Ed,

“The world had 6 trillion trees, when people showed up.

Half remain. Half again more will disappear, in 100 years.

The home repair they want is just slightly less wasteful demolition”.

So wrote Richard Powers in 2018 in his wonderful novel, “The Overstory.”  

In addition, the author had this to say about trees; “— a simple machine needing no fuel and little maintenance, one that steadily sequesters carbon, enriches the soil, cools the ground, scrubs the air, and scales easily to any size. A tech that copies itself and even drops food for free.”

According to Greta Thunberg in “The Climate Book” created by the author in 2022; “Every second, an area the size of a football field of forest is cut down.”

According to Noel Atkins, chair of the Resources Energy and Environment Forestry Awareness Program; “Native hardwood trees take 30-50 years — before they can be harvested — and continually regrown and harvested.” (CVI 14/8/ 2024). Australia’s eucalyptus trees can live in excess of 200 years but there is little mention of the benefits of retaining aged eucalyptus trees in our forests in Mr Atkins’ comments. 

Under “business-as-usual” global forest cover is in rapid decline. This is resulting in an ever-decreasing buffer zone between people and wild forest species that carry diseases that harm people, diseases such as Covid 19 and now M.pox, neither of which have very high mortality rates.

But what about when more lethal variants emerge from our diminishing forests? Employment in growing ever larger forests buffer zones might become even smarter “business-as-usual” than to continuing to cut down ever more forests than we plant.

Harry Johnson, Iluka