1.3: The Photosynthetic Replacement of Forests.

Deforestation does not automatically lead to the complete eradication of all Photosynthesis in the affected area i.e. desertification. In most cases Forests are logged/razed in order to create pastureland, cropland, Tree pharms, or lawns. Over the millenia, but especially over the last few decades, a substantial proportion of the world’s Forests have been converted for these purposes. This section highlights the replacement of Forests with Photosynthesizers which carry out far less Photosynthesis than Forests thereby causing a drop in the Earth's Photosynthetic capacity. It is highly unlikely that the Photosynthesizers replacing Forests are anything like as good as Forests in stabilizing the climate. On the contrary, it is more than likely that they will contribute to the destabilization of the climate. This work is primarily concerned with Photosynthesizers' ability to extract Carbon from the atmosphere, thereby reducing the greenhouse effect, rather than Photosynthesizers' wider impact on the climate through the albedo, and heat, effects.[1]

1.3.1: From Forests to Pastureland.

1.3.1.1: The Global Scale of Pastureland.

Colossal areas of Forest around the world have been cleared to make way for pastureland. It has been estimated that, “Around 3.4 billion ha (33% of the Earth's landmasses) are classified as permanent pasture.”[2]

Developing World.

"Expansion of livestock rearing in the developing world has been responsible for the destruction of 20 million hectares of tropical forests since 1970 as trees are cut to create new pastures which must then be abandoned as poor forest soils are rapidly exhausted."[3]

Latin America.

“Since 1970, farmers and ranchers have converted more than 20 million hectares of Latin America's most tropical Forests to cattle pasture.”[4]; “In mexico alone, 37 million acres of Forest have been destroyed since 1987 to provide grazing land for cattle.”[5]; "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."[6]

The Over-Industrialized World.

The greatest areas of pastureland, and thus the greatest expanses of deforestation, have been created in the over-industrialized world.

1.3.1.2: The Reduction in the Earth's Photosynthetic Capacity.

It is not known by how much the replacement of Forests by pastureland has reduced the Earth’s Photosynthetic capacity but it must be significant. However, the following quote indicates the scale of what is involved given that pastureland is not all that different from crops, "Forests contain more than three-quarters of all terrestrial Phytomass - in fact some 950 billion tonnes. Curiously enough, our cultivated crops amount to less than 7 billion tonnes of standing Phytomass, a trifling 0.5%, even though they cover more of the land surface than tropical Forests."[7]

1.3.2: From Forests to Crops.

Over the millenia, oomans have cut down Forests to establish small scale agricultural plots. Since the second world war, increasing numbers of Forests have been razed to create large-scale, cash crop plantations. This section looks at the latter whilst the section thereafter explores the impact of slash and burners on Forests.

1.3.2.1: The Global Scale of Croplands.

Large areas of Forest have been cleared to make way for cropland, “Land use statistics indicate that about 1.5 billion ha, or 10% of the total land area is arable.”[8]; "Conversion of forest to cropland is by far the leading direct cause of deforestation in the tropics."[9]; "In the period from 1860 to 1980 .. the cultivated area worldwide increased dramatically, from less than 600 million ha to about 1500 million ha. Houghton estimates that this resulted in a release of about 160-180btC .."[10] The area of land converted from Forests to cropland is far less than the area of land converted to pastureland. As a consequence, the reduction in global Photosynthesis brought about by new cropland is substantial but not as significant as the reduction brought about by the creation of pastureland. This is especially true since a significant proportion of the crops grown around the world provide feed for quadrapeds not bipeds.

1.3.2.2: Cropland Per Country.

Costa Rica.

“According to the Rainforest action network, Costa Rica is cutting 2000 hectares of virgin rainforest annually to add to their existing massive network of multinational owned banana plantations - United Fruit, Chiquita, Dole and PPI Del Monte.”[11]

El Salvador and Costa Rica.

"El Salvador and Costa Rica grow export crops such as bananas, coffee and sugar on more than one-fifth of their cropland."[12]

1.3.2.3: By Crop.

Bananas.

"In one respect, banana plantations are more ecologically harmful than cattle ranches because growing bananas involves the intensive use of pesticides. Costa Rica's pesticide use is equivalent to 7 times the world's per capita average. The cultivation of bananas requires a system of irrigation trenches which flushes millions of tons of soil into the waterways annually. Reports circulate in Costa Rica documenting acute poisonings among cattle, bees, and other domestic animals, as well as massive mortality cases in wildlife; up to a million fish were found dead in the canal areas of the banana producing region of Costa Rica in July 1990. The pesticide contamination eventually reaches the oceans. The coral reef off Costa Rica's Caribbean shore is now nearly 90% dead as a result of pesticide run off and sedimentation mainly from banana plantations."[13]; “Bananas are the number one export crop for several of the central and south American countries with Ecuador and Costa Rica being the first and second respectively in total production. According to the Rainforest Action Network, Costa Rica is cutting 2000 hectares of virgin rainforest annually to add to their existing massive network of multinational owned banana plantations - United Fruit, Chiquita, Dole and PPI Del Monte. Bananas are grown in the typical unconscious western chemical manner, leaving in its wake a legacy of massive fish kills, human chemical exposures, and poisoned and depleted soils. The effects on the rainforest are devastating, far more detrimental than even cattle production due to the massive chemical scale of banana production. United Fruit pulled out of the town of Golfito in Costa Rica due to the extensive copper residues left from the heavy application of fungicides, basically leaving the soils unusable for any agricultural production. Intensive banana cultivation depletes ordinary soils in 15 years. The banana planation is a plantation in movement; it migrates and occupies new space, modifies the landscape and abandons areas which have been depleted.”[14]

Cassava.

The cassava connection .. "cassava is extremely rich in calories, hence its demand as a foodstuff for livestock in the European Economic community has increased, thus contributing to the 'beef mountain'. The Community has been absorbing about 80% of internationally traded cassava, most of the supplies being grown in Thailand (where cassava is not a traditional food crop). In 1973 the Community imported 1.5 million metric tons of cassava from Thailand, an amount that rapidly rose to more than 8 million tons by 1982. The principal cassava growers in Thailand include a fast-increasing number of small scale farmers, especially in the easter and north-eastern parts of the country where they establish their crops at the expense of natural forest."[15]

Coca.

“Coca production has already devastated over 700,000 hectares of Amazonian forest, and processing the coca into cocaine dumps into rivers thousands of gallons of an explosive chemical cocktail - sulphuric acid, ether, kerosene, ammonia.”[16] What adds to the ecological problems is that American drug enforcement agencies are trying to stop Coca growing by spraying suspected coca-growing areas with biocides. This kills not only coca plants but all Vegetation, "American drug enforcement agencies are spraying 50,000 acres of Peru with biocides to stop the drugs trade."[17]

Coffee.

“Coffee is largely an export crop .. Georg borgstrom notes how the coffee planters have destroyed the soils of brazil. “The almost predatory exploitations by the coffee planters,” he writes, “have ruined a considerable proportion of brazil’s soils. In many areas, these abandoned coffee lands are so ruined that they can hardly ever be restored to crop production. In most regions, a mere one-tenth now remains of the amount of humus present when coffee cultivation was started. Therefore the coffee plantations have always been on the march, grabbing new lands and leaving behind eroded or impoverished soils.””[18]

Cotton.

“Cotton probably occupies about 34 million hectares (84 million acres).”[19]

Green Energy Crops.

In brazil, vast areas of land are used to grow crops which are then processed into ethanol, "Local production of ethanol provided a crop for 10% of Brazil's farmland .."[20]; "More than 6 million acres of the best agricultural land are now devoted to feeding cars .."[21]; It has been estimated that .. “each alcohol distillery needs about 15,000 acres of land to be viable ..."[22]

Tapioca.

“Over the 10 years to 1985, thousands of square kilometres of rainforest were cleared in order to grow tapioca for the EC’s livestock.”[23]

Tobacco.

“Tobacco is another crop that is largely grown for export worldwide. In the case of malawi it represents 55% of that country’s foreign exchange earnings. Robert goodland notes that “most tobacco depletes soil nutrients at a much higher rate than most other crops, thus rapidly decreasing the life of the soil.” But the heaviest environmental cost of tobacco production lies in the sheer volume of wood needed to fuel tobacco-curing barns. Every year the trees from an estimated 12,000 square kilometres are cut down, with 55 cubic metres of cut wood being burnt for every tonne of tobacco cured. Some experts put the figure even higher - at 50,000 square kilometres.”[24]; “Tobacco farming is doing serious environmental damage, according to a paper published today which reports that 200,000 hectares of forest are cut down for the cigarette industry. Substantial amounts of wood are used to provide fuel in tobacco curing, drying the leaves of the plant. A paper in the journal Tobacco Control calculates that around 114m tonnes of solid wood a year was used between 1990 and 1995 to produce an annual 3.8 m tonnes of cured tobacco, about half of the entire world production of tobacco. A t least 4.5 trillion cellulose acetate filters, which do not readily biodegrade, are deposited somewhere in the world every year.”[25]

1.3.2.4: The Reduction in the Earth's Photosynthetic Capacity.

1.3.2.4.1: The Drop in Photosynthesis resulting from the replacement of Forests with Crops.

The replacement of Forests with crops brings about a significant reduction in Photosynthesis, “Because tropical forests generally lie on infertile soils, deforestation quickly leads to essential nutrients being leached out of the soil, and can transform the land into a wasteland, denuded of all but the most unpalatable grasses. Typically, as much as half of the soil’s organic content is lost just three years after clearing the land for agriculture.”[26]

1.3.2.4.2: Cash Crops are Capital Intensive not Photosynthetically Intensive.

Industrialized crops are capital intensive. Huge amounts of money are spent producing crops whilst reducing labour costs as much as possible. However, industrialized crops are not Photosynthetically intensive. In general, the more labour intensive the farming, the greater the Photosynthesis. Alternative forms of agriculture could produce far more Phytomass than industrialized crops. Modern agriculture thus represses Photosynthesis far more than where crops are grown labour-intensively.

1.3.2.4.3: Cash Crops are Energy Intensive.

The damage caused to the Earth's Photosynthetic capacity by replacing Forests with crops is far greater than the straightforward replacement of one Photosynthesizer with another. Modern agriculture relies upon a vast infrastructure such as the oil, gas, chemical, and transportation, industries etc, to keep it functioning as efficiently as possible. The mining of fossil fuels; the manufacture of synthetic fertilizers; the transportation of synthetic fertilizers to pharmers; and the use of tractors to inject synthetic fertilizers into the soil; etc causes a colossal degree of destruction to the Earth’s life support system, "The Egyptian government spent more per capita on pesticide subsidies in 1982 than it currently spends on health."[27]

1.3.2.4.4: Mono-culturalization - the Monopolization of Seed Production.

The Earth’s vast Biodiversity is increasingly being expropriated and controlled by a small number of multi-national corporations, "Since 1970, a few giant petro-corporations have quietly taken over more than 400 small seed businesses; businesses that hitherto produced seeds with vast variety to suit diverse environments, tastes and price ranges. By controlling the production of seeds, a petro-corporation can breed crops that need extra large dollops of synthetic fertilizer, pesticides, and other petroleum-based additives.";[28]; "Since 1970 multinationals have bought up 839 seed companies, and as a result North American stockists have dropped 263 varieties of open-pollinated vegetables."[29] The consequence has been a considerable drop in the variety of seeds planted, "Already, 50% of the world's population are fed by three plants; wheat, rice and corn. Biotech would drastically reduce the number of naturally occurring varieties of these plants. Also 93% of the world's present supply of genetic data is stored in the gene banks of Western corporations and scientific institutions."[30] The profits from the monopolization of seeds are considerable, "Global sales of the seed industry now exceed $10 billion a year."[31]; "The international chemical companies have a big hand in plant-breeding - there's a lot of money to be made from a successful variety, particularly if your fertilizer is being used to grow it. All in all, it's just a continuation of the old South American rip-off: plant-gene pooling is in effect plunder under another name. And the Great Gene Robbery isn't just confined to potatoes. The same is shamefully true for all the great staple foods - wheat, maize, rice and beans."[32]

Multinational corporations are currently creating terminator seeds to force the world’s farmers to buy new seeds each year. The result of this drive towards the monopolization of seeds is the substitution of natural seeds by seedless synthetic seeds. What this indicates is that it is in the interests of multinational corporations to destroy Biodiversity.

1.3.2.4.5: Cash crop Refugees.

When small scale pharmers are forced off their land by the state they are rarely given alternative plots of land on which to grow crops. They almost invariably become environmental refugees who head for the nearest Forests in order to clear away the Trees so the land can be used to grow crops. The growing of crops thus causes even more damage than the simple replacement of Forests for cropland, “In the philippines, the island of negros - once a carpet of Forests - is now little more than a vast sugar estate. Meanwhile, those who previously farmed the land have been forced to clear upland Forests, which are currently being lost at the rate of more than 20,000 hectares a year.”[33]

1.3.2.4.6: The Overall Reduction in Photosynthesis.

The geophysiological consequence of eradicating Forests for the sake of cropland/pastureland is a significant reduction in the Planet’s Photosynthetic capacity. This happens for a number of reasons:

* firstly, because crops and pasture carry out far less Photosynthesis than Forests, “In most cases, significantly less Photosynthesis is carried out in agricultural ecosystems than took place in the natural ecosystems they replace.”[34]; "Note that croplands and pastures store only very little carbon in their vegetation, on the order of 3-7% of the soil-plus-vegetation total. In this respect, they are not much different from natural grasslands and woodlands."[35]

* secondly, the damage caused to Photosynthesis by the agricultural infrastructure which supports the pharming industry;

* thirdly, the creation of cash crop refugees. And,

* fourthly, the damage caused to the Earth's Photosynthetic capacity by the huge boost in the biped and quadraped populations brought about by the massive increase in agricultural productivity since the end of the second world war.

1.3.3: Shifting Cultivation; Slash and Burn Agriculture.

The pharming technique used by slash and burn farmers is to set fire to a small part of a tropical Rainforest and use the ash as a fertilizer to grow crops. However, the soils are threadbare and within a relatively short time are exhausted. The slash and burners then have move to another part of the Forest and repeat the process. In the past, the numbers of shifting cultivators were small and Forests were able to recover after a couple of decades. However, over the last few decades, the numbers of slash and burners has increased so much that massive areas of Forest are being burnt but are not being given enough time to recover before being burnt again. There are huge numbers of slash and burn farmers in third world countries and the amount of damage they are inflicting on Forests is colossal, “In the tropics, poor people, unable to get good land to feed their families, are driven to hack plots out from the rainforest. At least 150 million people worldwide are relentlessly pressing into the forests in this way, literally, to scratch a living. One million families are clearing about half a hectare of Indonesia’s forests apiece every year; they have already turned some 16 million hectares of former forests into a useless wasteland.”[36]; “More recent estimates suggest that shifting cultivation activities destroy 50,000 km² and degrades a further 10km² of tropical rainforest a year.”[37] There are commentators, however, who believe that multi-national corporations cause more damage than slash and burners. Ecoropa argues, “Destruction (of tropical rainforests) is caused primarily by the gigantic projects of multi-national corporations: cattle ranching, paper mills, immense rice plantations, and by large scale production of sugar cane, plantations for gasohol (fuel from vegetation), mining operations and pulping, and by dams and roads. At the other end of the scale is destruction by individual settlers: these often destroy the Forest as efficiently as the large companies, because they operate illegally.”[38]

Slash and burn agriculture cannot possibly be a long term solution to food production. This is because, firstly, fires release a substantial part of Forests’ nutrients into the atmosphere so that, overall, the area suffers a net loss of nutrients. It is an utterly extravagant waste of resources which shows that the poor can be as wasteful as the rich. There is no excuse for such extravagance whether it is caused by the rich or the poor. Secondly, the burning of Forests creates not only ash but charcoal, which does nothing to boost soil productivity. Thirdly, rainfall can sometimes wash away some of the ash thereby reducing soil fertility. Fourthly, some of the crops grown cause further damage to the soil, "In Thailand .. there are 8 million landless people, a proportion of whom are attempting to establish usufructuary rights (rights to use the forest short of degradation or waste) within the government forest estate. The people have few resources for investment, and consequently the planting of sago is widespread, for it requires low capital. Yet, without adequate inputs, sago exhausts soils within four to five years, and the people are forced to move further into the Forest, leaving unproductive grassland behind."[39]

1.3.4: The Slow Death of Forests being Stripped for Fuelwood.

Vast areas of Forest are being stripped to provide firewood. It has been estimated that, “More than 2/3 of all third world people rely on wood for cooking and heating.”[40]; “The UN estimates that 1.5 billion of the 2 billion people around the world who rely on fuelwood for cooking and heating are cutting wood faster than it is able to grow back naturally.”[41] It should not be surprising to learn that, “It is now estimated that about 100 million people in the world are unable to obtain enough fuel for even their minimum cooking and heating requirements and that well over one billion are depleting their locally available stocks of wood faster than the replanting rate. By the year 2000 about 3 billion people are likely to fall into this category."[42]; "Roughly 1.5 billion people in developing countries depend upon firewood as their major source of fuel. The demand greatly exceeds the supply. In India, for example, where forests can sustain an annual harvest of only 39 million metric tons of wood, the annual demand is for 133 million metric tons."[43] At the current rate of Forest destruction it will be only a matter of decades before hundreds of millions of people find themselves without fuel, “And as forests are destroyed every day, science estimates that by the end of the decade, 2.4 billion people, the vast majority living in developing countries, will either be unable to secure their minimum energy needs or will be forced to consume wood faster than it is being grown.”[44]; “Though environmental orthodoxy holds that deforestation is caused by rapacious clear-cutters .. penniless peasants seeking fuelwood may be the greatest threat to forests. Fuelwood consumption in the developing world rose 35% between 1975 and 1986, with replanting rare by peasants who are landless and thus lack economic incentive to husband resources. Jodi jacobson believes fuelwood supplies are becoming critical in haiti, india, nepal, mexico, sub-saharan africa and thailand.”[45]

1.3.5: From Forests to Tree Plantations.

Vast areas of Forests are being razed in order to make way for Tree plantations.

1.3.5.1: The Types of Tree Plantations.

Tree plantations produce timber or products such as rubber.

Rubber Plantations.

"The Americans .. were determined to break the almost total British and Dutch control over the rubber trade. In the 1920s the US tyre company Firestone, with the full support of the US government, turned to the American semi-colony of Liberia for the land to grow their own rubber. The Liberian government granted them a concession of 1 million acres of land at a price of 0.04 cents an acre. By the late 1920s Firestone already had over 80,000 acres of rubber plantations in the country and a large force of labourers working on them in very poor conditions. The domination of the Liberian economy by US companies such as Firestone was such that in 1943 the American dollar became the currency of the country."[46]

1.3.5.2: The Scale of Tree Plantations.

1.3.5.2.1: By Region.

“Plantation forestry now covers 13 million ha in northern europe, 11 million ha in north america and 17 million in the ussr and eastern europe.”[47]

1.3.5.2.2: Globally.

“As of 1985, industrial plantations worldwide covered nearly 12 million hectares.”[48]; “According to Sedjo and Clawson plantation Forests on a global basis occupy some 9x10⁷ ha which is equivalent to about 3% of the extent of the world’s closed Forests.”[49]

1.3.5.3: Ecological Damage.

Tree plantations cause a significant level of ecological damage.

1.3.5.3.1: The Depletion of Nutrients.

“Plantations are not without problems. When trees are harvested, they generally take along a large stock of nutrients, requiring increasing applications of fertilizers to maintain the site's productivity.”[50]

1.3.5.3.2: Vulnerability to Insects and Disease.

“Moreover, like many monoculture cropping systems, plantations are particularly susceptible to attack by insects and disease.”[51]

1.3.5.3.3: Destruction of Tree Diversity.

Another type of damage caused by the managers of Tree plantations is the tendency to plant imported varieties of Trees rather than indigenous varieties, “Exotic cypresses have no appropriate place or function in the African ecosystem. They are all exotic trees which have been imported in the past by colonialists.”[52]

1.3.5.3.4: The Pollution released by the Processing of Industrial Forests.

“The pulp and paper industry is a significant emitter of greenhouse gases. While plantations maintained to supply fibre for pulp production store large amounts of carbon on land that was previously not forested, this carbon storage is insufficient to offset the even greater emissions from fossil fuel use in manufacture and from paper disposed in landfills.”[53]; “Lignin gives Tree trunks and Plant stems their stiffness. But it can be a major inconvenience. Animals cannot digest lignin, and paper mills have to use caustic chemicals to separate lignin from cellulose in wood pulp. Paul cisco, a geneticist with the usda’s agricultural research service, says that one of the three hydrocarbon monomers that make up the lignin molecule causes most of the problems in pulp making and Animal feed. He and his colleagues have found the gene in maize plants that encodes the troublesome monomer. He hopes that by altering the plant to deactivate the gene, the plant’s lignin should be easier to process or digest.”[54]

1.3.5.3.5: Destruction of Wildlife.

The razing of Forests destroys not only Trees but virtually all Wildlife. However, according to gregg easterbrook, a green optimist, Tree plantations are bursting with Wildlife, “Tree recovery statistics for developed nations include the ‘industrial forest’, trees managed to maximize yield. Such forests are not wholly natural. Neither are they, as some ecologists would have it, dreary places. They teem with life, plants and animals going about their business oblivious to the presence of man.”[55]; “Most managed forests teem with life.”[56]; “In some respects young woodlands as developed by genus homo are better places for biodiversty than old growth forests.”[57] Easterbrook believes that Tree plantations with less canopy allow in more sunlight than old Forests and this attracts more species. This seems a reasonable point but it is irrelevant if the Wildlife who were living in the Forest were all incinerated when the Forest was razed to make way for the Tree plantation. Tree plantations do not contain anything like the same scale of Biodiversity as natural Forests and the more regularly the Trees are harvested the less species they are likely to be.

1.3.5.3.6: Summary.

“Where tree cover has expanded, it has been in the form of biologically impoverished plantations. Germany's old-growth forests, for example, used to be mainly deciduous but, now, just one conifer, Norway Spruce, accounts for some 40% of a shrunken forested area, composed mainly of what are little more than tree farms and cellulose factories.”[58]

1.3.5.4: The Reduction in the Earth's Photosynthetic Capacity.

Right wing extremists commonly believe the destruction of old growth Forests and their replacement by Tree plantations leads to an increase in the amount of Carbon absorbed from the atmosphere. This belief is based on the assumption that virile, young saplings absorb more Carbon than dark, dank, ageing Forests, “Growing trees require more carbon than do mature trees.”[59] Tree plantations are thus touted as an answer to the greenhouse effect. This is, of course, utter nonsense.

Firstly, quite how ageing Trees with tens of thousands of leaves absorb less Carbon than young Trees with a few thousand leaves is difficult to understand. Secondly, even if Tree plantations could absorb more Carbon from the atmosphere than old growth Forests, they cannot store it if they are regularly harvested. It has been estimated there is a considerable drop in Carbon storage when natural Forests are replaced by Tree plantations, "When Forests are harvested much of the standing Wood is converted into CO₂. This happens when waste is burnt, wood decays, paper is manufactured and so on. The amount of CO₂ that is produced by those processes is so great that it would take 200 years for young trees to absorb an equivalent amount as they grow. Worldwide the conversion of old growth forests to managed logging may already have contributed 2% of the total carbon released by changes in land use over the past century."[60]; "Even where forests are harvested on a renewable basis, there is carbon loss of anywhere from 10-25% in temperate and boreal forests. The same reduced carbon storage is found in "recovered" forests that regrow on abandoned agricultural land."[61] Thirdly, the Trees in Tree plantations are grown in rows between which there is space for various machines to log the Trees. The Trees are not as concentrated as is the case in natural Forests, "Between 1978 and 1984, some 24,700 hectares of British deciduous woodland were destroyed and another 11,200 hectares underplanted with conifers.”[62]

Fast growing eucalyptus plantations may reach a 'climax state' in a matter of decades but this is because they do not contribute to Soil formation nor do they provide a habitat for a wide range of Wildlife. The tragedy of logging the world’s old growth Forests is not simply that the Carbon stored in Trees is dumped into the atmosphere but that Soil erosion, and the obliteration of Biodiversity, dumps even more Carbon into the atmosphere.

Monocultural Tree plantations do not extract as much Carbon from the atmosphere nor store it in such great abundance as natural Forests. Synthetic Forests store even less Carbon if they are harvested on a frequent basis. The more frequent the harvesting, the smaller the Carbon storage. Natural Forests store huge amounts of Carbon in the soil, in Tree trunks, and in the Biodiversity which inhabit Forests. The longer a Forest survives in its natural state, the greater its store of Carbon, “Tree plantations cannot be considered forests in any meaningful sense of the word. In reality they are industrial timber stands .. dubbed “forestry’s equivalent to the urban tower block” - they are ruinous to wildlife, detrimental to the soil and destructive of water supplies.”[63]

The scale of the reduction in global Photosynthesis brought about by the replacement of natural Forests by Tree plantations is not known.

1.3.6: From Forests to Lawns - Sterilization.

Large areas of the Planet were once covered in Forests but these have been cut down and replaced by lawns, almost invariably synthetic Grasses - or, as bill mollinson calls it, green cancer, "Lawn tending in 1989 was a $25 billion industry. In the United States 31 million acres are currently planted in lawns, or about 50,000 square miles, an expense equal to the entire state of Illinois. 50 million people spend $4 billion annually for lawn accessories alone and devote hours on end to stewarding their piece of the world."[64]  This section covers domestic and civic lawns; playing fields and recreational areas; sport arenas; golf courses; cemeteries; parks; roadside verges; etc . The change from Forests to lawns causes a significant reduction in terrestrial Photosynthesis.

Neatly mown lawns have become a common feature in urban areas in the over-industrialized world. They are deemed to be a symbol of neatness, cleanliness, good manners, and oomans' control over nature. The ideal lawn resembles a billiard table i.e. the flatter, the greener, and the more homogenous the appearance of the lawn the better. What lawns typify is the sterility and extravagance of livestock consumers living in factory pharm societies. Although lawns absorb CO₂ they are usually energy intensive to create and maintain. Some need to be constantly watered, fertilized, and sprayed with herbicides etc.. The industrial infrastructure needed to perpetuate lawns not only requires a lot of energy but also causes a great deal of damage to Forests. As surprising as it might seem, lawns cause the release of far more CO₂ than they absorb because of the energy used in growing, laying, and maintaining, the Grass in good condition.

1.3.6.1: Golf Courses.

“There are over 50,000 golf courses in the world. Most of them are in North America. 20% of the ichihara province in japan is covered in golf courses. Land for courses has to be totally “re-contoured” to create rolling hills and smooth surfaces for balls to roll on. There is absolutely nothing natural about golf courses. Foreign plants and sand are imported, and even grasses have been shipped across the world. There is a huge chemical industry involved, for fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, and even for substances to make the grass look greener and thicker.”[65]; “In the last 10 years, the number of golf courses in Europe has increased by 74%. On average, one and a half new courses open everyday in the US. It is above all corporate involvement in the leisure industry which is driving this expansion. In asia, golf has become a new symbol of status and affluence. It is in japan where golf fever has by far exceeded the trends in other industrialized countries. The country has more than 1,700 golf courses and is expected to have 2,000 within a few years. The construction of clubhouses, hotels, residential complexes and other faclities adjacent to golf courses contributes to further ecological damage. The massive amounts of fertilisers, pesticides, herbicides, fungicides and other chemicals with which golf courses are routinely treated contaminate the water and surrounding soil and air.”[66]; “In 1990, there were 100 alpine golf courses; in 1992, 250; and by the end of 1996, 500 are expected.”[67]; “Worldwide , golf courses in toto cover an area roughly the size of belgium. In 1994, according tothe worldwatch institute, thailand was building one golf course every 10 days.”[68]

1.3.6.2: Domestic/Municipal Lawns.

"Britons spent about $3 billion on their gardens and lawns in 1991, up from $1 billion a decade earlier."[69]

1.3.6.3: The Scale of Global Sterilization.

There is no estimate of the area of land now covered in lawns nor of the damage this inflicts on the Earth’s life support system.

1.3.7: Conclusions.

1.3.7.1: Deforestation could lead to further Deforestation.

The danger of replacing Forests with pastureland/crops/plantations/lawns is that this could change the area's life sustaining processes to such an extent it brings about further deforestation, “Through their capacity to evaporate vast volumes of water vapour through the surface of their leaves, Trees may serve to keep the ecosystems of the humid tropics and the Planet cool by providing a sunshade of white reflecting clouds. Their replacement by cropland could precipitate a regional disaster.”[70]