Believe it when I see 338,306 square feet of newly replanted rainforest land.

That's about six football fields (American) including end zones.

Not bad, but still a long way to go.

I think 'preserve' means to buy it before it's destroyed, not try to replant it. The cost of restoration is probably tens if not hundreds of times more than that of preservation.

Oh, sorry, I missed that. Should have read it more carefully.

I have a slight ethical paradox with the hunger site.

If we don't feed the people today they will starve.

If we feed the people today and they continue to grow at the rate they have, more mouths will have to be fed. That means people are going to starve inevitably in the future unless we give more food, but then the cycle may continue.

We don't want them to starve today but if we feed them today, the next generation will have more people and then the people of the next generation will starve.

Besides industrialization (microfinancing), this paradox is really annoying ethically.

Maybe not. Typically the resources of the rain forest are tied up in the plants with little in the soil. After logging and burning the slash, the soil will only be productive for one or two seasons. Without chemical fertilizers, most of the farmers move on to new spots, following and often helping, the loggers.
I would expect this land would be available for replanting, cheap.

Boy that charcoal making is realllly bad. Besides denuding the forest those ovens pump out boo koo Carbon Monoxide and Carbon Dioxide. It's like a monstrous 1-2 punch.

We need to nuke those!!

Good points Bruce. It is amazing how little carbon in in the soil there vs temperate climate areas. I don't know how good Brazil is going to be on property rights for absentee landowners, that would seem to be an important thing to work on.

And they say, methane, for reasons I don't quite understand.

Except you can re-plant the cows for McBurgers. You can't replant the rainforest at any cost effective method.

Actually "Briquette" charcoal, like the classic Kingsford IS made from waste products - to whit - sawdust! The take sawdust and clay (and some other stuff) and mould it into the briquettes, and then make it into charcoal

True "lump" charcoal burns a LOT (and I mean a LOT) hotter, with much less ash (no clay)

As for "waste" vs burning wood - not all that much. Almost all of the energy is in the carbon, which is retained in the charcoal. You drive of the volates (water, oils etc) and then it's quenched - what's left burns a LOT hotter. It's done for the same reason that steel mills take coal, and turn it into coke. BTW you "village blacksmith" who burned coal - he would put the coal in on one side of the forge, and banked the fire in such a way that it would turn to coke. He did his actual forging in the coke, and would keep adding coal at one side , constantly making coke

Hey I'm from Texas, we use Mesquite!:D

Given that the square footage of a football is probably about 1 square foot... I think we're doing alright! :D


Seriously though, Wikipedia says that it's more than that - they give estimates of up to 120,000 km a year... That's more than 125 square miles a day. So sad that reforestation costs so much...

Well actually all you have to do is leave it alone and wait, but that's not very time effective.
I wonder if they just planted a few common types of trees, using the same methods the lumber companies do here, if the diversity would return in time? By making a home for the critters and birds that spread seeds, it might. Of course, as I mentioned before, the soil is so poor it would take some time.

People are betting you can.

Environmental investment funds such as Quadris invest in projects to regenerate forests that have been destroyed by logging or farming in the developing world. Smaller companies such as Bournemouth-based group Oxigen Investments are taking advantage of the demand for sustainable investment opportunities. It uses investors' money to create hardwood plantations in Costa Rica - when the wood is harvested, it reduces pressure on natural rainforests and protects thousands of acres more of previously threatened rainforest. Meanwhile, the scarcity of certified sources of hardwood drives the price up, increasing the benefit to investors.