Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Nasa Says Earth Is Greener Today Than 20 Years Ago Thanks to China, India

forbes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 99 posts

Re: Nasa Says Earth Is Greener Today Than 20 Years Ago Thanks to China, India

#81

Post by wickedwiesel »

Yes, India and China may be "greener". But, as the referenced article [0] states: The greening in China is from forests (42%) and croplands (32%), but in India is mostly from croplands (82%) with minor contribution from forests (4.4%). Main driver for greening according to the authors is an increase in food production.

It is not re-forestation as the Forbes' author wants readers to think: Both China and India went through phases of large scale deforestation in the 1970s and 80s, clearing old growth forests for urban development, farming and agriculture. However, it is clear that when presented with a problem, humans are incredibly adept at finding a solution.

The hubris!

This means we actually observe net deforestation, globally, but also in China [1] and India [2] if you look at tree coverage indicators from Global Forest Watch. Global Forest Watch also uses satellite images, from a very similar timeline, so it should be comparable and raise serious doubts on the positive message of the Forbes article. To preserve biodiversity and combat climate change, we need more forests, not just more "green" land.

[0] Nature article: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-019-0220-7

[1] China Forest Watch map: http://bit.ly/2HGOXtI

[2] India Forest Watch map: http://bit.ly/2qT4e0g

(edits to improve formatting)

Re: Nasa Says Earth Is Greener Today Than 20 Years Ago Thanks to China, India

#83

Post by _bxg1 »

rob74 wrote: post #71
_bxg1 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And what about India? As far as I know it doesn't have an authoritarian government. Europe is also democratic and has been a world leader in environmental policy. It's really just the United States that has the problem. I don't think the key difference is authoritarian vs. democratic, but "prudent" vs. "proudly ignorant". America has some deep, deep-rooted cultural problems that are really at the heart of our environ…

Unfortunately, it looks like the US are exporting this "proud ignorance" - see the recent victory of Jair Bolsonaro, who has been dubbed the "Brazilian Trump" because of his similar views on gun control, the environment ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jair_Bolsonaro#Environmental_p... ) and general firmly populist right-wing attitude. Maybe India, China and others will be able to offset the increased rate of deforest…

For various reasons the American mindset is more common in less-developed countries. To a degree that's natural - when you're just trying to get your economy off the ground, it makes more sense to get out of the way of business, as opposed to when you have the world's largest and most impactful economy.

The United States is a country that started out in that situation and never totally grew out of it. It's culturally stunted, stuck romanticizing an earlier stage of development instead of growing up. It's a fifty-year-old that refuses to stop acting like he's twenty-one.

Of course, the UK right now is a counter-example to this way of looking at things.

Re: Nasa Says Earth Is Greener Today Than 20 Years Ago Thanks to China, India

#84

Post by dalbasal »

ixtli wrote: post #61
bilbo0s wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You make a very good point, and I upvoted it. That said, ixtli has a very salient point on the subject of how implementing these things is a whole lot easier when you start shutting down factories and arresting scofflaws. But you probably don't necessarily need government as authoritarian as China's to do those things.

Ya I’ve said to another commenter that I just don’t know enough about Indian post-colonial government to be able to comment effectively.

Extremely multi-leveled and complex. Democratic. Corrupt in many places. Idk how you measure authorotarian-ness, but it certainly isn't totalitarian. Ie, A central national authority does not exercise a lot of power over people's lives. As you move down the power ladder to local scale, there is a lot of variance and there are pickets of totalitarian power... not the kind of power that'd be implementing environmental policies though.

I'd say more similar to the west than china, in terms of stuff pertinent to the thread.

More generally still, I don't think the high-level system is a driving force. I think it's mostly pretty straightforward.. environmental issues have become a thing people care about more in china and India, governments and publics.

Re: Nasa Says Earth Is Greener Today Than 20 Years Ago Thanks to China, India

#85

Post by rob74 »

_bxg1 wrote: post #83
rob74 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, it looks like the US are exporting this "proud ignorance" - see the recent victory of Jair Bolsonaro, who has been dubbed the "Brazilian Trump" because of his similar views on gun control, the environment ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jair_Bolsonaro#Environmental_p... ) and general firmly populist right-wing attitude. Maybe India, China and others will be able to offset the increased rate of deforest…

For various reasons the American mindset is more common in less-developed countries. To a degree that's natural - when you're just trying to get your economy off the ground, it makes more sense to get out of the way of business, as opposed to when you have the world's largest and most impactful economy. The United States is a country that started out in that situation and never totally grew out of it. It's culturally…

Well, yes, but India and China are less-developed countries too. I know all developing countries can say "you cut down your forests centuries ago, why can't we do the same thing now?", but at least some are trying to develop without making the same mistakes...

Re: Nasa Says Earth Is Greener Today Than 20 Years Ago Thanks to China, India

#86

Post by deftnerd »

ixtli wrote: post #10

I think its very important to engage with the fact that this is something China can do because of what we in the west deem unacceptably "authoritarian" governance. This effect isn't entirely due to people's starry-eyed conservationism: the government arrests people and closes factories that violate these ecological goals. By way of example, this happened a few weeks ago and is very difficult to find coverage of in en…

I know this is a somewhat controversial statement, but I sometimes feel that Democracy is ruining our chances of survival as a species.

Long-term project planning and execution is very difficult when administrations, and their inherent focuses, change so quickly compared to the length of time necessary to achieve massive projects.

If we want to "fix" climate change by terraforming our planet, it'll take multiple lifetimes. Same with substantial space engineering projects.

It flies in the face of my liberal demeanor, but I think the only form of government with the ability to stick to plans for hundreds of years would be a Monarchy, strict dictatorship, or something similar. In theory, we could get lucky and they would be benevolent.

We could also just embrace the plausible AI "singularity" and ask the machines to take care of us and tell us what to do. It just takes faith that an AI would be more reliable over hundreds of years than a succession of different people. It also takes faith that it wouldn't decide to just throw in the towel and remove the people to save the planet.

Re: Nasa Says Earth Is Greener Today Than 20 Years Ago Thanks to China, India

#87

Post by giggles_giggles »

deftnerd wrote: post #86
ixtli wrote: post #10

I think its very important to engage with the fact that this is something China can do because of what we in the west deem unacceptably "authoritarian" governance. This effect isn't entirely due to people's starry-eyed conservationism: the government arrests people and closes factories that violate these ecological goals. By way of example, this happened a few weeks ago and is very difficult to find coverage of in en…

I know this is a somewhat controversial statement, but I sometimes feel that Democracy is ruining our chances of survival as a species. Long-term project planning and execution is very difficult when administrations, and their inherent focuses, change so quickly compared to the length of time necessary to achieve massive projects. If we want to "fix" climate change by terraforming our planet, it'll take multiple life…

>I sometimes feel that Democracy is ruining our chances of survival as a species.

The cynic in me believes that the point of environmental alarmism is to convince the public that giving up their democratic way of life and their rights is the only way to save the earth and humanity from certain destruction. Those who believe that dramatic action is necessary to stop certain extinction will stop at nothing to take power in order to enact their plan. After all, the very survival of the species depends upon them, doesn't it?

Re: Nasa Says Earth Is Greener Today Than 20 Years Ago Thanks to China, India

#88

Post by [deleted] »

pm90 wrote: post #13
swarnie_ wrote: post #7

i think we'll see this more and more as China shifts its manufacturing over to Africa (currently huge investments going on). It doesn't really solve the problem, you just get to point at someone else who's now holding the ball instead of you when it all goes up in flames.

Uh..... no. If China/India adopt and perfect green tech and export it to Africa, fucking awesome. America is sadly too busy with infighting on stupid issues (Abortion, Gun restrictions , Voting rights... all important, stupid in that there still isn’t general consensus that these are all good ideas that should be adopted widely ASAP) while the rest of the world moves on.

[deleted]

Re: Nasa Says Earth Is Greener Today Than 20 Years Ago Thanks to China, India

#90

Post by Wowfunhappy »

harshalizee wrote: post #67
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is your point that the US is worse? Because, yes, the US absolutely needs to lower its carbon output immediately and drastically. Note that there are lots of other democratic countries doing far better than the US and China.

yeah, and none of those are remotely anywhere the size of the above mentioned countries.

Isn't the purpose of looking at "per capita" numbers that it allows you to compare countries of different sizes?
Post reply on HN