Taking Down Worldwide Forests Bit By Bit

 deforestation

I sometimes watch a show on TV about New Hampshire while eating dinner. It always includes a history segment and I like it because it puts our current times nestled into a larger framework..

One of the most interesting ones was about Livermore, NH — a long abandoned town. According to the TV show: the town was entirely owned and operated by the Grafton County Lumber Company, which was owned by three members of the Saunders family and two others. They also owned much, much more. They owned the town school, the only store in town and the boarding houses in which most town members lived. They also owned the family dwelling units while charging big bucks for everything in the town == from rent to food..

It was a logging town. Workers were paid at the end of the 1800’s a dollar a day and with specialty skills — $1.25 USD. In other words, the company was making money hand over fist by bilking workers of their money for housing and food (bought at the store while the company was also making huge profits in lumber sales.

Now a resident in the next town over with three pretty daughters noticed that the loggers who were unmarried had little to do at night. So the resident opened up a conversation club in Livermore for the loggers to relax and get to know their fellow loggers. .. The resident sent his three daughters to tell Livermore loggers of the club and it was a big hit!

Initially the next town’s resident would have his three attractive daughter frolic in some waterway in Livermore when loggers got off of work for the day. Then they would approach the loggers to talk of the club. That method posed as a great advertisement for the club.

Well, the owners of the town (and imagine your town completely owned by some organization like Monsanto or Pepsi Cola), were not happy about the club and either bribed a judge or got a legal stay against the club with a huge fine to be paid by the club owners. When the family got wind of it, they were long gone from their own nearby town.

Livermore shut down due to the obtainable timber being too far away since the forests had already been completely ravaged near town. So like many logging towns,due to local resource overshoot, it shut down and was abandoned. There was just not anything of great financial value to ravage left in the local environs from the natural world.

Yes, whole towns and nations can disappear through resource overshoot. A long period of history have taught us that with Livermore being just one of many more recent examples.

Livermore – White Mountain History whitemountainhistory.org/Livermore.html history of abandoned town of Livermore NH, History of Livermore New … of the company that would operate the mills, the Grafton County Lumber Company.

Now if you think that you like all sorts of paper products like books and newspapers (with their dioxin loading), disposable chopsticks, wooden furniture, lumber, cardboard packaging and so on, please do consider that the Earth IS losing its forests bit by bit.

 

Amazon Deforestation Rate Up 29 Percent From Last Year, Study …

https://www.npr.org/…/deforestation-of-the-amazon-up-29-percent-from-last-year-study...

Nov 30, 2016 – That’s the second year in a row that deforestation in the Amazon quickened; last year, the pace rose by about 24 percent. The estimated deforestation rate, released Tuesday by Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research (INPE), is based on satellite imagery.

Deforestation Facts, Information, and Effects | National Geographic

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/global-warming/deforestation/

Jul 25, 2017 – Forests still cover about 30 percent of the world’s land area, but swaths half the size of England are lost each year. The world’s rain forests could completely vanish in a hundred years at the current rate of deforestation. The biggest driver of deforestation is agriculture.

Sally Dugman is a writer from MA, USA

 

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