Everyone knows
- That the forests collect CO2, contribute to the formation of the clouds, thus to the rain, they also protect the grounds from erosion and guarantee a habitat for the wildlife…
- That they purify the air, keep the grounds in space and nourish them, protect ground waters, shelter a typical flora and fauna, produce honey, extracts for herbal medicine and cosmetic products.
- That the carbonic gas molecules brewed by the winds and collected by the leaves do not have borders. They come from the exhaust pipe of the car which gets down the street, from the engine of a plane high in the sky, from a coal stove in Africa, from a refinery, from a forest fire somewhere in the world… or from an old oil lamp. Indeed, carbonic gas remains on average 100 years before being reabsorbed by a natural process.
- That all living beings, among which we are, use up oxygen and discharge carbonic gas. Everyone also knows that green plants exposed to sunlight make the opposite phenomenon: they absorb carbonic gas and reject oxygen (photosynthesis).
- That besides absorbing carbonic gas, reafforestation increases the process of evaporation in certain places of the world (for example in a wet tropical environmnent) and thus the formation of the clouds which limit the reverberation of the sunrays in the atmosphere.
- That the cut down trees reject carbon in the atmosphere, increasing the greenhouse effect and the warming of the planet. The cutting down, the combustion and the decomposition of the trees would account for approximately 20% of the carbon dioxide rejections in the atmosphere. It is as much as the gas emissions with greenhouse effect coming from transport.
- That man deforests to extend his activities, mainly the agriculture and the breeding which are the first driving forces of deforestation after the exploitation of forest resources. Then you also have the mining and the extraction of oil and gas. Other natural factors are also to be taken into account in the shrinkage of wooded areas. There are fires, insects and diseases. But once again man has to be blamed for the multiplication of these phenomena.
- That if you consider the needed conditions for the growth of a tree, the nations of the southern hemisphere have an advantage on most industrialized countries.
- That the annual and short-life-cycled plants cannot be counted on for an effective storage of carbonic gas.
- That the large stockbreeders (e.g. cattle breeders) clear the forest to create pastures and sometimes move farmers to forest grounds where they still use slash-and-burn agriculture.
- That the forest owners harvest wood on a commercial scale, which involves that the tracks of exploitation (roads and highways built through the wooded areas) become access roads for other users of the grounds.
