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Ethiopia Plants 350M Trees in One Day to Combat Drought and Climate Change

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181–190 of 258 posts

Re: Ethiopia Plants 350M Trees in One Day to Combat Drought and Climate Change

#181
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I wouldn't say it's that stable or that the rest of Africa is instable, especially compared to Europe. It's just that Europe industrialized earlier and got to reap rewards that can only come from most simple needs being met easily. Europe's industrialization as well as other Western countries heavily depended on the exploitation of third world countries in Asia and Africa, especially after WW2. Sweatshops and slave…

It took suicide-level conditions in places like Foxconn to get us our gadget at Not that I disagree with the rest of the post, but it's time the suicides at Foxconn story dies a fiery death. https://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2013/07/10/apples-c... The juicy quote: At the time of that spate of suicides Foxconn had nearly 1 million workers in its plants. There were up to 14 suicides (it depends whose count you w…

This is probably the thirtieth time I've seen this debunking over the last several years. The first was not long after the original Foxconn suicides news cycle. This is widely available enough information that if somebody references the Foxconn suicides and doesn't know the figures you mention by now, they have no interest in understanding the reality of the situation.

I say this as someone who's considerably more negative about Apple than the median here. I just think you're wasting your breath assuming intellectual honesty from people repeating a canard years after it's been debunked (Note that I'm excluding people aware of the statistic who are interpreting Foxconn's suicides as still notable for whatever reason)

Re: Ethiopia Plants 350M Trees in One Day to Combat Drought and Climate Change

#182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even 200 seeds per hour would require ~145,000 participants to plant all 350M seeds in a 12 hr time frame. I’m literally just imagining a few guys with a leaf blower and a bag of seeds for how they got 350M in 12 hours haha.

They closed schools for this. There were a lot of people involved.

Not the worst way to teach kids a bit about how to nurture their environment. The absolute worst case here is a bunch of kids learning stuff and applying it later in their life. The best case is that and some meaningful percentage of these trees actually survives and helps restore a bit of land. Sounds like an interesting example to follow elsewhere. There's no shortage of recently arified land across the world.

I think there are a lot of countries finding out that they are not passive participants in the curve balls nature is throwing them and that they can influence what happens with simple, low tech solutions like planting trees and taking care of them and maybe a few simple changes in behavior like keeping sheep and cattle away from volatile areas.

Re: Ethiopia Plants 350M Trees in One Day to Combat Drought and Climate Change

#183
post #158
post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a friend who has a small business doing, well I actually have no clue what the English word for it is, but its direct translation would be “Nature Nursing/Care taking”. A descriptive translation would be something like a wild nature gartner. I asked him and he said it would be little trouble to plant that many seedlings if you coordinates the efforts and planned for it. He also told me that these stunts, like…

Now that is interesting. What are the challenges for making sure the trees survive the first five years? Do you have any knowledge you can help to elaborate?

As I understand it, it’s a range of things. Water and protection from animals, as other mentioned, is a big part of it. But so is growth speed, most trees grow rather slow, but grass, weeds and shrubbery doesn’t. This means that seedlings can lose the struggle for sunlight if you don’t “now the lawn” around them.

There is also quality of the seedlings. The best example is kitchen herbs. If you buy some rosemary in a pot at you local supermarket, it’ll taste fine. It’ll probably also survive long enough for you to eat it. If you try to plant it in your garden with the intention of keeping rosemary around for years, then there is a good chance it’ll have died within its first month. That’s because supermarket herbs are mass produced in safe environments, where long term survival isn’t valued. You could get lucky, but you’d have a much higher rate of success if you buy your rosemary from a grower who grew them to be planted outside. This is both slower and more expensive though.

Getting 350 million seedlings, often as cheap as you can, is easier with the mass-production approach, and that’s typically what these projects do.

Re: Ethiopia Plants 350M Trees in One Day to Combat Drought and Climate Change

#184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I wouldn't say it's that stable or that the rest of Africa is instable, especially compared to Europe. It's just that Europe industrialized earlier and got to reap rewards that can only come from most simple needs being met easily. Europe's industrialization as well as other Western countries heavily depended on the exploitation of third world countries in Asia and Africa, especially after WW2. Sweatshops and slave…

> Europe's industrialization as well as other Western countries heavily depended on the exploitation of third world countries in Asia and Africa, especially after WW2. If colonialism was necessary for industrialisation the European powers with no or smaller colonial empires would have had lower growth. Germany would have been behind the U.K. and France. Austria would have been obviously suffering compared to Germany.…

>If colonialism was necessary for industrialisation the European powers with no or smaller colonial empires would have had lower growth.

This assumes that the colonialists countries didn't trade with non colonialist countries in Europe.

Prussia initiated the concept of a common market in 1818 and in 1833 a treaty extended the Zollverein to the larger states of Germany, although Austria, by Prussian design was excluded.

As demand for coal increased, Germany rapidly developed railway and coalfields

We see lots of migration between Europeans countries specially ones with linked borders. There is movement of goods and people which itself can pull multiple of European countries to higher wages levels and living standards.

If french were getting richer and Germans were extracting coal. Germans could sell their coal at much higher price to French and grow rich without getting into colonialism.

If you cross the border and make much higher wages, the news would spread and regions would equalise overtime unless there is something which artificially stops migration.

Here's the data (which confirms high migration rates): https://brewminate.com/internal-migration-in-france-and-germ...

Re: Ethiopia Plants 350M Trees in One Day to Combat Drought and Climate Change

#185
post #151
post #99

But tell me again how the world's largest economy can't be bothered to do anything about climate change.

~1.6 billion trees are planted in the US every year and the total area of forested land in the US has been consistently growing since 1990.

Mostly on private land for the purpose of harvesting with heavy equipment.

Not exactly a carbon sink...

Re: Ethiopia Plants 350M Trees in One Day to Combat Drought and Climate Change

#186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't say it's that stable or that the rest of Africa is instable, especially compared to Europe. It's just that Europe industrialized earlier and got to reap rewards that can only come from most simple needs being met easily. In general, the developing countries are mostly "behind the curve", meaning their economic growth mostly wasn't that much lower for most of history, but rather they started somewhat later,…

> I wouldn't say it's that stable or that the rest of Africa is instable, especially compared to Europe. It's just that Europe industrialized earlier and got to reap rewards that can only come from most simple needs being met easily. Europe's industrialization as well as other Western countries heavily depended on the exploitation of third world countries in Asia and Africa, especially after WW2. Sweatshops and slave…

> Europe's industrialization as well as other Western countries heavily depended on the exploitation of third world countries

Causality and time moved the other direction.

Industrialization made Britain and a few other countries rich and technologically advanced. That enabled them to conquer and exploit third world countries. On balance, that enriched a lot of individuals and made a lot of leaders feel powerful, but didn't actually make the countries any richer.

The earlier conquests of the New World by Spain and Portugal was a whole other thing, mostly based on astonishing immunological luck.

Re: Ethiopia Plants 350M Trees in One Day to Combat Drought and Climate Change

#187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Europe's industrialization as well as other Western countries heavily depended on the exploitation of third world countries in Asia and Africa, especially after WW2. If colonialism was necessary for industrialisation the European powers with no or smaller colonial empires would have had lower growth. Germany would have been behind the U.K. and France. Austria would have been obviously suffering compared to Germany.…

>If colonialism was necessary for industrialisation the European powers with no or smaller colonial empires would have had lower growth. This assumes that the colonialists countries didn't trade with non colonialist countries in Europe. Prussia initiated the concept of a common market in 1818 and in 1833 a treaty extended the Zollverein to the larger states of Germany, although Austria, by Prussian design was exclude…

> This assumes that the colonialists countries didn't trade with non colonialist countries in Europe.

Look at the US and Mexico: Despite having a lot of trade and migration, the two countries significantly differ economically.

So it plainly does not hold that trade and migration entirely eliminates differences.

Re: Ethiopia Plants 350M Trees in One Day to Combat Drought and Climate Change

#188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

America’s success was the direct result of ethnic cleansing of millions of Native Americans and the backbreaking labor of millions of slaves. The comparison is ridiculous. We were the exploiters.

I don't think slavery is instrumental in the economic success of the USA - it probably hindered development, while no doubt enriching some individuals. If true, then when slavery was ended we would presumably have seen a stagnation in the economic fortunes of the USA, which I don't think has happened.

> If true, then when slavery was ended we would presumably have seen a stagnation in the economic fortunes of the USA, which I don't think has happened.

Something like that did in fact happen -- the post-civil war period coincided with the Long Depression (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Depression), which some economic historians would date between 1873 and 1896.

However, the Long Depression was at least in part a global phenomenon, and with any economic story there are many confounding factors. (And on top of all of this, nations did not keep rigorous economic statistics at the time anyway.)

Re: Ethiopia Plants 350M Trees in One Day to Combat Drought and Climate Change

#189
post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If colonialism was necessary for industrialisation the European powers with no or smaller colonial empires would have had lower growth. This assumes that the colonialists countries didn't trade with non colonialist countries in Europe. Prussia initiated the concept of a common market in 1818 and in 1833 a treaty extended the Zollverein to the larger states of Germany, although Austria, by Prussian design was exclude…

> This assumes that the colonialists countries didn't trade with non colonialist countries in Europe. Look at the US and Mexico: Despite having a lot of trade and migration, the two countries significantly differ economically. So it plainly does not hold that trade and migration entirely eliminates differences.

>Look at the US and Mexico: Despite having a lot of trade and migration, the two countries significantly differ economically.

Back then labor was in more demand. Evidence is the salves were imported often at great cost and risk.

There were fewer commodities in market.

Germany had coal, French needed it.

There was no limit on immigration.

People from Germany and France were more equal in education and social status than the difference you've between Americans and Mexicans.

Technology wise countries in Europe were quite equal, what differed is the amount of resources at their disposal.

>So it plainly does not hold that trade and migration entirely eliminates differences.

It doesn't have to entirely eliminate differences, just have to make them more equal.

Re: Ethiopia Plants 350M Trees in One Day to Combat Drought and Climate Change

#190
post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

~1.6 billion trees are planted in the US every year and the total area of forested land in the US has been consistently growing since 1990.

Mostly on private land for the purpose of harvesting with heavy equipment. Not exactly a carbon sink...

Sure it is. Harvested lumber doesn't release its CO2 back into the atmosphere unless you burn it.
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