World News @lemmy.ml

1y ago

China has grown more new forest cover than any nation on Earth

https://www.visualcapitalist.com/mapped-30-years-of-deforestation-and-forest-growth-by-country/

188 comments

ngl, vietnam is looking pretty impressive too
- Cuba is at 57.5%, also one of the highest in the world percentage-wise

but at what cost? 😭
- Xi is genociding the deserts.
  
  If only he kept it to those.

This article is nearly two years old. Also, I implicitly distrust any source which depicts Taiwan as part of the PRC.
- Every single country on Earth except like seven (I only remember the Vatican and Paraguay) acknowledges that Taiwan is a dependent province of the PRC, including the USA and just about all of Europe.
  
  Yes, but as you know in many cases it's for purely diplomatic reasons since acknowledging Taiwan's sovereignty means basically severing ties with the PRC, and most countries do far too much trade with it to make that in any way appealing.
  
  me when china threatens to abuse the living shit out of anyone if they recognise an 85 year running independently functioning island just so meatheads like you can spew obvious fat horseshit: 🙁
  
  So fucking what? My government's official stance is not that they are a bunch of dickheads, yet here we are.
  Outside of SOME official government communication (Western governments will happily send official delegations to Taiwan from time to time just to piss off the CCP) and other matters of strategic ambiguity like the Olympics, Taiwan is a country. Everybody but China and a few lonesome tankies agrees on that.
  So when a private entity shows Taiwan as part of the PRC, it can only be assumed that they are tankies, Chinese propagandists, or incompetent. Either way, probably not trustworthy.
- The unofficial consensus between the KMT/PRC was that Taiwan and China are one country. The NED-funded DPP has been trying to break that status quo, though.
  
  What's the NED and DPP? I've been staying away from the news. I'll look them up in the future.
- Daily reminder:
  
  The Taiwan Province is an inalienable part of the People's Republic of China:
  
  And this is recognized by the United Nations ever since 1971 after UNGAR 2758.
  Source, page 546: https://web.archive.org/web/20230503050030/https://legal.un.org/unjuridicalyearbook/pdfs/english/volumes/2010.pdf
  
  Video of the votes happening: https://farside.link/invidious/watch?v=sfOIEjuXFyU
- Also, I implicitly distrust any source which depicts Taiwan as part of the PRC.
  
  What did the RoC Marine Corps do to you?
- that's a healthy way to distrust the US and chinese governments i guess
- Imagine being so brainwashed by propaganda that you distrust your own government position 🤡
  The United States approach to Taiwan has remained consistent across decades and administrations. The United States has a longstanding one China policy, which is guided by the Taiwan Relations Act, the three U.S.-China Joint Communiques, and the Six Assurances. We oppose any unilateral changes to the status quo from either side; we do not support Taiwan independence; and we expect cross-Strait differences to be resolved by peaceful means.
  
  I'm not sure why you would assume I'm American. I mean, you happen to be right in this case, but I'm still not sure why you'd assume that.
  Anyhow, there's an irony in your assertion that disagreeing with the position of one's government is "brainwashed."

I wonder what's going on with the DPRK
- Pretty bad drought and floods over the past 20 years, and the country is too mountainous to support most effective reforestation strategies. So it's mostly climate change, economic isolation, and only 17% of the land can support forests in the first place. It's not a good time right now.

That's nearly a Texas area of forest.
- too bad most of texas cant grow forests because its too dry
- how many cheeseburgers is that

The picture shows that Vietnam has more with 56.2%....
- It's in absolute area terms jfc
  
  jfc?

I am always happy to hear about reforestation, but has somebody understood out of which source the numbers from china are coming? I mean they are sometimes quite the enthusiasts talking about their successes
- the article linked cites the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations as its source, so it's not using china's numbers for this
  
  Okay thanks, I guess I overlooked that :)
- Source for your claim that they sometimes lie about their accomplishments?
- It's not like forest cover is hard to verify by satellite imagery. Lying about reforestation and deforestation is hard.
  
  The satellite imagery shows a net loss compared to CCP figures which show a net gain. China lies more easily than it tells the truth.
- Here's your source https://youtu.be/3_lAb8m9MpI?si=IrfZYXXuC1BNf2op
  
  Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
  https://piped.video/3_lAb8m9MpI?si=IrfZYXXuC1BNf2op
  Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
  I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
  
  programming.dev back at it with the shit takes
- you managed to fit so much seething and coping into a single comment

What the hell is PRK doing!?

I would be hesitant in claiming this as a win. I know that Japan has one of the highest number of trees per capita in the g7 but that was a hold over from post WW2. Where they planted a shit ton of a singular tree type. The monoculture wrecks havoc in their ecosystem. All this to say it's good that they are planting trees I'm just hoping they are doing it planning it out carefully.
- A monoculture only wrecks havoc on an ecosystem if a flourishing ecosystem existed there already...
  In China, trees are mostly used to block desertification.

according to (checks notes) ... "visualcapitalist". Yeah that sounds like a totally unbiased and reliable source.

I wonder if this includes tree plantations. Those should not be considered forests in my view.
- China even includes shrubbery in their numbers so take that as you will.

No sources given for the data used in the infographic. How surprising /s
- reading comprehension problems?

Iceland and Uruguay got those numbers tho.

Sure but what's the forest growth per capita?
- How is that relevant? Serious question, I don’t see a link between forests and per capita that actually matters. If we were talking about economic comparisons, sure. If anything, adjusting it as “per sq mile of forestable land” would make more sense.
  
  It's relevant because, as demonstrated multiple times in this thread, when the topic of pollution and emissions from China comes up everyone rushes to defend them with "but muh per capita". As if the environment cares.

sources that contradicts this is buried in the convo
https://lemmy.ml/comment/5738838
- once you learn to read, you'll see that the sources provided are contradicting the claim in the parent comment which is
  The satellite imagery shows a net loss compared to CCP figures which show a net gain. China lies more easily than it tells the truth.

Yay China. Say... isn't this the same country that turns out 68% of the world's air pollution?
What have they done about that?
- wow lemmy is full of liberals
  Ya think maybe producing most of the world's shit has anything to do with that pollution, buddy? Like wow the west outsourced most of its manufacturing to China, no fucking shit it's going to produce more pollution. What's their per capita #s look like, frienderino?
  
  Hey pal... I'm not your buddy. Bro. Spud. Palsy Walsy. Your rock. You're out from under it. Oh my.
- Say, what would the data show if we measured cumulatively instead of pretending history began in the 1990s?
- Now go per capita and check out other countries
- So far this year China has added more solar capacity than the US in its entire history
  
  Yes, and still the air in China's major cities and regions can be cut with a knife on a bad day. And you're right - the U.S.'s 'green' push came to a screeching halt most places when oil and gas and coal said "fuck this shit - y'all can't have that green stuff" ... and here we are; some states even penalizing criminally being "off the grid".
  Those fuckers are not going to go quietly. Don't blame the common people of the country because of corporations running governments passing laws for corporations.
- In 2021, China, the United States, the EU27, India, Russia and Japan remained the world’s largest CO2 emitters. Together they account for 49.2% of global population, 62.4% of global Gross Domestic Product, 66.4% of global fossil fuel consumption and 67.8% of global fossil CO2 emissions.
  Unless China annexed the US, the EU, India, Russia, and Japan and I just haven't gotten the memo yet...
  Source
  
  Who are you and why would I care?
- They've done a lot about that, like becoming the global leader in pretty much every renewable sector as well as nuclear. Also, worth mentioning that smooth brained liberals have all their stuff produced in China. It's absolute idiocy to bleat about pollution without considering where consumption is happening. Per capita energy usage in China is far lower than in the west.
- In terms of particulates? China's really cleaned that up in recent years.
  But, well, China doesn't have massive piles of natural gas it can burn instead of coal. Coal is notoriously dirty.
- Yes. And the same country that produces all the shit we order from them. So is it their pollution or ours?
  
  Yes. It is.

188 comments