It puts the annual cost of forest loss at between $2 trillion and $5 trillion.
The figure comes from adding the value of the various services that forests perform, such as providing clean water and absorbing carbon dioxide.
The study, headed by a Deutsche Bank economist, parallels the Stern Review into the economics of climate change." Circle of 13 http://circleof13.blogspot.com/2008/10/nature-loss-dwarfs-bank-crisis.html
If that is true in Europe, Europe is in a sorry state. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forestry Service:
"It is estimated that—at the beginning of European settlement—in 1630 the area of forest land that would become the United States was 423 million hectares or about 46 percent of the total land area. By 1907, the area of forest land had declined to an estimated 307 million hectares or 34 percent of the total land area. Forest area has been relatively stable since 1907. In 1997, 302 million hectares—or 33 percent of the total land area of the United States—was in forest land." [emphasis added] http://fia.fs.fed.us/library/briefings-summaries-overviews/docs/ForestFactsMetric.pdf
The E.U. reports states: "The global economy is losing more money from the disappearance of forests than through the current banking crisis..."
If both the E.U. and the U.S. reports are correct, America is holding its own against the losses of the rest of the world. In other words, the "global economy" where it regards the "disappearance of forests" is affecting all parts of the world except the U.S.
"Speaking to BBC News on the fringes of the congress, study leader Pavan Sukhdev [said]...' "So whereas Wall Street by various calculations has to date lost, within the financial sector, $1-$1.5 trillion, the reality is that at today's rate we are losing natural capital at least between $2-$5 trillion every year.'"
http://news.bbc.co.uk/nolpda/ukfs_news/hi/newsid_7662000/7662565.stm?(none)I have no idea of the political beliefs of Mr. Sukhdev, but there is nowhere in this report by the BBC News Online that draws any comparison to U.S. forests and non-U.S. forests. This lack of information may be accidental, or incidental if the E.U. commissioned study, or Mr. Sukhdev himself, has any less-than-objective reason for failing to make the comparrison.
But it is this kind of information--and lack of it--that plays into the hands of the left-wing think tanks and then into the mouths and feet of leftists activists.
They make the claims that "scientific studies" have shown this or that, and then blame the U.S. for failing to accept science, while at the same time failing to accept the failings of the study itself.
The U.S. government under George W. Bush was correct to scuttle the
Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, otherwise known as the Kyoto Treaty."Bush administration officials said the treaty would hurt the economy and is ineffective and discriminatory because large, rapidly industrializing countries such as China and India escape the limits. Moreover, they say, many countries, including Japan and several in the European Union, are unlikely to meet their emission-control targets and will have to buy "credits" -- most likely from Russia, which will have plenty to sell because many of its industrial plants shut down during the economic meltdown in the 1990s." [italics added] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A27318-2005Feb15.html
Indeed, just to get ready for the recently finished Summer Olympics in Beijiing, "the city has spent $16.4 billion, moving the heaviest polluters outside its borders, planting trees, rerouting traffic and inducing rain." [emphasis added]
"Hong Kong, a wealthy and autonomous city state whose tycoons have invested heavily in the polluting industries of neighbouring Guangdong, has done virtually nothing in the past five years to reverse the steady deterioration of south China’s air quality. On Monday, the city was shrouded in a brown miasma and suffered the worst pollution levels on record as it prepared to host the equestrian events of the Olympics." http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/39509dac-5e62-11dd-b354-000077b07658.html
But the ultra-right wing Bush Administration--Bush, not President Reagan, is the first "Moral Majority" President, and hopefully will be the last--has stymied science in other ways, most notably in the area of stem cell research.
Note:
I will be the featured speaker at the Center For Inquiry (CFI) meeting, October 16, 2008, in Portage, Michigan. The topic is "Atheism as a 'Religion' Protected by Courts According to the Establishment Clause" CEC
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