres of Peru with biocides to stop the drugs trade."

Philippines

.. "in the early 1980s the Philippines government claimed that 58% of its land was covered by tropical forest, but satellite imagery showed the true figure to be nearer 38%."; "In 1934, more than 17 million hectares, or 57% of the entire land area, was forested, with virgin forests covering about 11 million hectares. Today .. it is estimated that only 6.5 million hectares of forest remain covering a mere 21.5% of the country. According to some reports, less than 800,000 hectares of this is old growth."

Thailand.

Prior to the 20thC Thailand was .. "three-quarters forested, and at the time of the Second world war, two-thirds. Since the 1950s, however, forest cover has declined rapidly, and now stands at perhaps 15%."

United States of America.

"In 1790 .. forests covered about one million miles of the United States. By 1990 about 6% was left."; "More than one million acres a year are being brutally clearcut."; "The United States has lost 1/3 of its forest cover and 85% of its primary forest."; "More than one million acres a year are being brutally clearcut. In the process, 360,000 miles of roads have been built in the forests. No other government or government agency in the world is responsible for such a huge road system. Over $2 billion a year in taxpayers' money is spent building and maintaining logging roads and cleaning up after logging operations."

Vietnam.

"American forces and their allies dropped more than 12 million gallons of Agent Orange during the Vietnam war in a bid to deny communist forest sanctuary and food. Their aircraft systematically sprayed more than 6,500 square miles of south and central Vietnam."; "According to .. Ed Milner, as a result of the war the country (Vietnam) lost over three-quarters of its forest cover, some fifty million acres of forest, mainly due to the American air force spraying defoliants like Agent Orange."; "The Vietnamese are razing 200,000 hectares of tropical forest each year for export to Thailand and Japan."

Zaire.

.. "in Zaire 347,000 hectares per year."

Zimbabwe.

"Some 80,000 hectares of Zimbabwean land was deforested annually during the eighties and that trend is expected to continue."

VI: Deforestation by Continent.

A: Africa.

a) In General.

.. "in the last decade it is Africa, not South-East Asia or South America that has suffered the highest level of deforestation. A study by the FAO shows that, from 1981 to 1990, Africa lost 17% of its rainforests, Asia 14% and Latin America 9%. During this period, the fastest rate of forest destructon was recorded in Nigeria - not Brazil, Malaysia or Indonesia."

b) West Africa.

Aside from highly depleted Forest reserves, "there will soon be no significant forested areas left in West Africa (Nigeria, Liberia, Ghana, Cote d'Ivoire)."

c) North Africa.

"It is now estimated that no more than 10% of the original forests that once stretched from Morocco to Afghanistan even as late as 2000BC still exist."

B: The Americas.

a) Latin America.

"It seems much of Latin America is locked in a race to see who is first to convert their country into a dry, infertile wasteland."; "Since 1970, farmers and ranchers have converted more than 20 million hectares of Latin America's most tropical forests to cattle pasture."

b) The Amazon.

"In twenty years Amazonia may be as bereft of trees as Haiti."

C: Asia.

a) Himalayas.

"In the Himalayas about 40% of the forests were destroyed in the thirty years after 1955 to provide fuel and increase the amount of agricultural land."

D: Europe.

a) Central Europe.

"One thousand years ago, 80% of central Europe was forested. Today 20%."

VII: Deforestation by Other Categories.

A: Industrializing Countries.

Forests and Woodlands in developing countries shrank by 125 million hectares in the 15 years up to 1986, according to the U.N. Food and Agricultural Organisation.

B: New World.

"The United States, Canada, and Australia have devastated their ancient forests to a far greater extent than than have most tropical nations their rain forests."

VIII: Deforestation by Forest Types.

A: Boreal Forests (The Taiga).

"Dr Norman Myers observes that as much as 400 billion tons of carbon could be sequestered in the 4.3 million square miles (three Europes) of boreal forest, and these are being logged and burnt apace. Some 70% of these forests are in Siberia, where logging has reached 15,500 square miles per year .."

B: Temperate Forests.

.. "the deforestation of temperate lands .. was largely achieved by the end of the 18thC and must have contributed substantially to the addition of CO2 to the atmosphere."

C: Tropical Rainforests.

a) The Past.

"45% of the world’s rainforests have been destroyed in the last 30 years."; "In 1950, 30% of the earth’s landmass was covered with tropical forest. By 1975 this figure was only 12%. In 1988 only 6% was left."; "Two thousand years ago, the tropical rainforest alone extended over 5 billion acres, covering 12% of the earth's land surface. In less than one hundred years over half the forest has now been cut and burned, leaving whole areas of the earth bare and unprotected, rendering entire regions lifeless."; "In the tropics half the original forest cover is gone. Half of what remains has been logged and degraded."

b) The Present.

"Our annual toll of tropical forests nearly doubled between 1979 and 1989 ..."; "It is the tropical forests of South America, west Africa and south-east Asia that have borne the brunt of (forest) destruction - overall since 1950 about half of the world’s tropical forests have been destroyed and three-quarters of that clearance has been to provide land for agriculture. By the 1980s the best estimates suggest that 28 million acres a year were being cleared. Nearly all the ranches established in the Amazon area before 1978 had been abandoned by the mid-1980s."

c) The Future.

"The rate of destruction of tropical forests means that by the end of the century and given current trends, nearly all forests will be gone in India, Thailand, Vietnam, the Philippines, Madagascar, East Africa, West Africa, and central America, and virtually all primary forest will be eliminated in Burma and Ecuador."

IX: Global Deforestation.

A: The Historical Scale of Global Deforestation.

The scale of global deforestation which has taken place since the end of the last ice age is nothing less than frightening, "Over the last 10,000 years, the earth’s mantle of forests and woodland has shrunk by a third as trees were cleared to make way for crops, pasture and cities."; "During the past ten thousand years, global forest cover has been reduced by about one third, from an estimated 6.3 x 109 ha to about 4.2 x 109 ha. A considerable proportion of the historic deforestation has taken place in the temperate and boreal regions to meet the needs of an expanding population."; "Before humans invented agriculture there were 6 billion hectares of forest on Earth. Now there are 4 billion (hectares of forest on Earth), only 1.5 billion of which are undisturbed primary forest. Half of that forest loss has occurred between 1950 and 1990."

B: The Current Scale of Global Deforestation.

There are a number of estimates of the current scale of global deforestation, "The planet’s mantle of trees, already a third less than in pre-agricultural times and shrinking by more than 11 million hectares per year."; "The United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization claims that forests are disappearing at the rate of 43 million acres a year."; "The rate of global deforestation has increased by 90% over the last decade."

It has already been concluded above that there is no clear measurement of the Earth’s current Forest cover and it is likely, given the substantial degree of illegal deforestation, that there is no clear measurement of the rate at which Forests are being cleared. Any estimates are likely to be under-estimates.

C: The Future Scale of Global Deforestation.

For the first time in history, it is possible to envisage the eradication of the boreal Forests of Canada and Alaska as well as the world’s tropical Rainforests, "The rate of destruction of tropical forests means that by the end of the century and given current trends, nearly all forests will be gone in India, Thailand, Vietnam, the Philippines, Madagascar, East Africa, West Africa, and central America, and virtually all primary forest will be eliminated in Burma and Ecuador."; "All the world’s forests could be destroyed within 60 years according to Professor Peter Raven, director of the Missouri Botanical Gardens in St Louis."

As a consequence of this wholesale deforestation, it has been postulated that the Earth is one continent short of the Forests needed to maintain climatic stability, "Dysen and Marland have calculated that .. to absorb the 20,000 million tons of CO2 currently emitted every year into the atmosphere, an area of 7 million square kilometres (roughly the size of Australia) would have to be planted."

X: Reforestation Per Country.

It is not all gloom and doom. There are some countries where there has been an increase in Tree cover although it is not known whether this is due to Tree plantations or to a natural extension of Forests. The increase in Tree plantations is explored in the following section Defoliation. There is also a political element entailed by this sudden rediscovery that many of the over-industrialized nations have much greater scale of Forest cover than previously expected. The over-industrialized nations responsibility for combatting global warming is much greater the lower its Forest cover.

A: General.

"The USSR, which produced more harvested timber than Brazil, reported a modest increase in forested area, and so did the four largest timber producers in Europe: Sweden, Finland, France, and Germany. Canada’s forested area probably increased during the 1980s, too, though figures are unreliable."

B: The United States of Soviet Russia.

"The Soviet Union has 2 million square kilometres more land under forests than in 1960."; According to Roger Sedjo of the ‘Resources for the Future’, "Forest cover in the former Soviet Union has risen by more than 70 million hectares in 25 years."