Lulu-Vamp
While growing hemp is an option you would take away the structure provided by the forest as it grows and thus the habitat provided by the ever changing forest as it grows. For example, clear-cut forest areas provide us with fiber for paper and the exposed land is a grassy shrubby paradise for birds who prefer non-forest habitat and who are actually suffering greatly when we DON'T clear-cut because they lose more and more habitat as it grows into mature forest. As the forest matures the species composition changes and a variety of shrubland and forestland species receive benefits.
The best way to harvest wood is not to clear-cut, but selectively cut at a sustainable pace. The grassy, shrubland for other animals should exist naturally. If it always develops into forest, then how did nature originally create a habitat for these animals? Did large browsers originally hold the forest back, as elephants in Africa do today? Also, are some of the birds you mentioned introduced species from Europe? Please educate me on this subject.
In the North American Midwest, the natural habitats have been in disarray for centuries due to human intervention. Even before Europeans arrived, much of the forest had been cleared by the Native Americans for agriculture. When small pox wiped them out (before the Europeans had moved very far inland), the forests regenerated... only to be cut down again by the European settlers. It would be interesting to see what the natural habitat would be if humans hadn't started manipulating it.
The problem is that we're too busy playing god with our resources and the environment. Usually, clear-cutting leads to monoculture tree farms, which only decreases biodiversity. How common is the technique you described, where people clear-cut, then allow grassy shrub to develop and slowly mature into forest? I suspect that is not very common, but I could be wrong.
Lulu-Vamp
Hemp would serve only certain species and because hemp is a non-native plant we would actually be contributing to the invasive exotics problem already unbearable and untreatable in our wildlands today.
Very well said! Sometimes the most environmentally promising solution actually creates more problems than it solves. The most basic solution to deforestation is primarily reduced consumption, and secondarily recycling.
ghstphantom3
the main thing to think about here is the factor of money. no one who is making money their way will willingly cut their own profits just for environmental reasons unless legislation forced them to. not only is it more expensive to produce, think also of how much money it would cost for the businesses to convert. they would have to pay for new farms, the plants, new workers, retrain the old workers, new machinery and just have to make a huge overhaul, much like starting over again would be.
Hemp is the way to go, but there is no way it will happen if just left to happen on it's own.
This is because our economic system is horribly flawed. It assumes infinite resources and infinite waste absorption through the environment. Our economic system promotes externalizing costs, which means that costs of doing business can be off-loaded onto unsuspecting, uninvolved third parties, such as the environment or the public. For example, a paper mill can dump its effluent into the local river and not have to pay for the cost of cleaning it up. Instead, the environment becomes degraded, and if people want it cleaned up, the community foots the bill. No environmental regulations prohibit all pollution, they merely limit it.
Because companies can externalize their costs, they can offer cheaper goods in our price-competitive marketplace. Therefore the goal of commerce is to maximize sales while lowering costs and price. Environmentally friendly companies are always at a disadvantage because they don't externalize their costs as much. They foot the bill, and that translates into higher priced products.
Things don't have to be this way. In "The Ecology of Commerce: A Declaration of Sustainability" by Paul Hawken, green taxes are proposed. Green taxes attempt to compensate for externalized costs, and would essentially give sustainable products the competitive advantage within our capitalistic economy. By phasing out taxes on beneficial aspects of our lives, such as income taxes, and gradually phasing in green taxes, businesses would actually work to maximize profits by protecting the environment and working towards sustainability.
Remember: Things don't have to be this way. There are other ways of living out there. We just have to have the courage to abandon this failing system and expend our energy towards finding new ways that nurture both us and the environment that sustains us.
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