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

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

#241

Post by bayesian_horse »

iguy wrote: post #157
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…

> Sweatshops and slavery and cheap mass transportation of goods make our lifestyle possible. One of these things is not like the others! Cheap sea transport is a triumph of engineering. Sweatshop is just a term for a factory which the speaker disdains. Usually implying that the peasants should stay on their fields in picturesque poverty, and not make their own life choices. Slavery, on the other hand, is actually evi…

Mass transportation means you can profit from slavery or human rights abuses or whatever, while not seeing it because of the distance.

Slavery is more common than you think, and especially because there are conditions equal to any definition of slavery, which are just not labeled that. There still is plenty of such slavery almost all around the world.

Also, slavery is not the standard for exploitation. Subsistence wages alone may or may not be exploitative, but they don't constitute slavery. You need additional restrictions, for example on your movement, choice of work, human rights, etc

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

#242

Post by bayesian_horse »

greeble wrote: post #75
whb07 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You realize that the European powers of 17th and 18th centuries "exploited" the Americas to include the U.S and yet here stands the U.S head and shoulders above these "exploiters".

Good going USA. It's too bad Africa as a whole didn't manage the same. But you know, the people in the now USA who did the overthrowing were themselves Europeans. After all, the native Americans are not running things today are they?

It's harder to exploit people who have the institutional/cultural knowledge to fight back.

And still, lots of natives in colonies managed to overthrow their exploiters, usually with higher technology or more ressources than their original hunter-gatherer culture had.

Native Americans were outmatched by the population pressure from Europe. They didn't get the time to develop agriculture and everything to the point that they could compete in population density. And on top of that, a lot of violence, accidental harm and wrongful deeds have been done to them.

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

#243

Post by bayesian_horse »

zapita wrote: post #124
whb07 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, butter production in the southern states where there was "unlimited free labor" was roughly 20% of the national output, even though they had 40% of the total dairy cows. So there is your counter point to the argument that with "free labor" things got massively built. Quite the opposite. Its hard to get high productivity from slave labor (go figure). Anyhow, one has to observe to be first aware of such things li…

First, I'll note that you haven't addressed the "unlimited land" part at all. Shall I conclude that you agree with me, at least, that appropriation of native land was one of the pillars of US wealth creation? > butter production in the southern states where there was "unlimited free labor" was roughly 20% of the national output, even though they had 40% of the total dairy cows. So from this one example, you're extrap…

Native American Cultures are extremely dynamic. It's hard to define objectively who is native American and who is not. As in similar matters, it may be the best thing to let people call themselves what they want.

You can define Native American ancestry in some way or other, but that would say nothing about an individuals connection to that culture which may be high or may be zero.

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

#244

Post by bayesian_horse »

zapita wrote: post #135
merpnderp wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The shortest and simplest argument is that the South barely had the funds to prosecute the war while the North not only could fully fund their war efforts, they had access to extensive lines of credit from other nations. The South had to rely upon the largesse of European countries using it as a pawn. The North lost roughly one soldier for every African slave brought to the South and the least we could do is not impl…

> The shortest and simplest argument is that the South barely had the funds to prosecute the war while the North not only could fully fund their war efforts, they had access to extensive lines of credit from other nations. The South had to rely upon the largesse of European countries using it as a pawn. Interesting argument. And what was the wealth of the North built on?

You can't say the northern states were not benefiting from exploitative conditions or even slavery in the south. And all of white America continued to profit from denying non-whites equal rights in one way or another.

The Confederates had probably hoped the North would not want to go to war over the Union thing.

And also: Even though slavery is not an effective means of production (though it probably was, at some points for some people), it's still wrong.

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

#245

Post by charlescearl »

I am surprised that no one mentioned the Greenbelt Movement, a grass roots effort started in neighboring Kenya by Nobel laureate Wangari Maathai [0]. They have successfully planted millions of trees over the years to combat deforestation.

The strides that the current Ethiopian government has taken in terms of human rights and commitment to resolving ethnic disparities are tremendous [1]. Since most humans have an Ethiopian grandma in the family tree, these are accomplishments that we can all take pride in.

[0] http://www.greenbeltmovement.org/

[1] https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2019/country-chapters/ethio...

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

#246

Post by lazyasciiart »

crististm wrote: post #239
aldanor wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Times 10% population = 350M

Because 10% of the population have nothing to do in a day and voluntarily plant trees? Hmmm... I might be underestimating Ethiopians though...

Did you try reading any of the links people have added in this thread? Schools and government offices were closed. This was a big event that was planned for months. 10% participation sounds absolutely plausible if not lower than I'd expect.

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

#247

Post by ryanmercer »

ginko wrote: post #101
ryanmercer wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's better to just use it for sustainable construction, where you are locking it up for decades in a structure.

I guess another option would be to shred the wood and dump it in wasteland to compost it. Considering we have a huge problem with soil erosion, this might be a viable way to regain some of it. There was this experiment with just dumping 12000 tonnes of orange peel a while ago that turned out to be a huge success: https://www.sciencealert.com/how-12-000-tonnes-of-dumped-ora... Maybe something like this can also work w…

Hmmm, this makes me wonder how much of the carbon petrified wood retains and if there isn't some method where the process might be accelerated (without a lot of energy input, a quick google shows you can do it rapidly using a heated chamber but that's going to be counterproductive and require an absurd amount of energy).

Although, maybe you could use concentrated solar or even geothermal for the heating part. Hell, you could probably make it profitable selling the petrified wood for use in construction (mantles, counter tops, tile). If it retains a decent amount of the carbon.

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

#248

Post by wutbrodo »

ryantgtg wrote: post #195
wutbrodo wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ne…

This is the first time I've seen this debunking. And my head isn't in the sand, and I am definitely interested in understanding the reality of the situation. So, it's not a waste of breath at all.

Thanks for the counterexample. I'm sincerely curious as to how you ended up in this position. When you read a claim (in this case, "Foxconn workers have an elevated suicide rate"), are you not in the habit of at least Googling it to verify whether the source you read is mistaken or lying? In this case, the very first Google result is a short Wikipedia article containing the debunking, for a grand total of thirty seconds of research required to get a clear picture of the truth of the matter.

This isn't a rhetorical question,as I'm actually curious: taking you at face value as subjectively not having your "head in the sand", I don't have a model for how you'd end up believing the Foxconn suicide claim without being aware of the counterargument.

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

#249

Post by crististm »

lazyasciiart wrote: post #246
crististm wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because 10% of the population have nothing to do in a day and voluntarily plant trees? Hmmm... I might be underestimating Ethiopians though...

Did you try reading any of the links people have added in this thread? Schools and government offices were closed. This was a big event that was planned for months. 10% participation sounds absolutely plausible if not lower than I'd expect.

No. I would assume if this was such a big event that the original article would cover it. I guess it was that big that they did not need to add any details.

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

#250

Post by swish_bob »

dgacmu wrote: post #57
sriram_malhar wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What Band Aid? I'm talking of the mechanics of keeping 350 million trees alive. That takes effort, and a lot more area besides Addis Ababa. I'm inclined to disbelieve these numbers unless I see some trustworthy non-govt source. Everyone's quoting the minister.

Band Aid in this case refers to a charity fundraising effort started in the 1980s to combat famine in Ethiopia. It included some misleading lyrics in its headliner song: > Lyrics of the song included description of the country saying, "where nothing ever grows, no rain or rivers flow..." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Band_Aid_(band)

It was a response to an immense drought in Ethiopia (largely the result of deforestation). They had years with almost no rain. It really wasn't misleading with respect to the situation at the time.
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