Rainforest

Last week’s theme was paper and I think it is appropriate to talk about trees this week. Specifically the rainforest. This is possibly the sexiest and most loved of all the environmental causes. Mainly, I think, because rainforests are cool and mysterious, and what they are being replaced with – farms, roads, nothing – is not cool and mysterious.

Here is an abysmal pie chart

which shows that about half the rainforest is forever lost.

And basically that the rest of it is on its way out too.

63,000 square miles of rainforests are being destroyed each year.

Suck.

Ok, time for the cool shit abut rainforests. Thanks to this website for all these facts.

In Peninsular Malaysia, more tree species are found in 125 acres of tropical forest than in the entire North America.

Madagascar is the home to a rainforest where 60% of its 12,000 different plant species are unique to that island.

In Peru, a single bush may contain more ant species than in the British Isles.

A study has shown that there are possibly over 30 million species of insects dwelling in the canopies of tropical forests.

Despite covering only 2% of our planet’s surface, over half of the earth’s animal, insect species, and flora live there - Only 1% of these species has ever been studied.

Paper

The theme of this week’s facts is paper. These facts are all U.S. based because pretty much everything in the world always is. To help you picture the scale, the population of the U.S. is about 75 times that of New Zealand.

58% of U.S. newspapers are recycled.

That’s fairly good, but 500,000 trees could be saved if every family in the United States recycled their newspaper.

Americans use 50 million tons of paper annually – consuming more than 850 million trees.

So I guess that would mean 17 trees are used to make one ton of paper

Every ton of recycled office paper saves 1,440 litres of oil (plus save heaps of trees)

These facts raised a really interesting point for me, basically because I like cars and I like driving. Let’s just stop being such arrogant idiots and save some stuff. I see now why greenies get so frustrated, because if everyone on the planet did this stuff it would make a huge difference. Billions of trees and millions of litres of oil would be saved instead of being pissed away. It makes me think of burning money – just totally wasteful and pointless. Aaaaaah! I think I’m being converted :/