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

bloomberg.com

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

#221

Post by thinkpad20 »

simonsarris wrote: post #218
thinkpad20 wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If slavery makes a country rich, why isn't Africa rich? I never made the claim that any country can become rich simply by having slavery. The question of why the West is so much richer than e.g. Africa or Brazil is obviously vastly complex and does not boil down to "because of slavery." But whether or not the American South was richer than the North at the time of the civil war, it certainly very very wealthy, and…

I'm not trying to point accusatory fingers anywhere, you're missing the claim. You made the claim that USA success was the direct result of slave labor. If this were true, you would expect other societies with boatloads of slave labor to be more successful. They weren't. Since lots of places had lots of unpaid labor and did nothing particularly successful, there must be more to it. If there is more to it, it is (usua…

Perhaps my choice of the term "direct" is overly specific, but I feel like this is a very nit-picky quibble. The underlying point I was trying to make doesn't change, which is that the United States benefited hugely (in purely economic terms) from slavery. Whether or not we would have been as, less, or more successful without it, or whether it has been helpful to others, is an orthogonal discussion. As I said, I am not making the claim, and never intended to, that slavery was the only cause of American prosperity. If this is the primary dispute you have with what I said, I readily accept the correction and we can move on.

However, if your intention is to dispute the claim that slavery was immensely beneficial to the development of the American economy, or to suggest that the morality of American slavery was somehow mitigated by other historical examples of slavery, I strongly disagree. I think in general this mentality is incredibly disrespectful. Acknowledging the role played in our success by the (unwilling) sacrifice made by millions of slaves and Native Americans is the very least that we can do.

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

#222

Post by sitkack »

VBprogrammer wrote: post #171
dmix wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Because the hard part isn’t planting trees it’s making sure they survive the first five years. Which is interesting because the article already mentions a lack of water resources: >> as Ethiopians heeded Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s ambitious plan to roll back years of drought and scanty rains that the United Nations says has left some 3.8 million people in immediate need for assistance. Won't these new trees demand…

It's important to remember that the water used by trees is not necessarily zero sum. Trees shade the ground reducing evaporation; they contribute to soil structure increasing the soils ability to hold water; they break hard-pan layers allowing more water to seep into the ground during rain-fail events etc.

https://www.sthelenaisland.info/the-millennium-forest/

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-11137903

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

#223

Post by netllama »

lazyasciiart wrote: post #150
supernova87a wrote: post #127

Did anyone else find the 350M number implausible? They claim it happened in 12 hours. Unless they're talking about planting seeds, I find it hard to believe and take this story just as a political stunt. Ethiopia's population is 100M. Did 10% participate in this somehow, and each person plant 35 trees across the country? How would you even get that many trees to plant?

They've been planning this for a while. Lots of schools and government offices were closed so people could do this - I wouldn't be surprised if more than 10% of people were involved.

They didn't mention that most schools in Ethiopia are half day by default (because they lack sufficient teachers & school rooms to educate all the children for a full day). So in reality, most children wouldn't have been in school for half the day regardless.

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

#224

Post by netllama »

Tepix wrote: post #71

Numbers about Ethiopia's forest cover vary greatly, I see 4% in the year 2000 mentioned on Wikipedia, I see 14% in 2018 mentioned in this Bloomberg article and I see some numbers in between in a 2015 paper by Abraha Hatsey http://wiki.awf.forst.uni-goettingen.de/wiki/images/e/e9/6_3... I wonder why the numbers are varying so wildly.

The numbers vary so much because they're (nearly) all fabricated by whomever was interviewed. The Ethiopian government is notoriously corrupt. Lots of talking heads who contribute little. They're just trying to one up each other with fabricated statistics.

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

#225

Post by amerine »

Vomzor wrote: post #194
rjzzleep wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If colonialism was necessary for industrialisation the European powers with no or smaller colonial empires would have had lower growth. Which countries are you referring to? First of all borders in Europe were not the way they are right now 150 or 200 years ago. Second, an example for a tiny country that was exploiting an african nation well into the 20th century is Belgium [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bel…

It's doubtful Congo was responsible for the wealth of Belgium. - What is now Belgium was one of the wealthiest parts of Europe in the Middle Ages, long before any colonization. - Belgium was the second European country to industrialize. This caused the economy to boom and Belgium had the 4th highest GDP in 1900. Congo was only a colony since 1908. - In 1918 the whole economy was destroyed because of the war. The Germ…

What is the Marshall Plan?

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

#226

Post by grzm »

amerine wrote: post #225
Vomzor wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's doubtful Congo was responsible for the wealth of Belgium. - What is now Belgium was one of the wealthiest parts of Europe in the Middle Ages, long before any colonization. - Belgium was the second European country to industrialize. This caused the economy to boom and Belgium had the 4th highest GDP in 1900. Congo was only a colony since 1908. - In 1918 the whole economy was destroyed because of the war. The Germ…

What is the Marshall Plan?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Plan

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

#227

Post by dmix »

VBprogrammer wrote: post #171
dmix wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Because the hard part isn’t planting trees it’s making sure they survive the first five years. Which is interesting because the article already mentions a lack of water resources: >> as Ethiopians heeded Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s ambitious plan to roll back years of drought and scanty rains that the United Nations says has left some 3.8 million people in immediate need for assistance. Won't these new trees demand…

It's important to remember that the water used by trees is not necessarily zero sum. Trees shade the ground reducing evaporation; they contribute to soil structure increasing the soils ability to hold water; they break hard-pan layers allowing more water to seep into the ground during rain-fail events etc.

That’s interesting I wasn’t aware of that. I guess trees are different than agriculture.

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

#228

Post by iguy »

thinkpad20 wrote: post #221
simonsarris wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not trying to point accusatory fingers anywhere, you're missing the claim. You made the claim that USA success was the direct result of slave labor. If this were true, you would expect other societies with boatloads of slave labor to be more successful. They weren't. Since lots of places had lots of unpaid labor and did nothing particularly successful, there must be more to it. If there is more to it, it is (usua…

Perhaps my choice of the term "direct" is overly specific, but I feel like this is a very nit-picky quibble. The underlying point I was trying to make doesn't change, which is that the United States benefited hugely (in purely economic terms) from slavery. Whether or not we would have been as, less, or more successful without it, or whether it has been helpful to others, is an orthogonal discussion. As I said, I am n…

> United States benefited hugely (in purely economic terms) from slavery. Whether or not we would have been as, less, or more successful without it, or whether it has been helpful to others, is an orthogonal discussion.

I don't see how these can be orthogonal. If the claim of benefiting from something isn't a comparison to a world in which you didn't have that thing, then what is it?

And since we don't have access to a world in which the US didn't have slavery, the best we can do to get information is to compare to other somewhat similar societies. Other places in the Americas with (and without) slave economies seem extremely relevant.

One comparison not mentioned so far: The cotton mills of England spun a lot of slave-grown cotton, just like the ones of New England. It was debated at the time how essential this was. And the civil war blockade provided a useful natural experiment, in which it turned out not to take very long to switch to cotton from other places, like Egypt.

The moral questions don't seem tightly coupled to the economic ones. Would anyone claim that slavery in what's now Haiti (or Brazil) was less of an evil act than slavery in the US, on the grounds that these places are poorer now? Or more evil, on the same grounds? And if not, then why is disputing the economic benefit of slavery in any way taken to be disrespectful of suffering?

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

#229

Post by iguy »

BurningFrog wrote: post #186
neuronic wrote: post #24

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 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…

Yes to this.

Somehow it's easy to imagine that the Iraq war could happen for the benefit of some people's careers, and Halliburton's stockholders, while being a complete disaster for the US as a whole (not to mention for everyone else).

Yet when we discuss 19th C colonial adventures, the default assumption is that the much weaker states of the time certainly knew exactly what they were doing, for their own good. And could make sure that their generals, months away by post, certainly obeyed, and never got rich themselves...

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

#230

Post by blackoil »

gingabriska wrote: post #192
blackoil wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there any reason to believe, Foxconn employees don't have any other personal/environmental problem causing them to suicide. While I am all for improving conditions of employees, it should be in context to the environment. If the whole country is working on 1$/day, expecting few companies to got 5$ just because they have global visibility is not feasible. It is not good for the company, economy and social dynamics…

>Is there any reason to believe, Foxconn employees don't have any other personal/environmental problem causing them to suicide. It seems #1 reason for sucide is mental illness or chronic pain/disease severely impacting their quality of life. You need to ask can mentally ill people get employed at foxconn? They would be having interviews like for every other job, and probably the workers are selected based on their ef…

Not my area of expertise, but someone with depression or similar disease should be able to interview and function well in company for most of days. Particularly someone very smart may have problem with communication intensive roles, but may excel in repetitive/manual tasks.
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