China has added forest the size of Texas since 1990 • Hacker News Board

Re: China has added forest the size of Texas since 1990

#551

Post by alex_smart » Thu, Oct 30, 2025, 2:36 PM UTC

shubhamjain wrote: post #333

yanhangyhy wrote: post #233

I don’t know how it is in other countries, but nearly thirty years ago when I was in elementary school, a Chinese propaganda slogan stuck with me: “If you want to get rich, build roads first; have fewer children, plant more trees.” Every part of that slogan has been put into action, continuously, for decades. Although low birth rates have now become a problem, back then it seemed like a solution. Xi Jinping may be a…

> Although low birth rates have now become a problem, back then it seemed like a solution. They haven't, imo. I am from India, and I have been hearing for the last two decades how we have avoided same mistakes as China and the latter is headed for a demographic collapse. China is only marching forward, and focusing more on automation to hedge its bets. While overpopulation in India has choked almost every city in Ind…

India’s problems have nothing to do with population and everything to do with complete collapse of all government institutions.

Re: China has added forest the size of Texas since 1990

#552

Post by fwip » Thu, Oct 30, 2025, 2:37 PM UTC

chemotaxis wrote: post #147

dustractor wrote: post #129

Meanwhile we're speedrunning DustBowl 2.0 just in time for its 100th anniversary.

How so? US forest cover bottomed out in the 1920s or 1930 and has been going up since. If anything, in the West, the forests aren't logged enough, which increases wildfire risk. China isn't following a particularly unique path, they just did a speedrun of economic development - they had nearly everyone living in extreme poverty in the 1980s. Before long, they'll be looking for cheap markets to outsource manufacturing…

I think it's due to topsoil depletion, which is only partly affected by local forests. Trees reduce wind speed which helps reduce erosion from wind, but much of our topsoil is lost due to our agriculture practices.

Re: China has added forest the size of Texas since 1990

#553

Post by kulahan » Thu, Oct 30, 2025, 2:38 PM UTC

golem14 wrote: post #178

votepaunchy wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> embrace and profit massively off of next gen energy infrastructure Our children’s generation will never forgive us for abandoning nuclear energy abundance. Truly a crime against humanity.

I used to be a true believe in nuclear (in the 80s, 90s). Recently, I thought (with good justification) that it's a folly to build out nuclear if renewables' economics continue on the current path. Recently, I wonder if a nuclear winter (I mean this in the cold war context) is likely enough to make renewables massively less efficient. If the current administration were more competent, I'd assume that they are pushing…

Nuclear is a renewable, and of course it still makes sense to build it out. In what world do you think our energy needs plateau? I'm always so surprised to see this 1970s hippie attitude making a comeback, especially since it makes less sense today than ever before.

Re: China has added forest the size of Texas since 1990

#554

Post by kulahan » Thu, Oct 30, 2025, 2:41 PM UTC

votepaunchy wrote: post #155

munk-a wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US was positioned to leverage technological and economic advantages to embrace and profit massively off of next gen energy infrastructure. It is a tragedy of our era that anti-conservationalism was able to gain such a strong foothold in the body politic.

> embrace and profit massively off of next gen energy infrastructure Our children’s generation will never forgive us for abandoning nuclear energy abundance. Truly a crime against humanity.

This is the worst part. Wind and solar don't come within a thousand miles of being sufficient unless we massively improve our generation density, invent new magical batteries that aren't even on the horizon yet, and build out hundreds of thousands of square miles of solar panels and windmills.

Re: China has added forest the size of Texas since 1990

#555

Post by triceratops » Thu, Oct 30, 2025, 2:43 PM UTC

somenameforme wrote: post #446

Arainach wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LBJ made more progress on social issues than any President with the possible exception of FDR. Certainly dramatically more progress per year in office. Jimmy Carter was also socially motivated. Reagan changed the game, Newt Gingrich destroyed cooperation, and now we're living in the world they created.

Modern politicians are really good at framing everything as being the most socially motivated thing in the world. And I think LBJ is the grandfather of this stuff. When you read of his private discussions, socially motivated is just about the last thing he was. He wanted absolute political power and understood that he could create systems of dependency to achieve it. It just so happens that systems of dependency can…

> The fact that 60 years later 'solving hunger' has translated to having more than 41 million people completely unable to feed themselves without government assistance is not a coincidence

Yeah it is a coincidence. The last 60 years also coincided with massive deindustrialization, job losses and reducing labor power, and multiple drug epidemics. I'm much more inclined to believe it was those factors, and not "welfarism".

Re: China has added forest the size of Texas since 1990

#556

Post by ashanoko » Thu, Oct 30, 2025, 2:47 PM UTC

simsla wrote: post #466

shubhamjain wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Although low birth rates have now become a problem, back then it seemed like a solution. They haven't, imo. I am from India, and I have been hearing for the last two decades how we have avoided same mistakes as China and the latter is headed for a demographic collapse. China is only marching forward, and focusing more on automation to hedge its bets. While overpopulation in India has choked almost every city in Ind…

European here. One of the problems is that many of our society's systems are predicated on a growing population. Social security and pensions, for example, are structured not unlike a pyramid scheme: for every old person we should have more than one working young person. People take more than they give. Fixing that will be painful, but possible. More worrying is how many countries' birth rates have fallen below the r…

[dead]

Re: China has added forest the size of Texas since 1990

#557

Post by BurningFrog » Thu, Oct 30, 2025, 2:50 PM UTC

goatlover wrote: post #283

BurningFrog wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Have fewer children" implies that people are a burden, which can be true in a dysfunctional society, like perhaps China under Mao. But in a well functioning system, more people get more things done and make society wealthier. The old idea was that the planet can only produce enough food for a certain number of people. But it turned out that people produce the food, not the planet!

There's only so much food people can grow on planet Earth, so it remains true, even if the number varies depending on the means available for producing that food. So yeah we can grow more food than people thought decades ago, but the Earth and the energy available to it, along with arable land are still finite.

Empirically, we now get more than 3x the yield per land area than 1960, and the trend is steadily rising (see graph link below).

Your argument is that it can't grow to infinity, which is probably true. But there is nothing indicting we're close to any hard boundaries.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/index-of-cereal-productio...

Re: China has added forest the size of Texas since 1990

#558

Post by Jyaif » Thu, Oct 30, 2025, 2:50 PM UTC

throw0101c wrote: post #525

simsla wrote: post #466

Earlier quoted context omitted.

European here. One of the problems is that many of our society's systems are predicated on a growing population. Social security and pensions, for example, are structured not unlike a pyramid scheme: for every old person we should have more than one working young person. People take more than they give. Fixing that will be painful, but possible. More worrying is how many countries' birth rates have fallen below the r…

> Social security and pensions, for example, are structured not unlike a pyramid scheme: for every old person we should have more than one working young person. Canada saw the demographic writing on the wall, and solved its public/government pension problem in the 1990s: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada_Pension_Plan#1998_refor... Good book on the history of the CPP, and how the reforms were determined and enact…

> In France it is reported that retirees now have higher (average?) incomes than workers

It may not be exactly true, but it's close to be true, and then like you said the workers have way more expenses (rent, children).

I will point out that in the 90s we in France already knew that the retirement system was unsustainable. It is quite obvious if you look for 2 seconds at the population pyramid :-)

Generations of politicians tried and failed to do something about it, thanks to the left (and sometimes extreme right wing) saying that there was enough money and we just need to tax the rich more.

Re: China has added forest the size of Texas since 1990

#559

Post by 6510 » Thu, Oct 30, 2025, 2:50 PM UTC

shubhamjain wrote: post #333

yanhangyhy wrote: post #233

I don’t know how it is in other countries, but nearly thirty years ago when I was in elementary school, a Chinese propaganda slogan stuck with me: “If you want to get rich, build roads first; have fewer children, plant more trees.” Every part of that slogan has been put into action, continuously, for decades. Although low birth rates have now become a problem, back then it seemed like a solution. Xi Jinping may be a…

> Although low birth rates have now become a problem, back then it seemed like a solution. They haven't, imo. I am from India, and I have been hearing for the last two decades how we have avoided same mistakes as China and the latter is headed for a demographic collapse. China is only marching forward, and focusing more on automation to hedge its bets. While overpopulation in India has choked almost every city in Ind…

My thought was that we should develop a good DSL to design pensions. You obviously cant have a formula with more money coming out than going in. Pensions can gradually scale up and down depending on all factors.

It isn't even hard to create. Things currently work like that children's game where each participant has to write the next word in the sentence. No amount of effort or coordination will produce a good novel.

Re: China has added forest the size of Texas since 1990

#560

Post by kulahan » Thu, Oct 30, 2025, 2:51 PM UTC

Terr_ wrote: post #307

kulahan wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is opposite to everything I've ever read. A brief "greening" period was expected (and is now nearing its end) as climate change started taking off due specifically to this effect. Edit: to clarify, I'm saying the greening thing already happened due to increases in CO2 levels (though it's possible this is due to heat and not CO2 itself, I guess?).

Hmmm, separately of plant-types, I wonder if there may be a distinction here between how a surge in individual growth doesn't necessarily translate to a surge in the forest. Imagine a higher CO2 concentration allows a tree to reach maturity a whole +25% faster, taking 16y instead of 20y. However its happening in an established forest, already bounded by mountains, rivers, etc, where mature trees sustain for another 1…

Interesting theory. I imagine there would be a stratification of mature and immature trees that would be pretty striking if this is the case. It might not be hard to find out if it's true!