During the past 200 years, humans had a substantial and not very positive impact on biodiversity. Our modern lifestyle, with sprawling cities and infrastructure, with our lighthearted production and consumption attitudes, pushed biodiversity to the brink.
With this, we produced substantial risks. Even our and the planets’ survival is at risk. Burning fossil fuels and spreading around millions of tonnes of chemical poisons jeopardize our existence as a species.
Even though I don’t want too many or big trees in our garden, I am well aware that trees are vital to the world. The only reason that I don’t want too many of them in our garden is that they wouldn’t have room to grow.
It’s kind of a luxury decision. After all, we live at the foot of a nature park that covers the mountains in front of our house. And behind the house is a little terrain covered with trees and shrubs. Plenty of trees in my environment to enjoy.
In this article, I’ll try to be objective about the positive effects of deforestation and the negative ones. Although I must admit that I am a bit biased, my gut feeling is that at the moment the negative effects outweigh the positive ones.
“What now remains is like the skeleton of a sick man, all the fat and soft earth having wasted away, and only the bare framework of the land being left… Moreover, it was enriched by the yearly rains…”
This could very well be a quotation from a present-day text. It is not. It’s a complaint from the Greek philosopher Plato about the slopes of Athens in Critias which he wrote in 360 BC. Deforestation has been taking place from the time when agriculture became more widely practiced 4,000 years ago.