History’s first mass murdering “environmentalist” (empathy rant included)

Monogabay “It’s a common misconception that the human impact on climate began with the large-scale burning of coal and oil in the industrial era,” says Pongratz, lead author of the study in a press release. “Actually, humans started to influence the environment thousands of years ago by changing the vegetation cover of the Earth’s landscapes when we cleared forests for agriculture.”

The answer to how this happened can be told in one word: reforestation. When the Mongol hordes invaded Asia, the Middle East, and Europe they left behind a massive body count, depopulating many regions. With less people, large swathes of cultivated fields eventually returned to forests, absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

“We found that during the short events such as the Black Death and the Ming Dynasty collapse, the forest re-growth wasn’t enough to overcome the emissions from decaying material in the soil,” explains Pongratz. “But during the longer-lasting ones like the Mongol invasion and the conquest of the Americas there was enough time for the forests to re-grow and absorb significant amounts of carbon.”

The Mongol invasion had the most significant impact. According to the study’s accounting, re-growth of forests during the Mongol invasion absorbed 700 million tons of carbon from the atmosphere, equaling the amount of carbon global society now produces annually from gasoline.

Pongratz argues that her study has relevance for the world’s current climate crisis: “Today about a quarter of the net primary production on the Earth’s land surface is used by humans in some way, mostly through agriculture. […].

In the past we have had a substantial impact on global climate and the carbon cycle, but it was all unintentional. Based on the knowledge we have gained from the past, we are now in a position to make land-use decisions that will diminish our impact on climate and the carbon cycle. We cannot ignore the knowledge we have gained.”

Of course, before society can even consider global reforestation, global deforestation must be halted. Despite worldwide concern and numerous initiatives over the years (both local and global) forests continue to fall at staggering rates. Currently around 10% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions come from deforestation.

She is not advocating genocide… She is explaining the impact of deforestation

‘Population Bomb’ or ‘Humanity on a Tightrope’

• Populating to increase workforce, not family;
• Selling off natural resources to sell as commodities not as necessities;
• Dumping the ravages of their unsustainable industrialization into the very life giving landscapes and habitat they need to survive;
   

Sound preachy? Judgmental? Us better than them?
Hardly, all great nations have made the same mistakes during the growth of democracy. And at the right point nearly all modern societies reach a population plateau based a balance of on care, education and  resources.

We would never again treat our people, resources or environment like that but we expect the majority of the world too…when modern nations reached their “balance of resources”, they took advantage of impoverished and oppressed nations, leading them with the false pretense they would have equal prosperity someday with better leaders who never came.

And it IS our fault.
It is our disassociation with that world that amplifies this condition. Watching them make the same environmental, energy, worker, wage and human right mistakes… decade after decade.