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Today's Top News
Pakistan: A Land Left to Drown by the ‘Timber Mafia’
The warnings regularly given by all manner of experts had been ignored for decades.
A man waves for attention as a family takes refuge in date trees from flood waters in Muzaffargarh district of Pakistan's Punjab province on August 8, 2010. (REUTERS/Adrees Latif)
If Pakistan's authorities continued to allow the country's timber mafia and a benighted and oppressed peasantry to strip the country's forests at a faster rate than anywhere else in Asia, as is happening, floods of Biblical proportions would be inevitable. They would not be acts of God. They would be man-made catastrophes.
And so it came to pass - as August began - that heavier than usual, but not unprecedented, monsoon rains fell on the largely forest-denuded northwest Himalayan, Karakoram and Hindu Kush mountains and foothills, swelling the mighty 2000 mile-long Indus river, originating in Tibet, and others such as the Jhelum, Swat, Chenab, Ravi, Beas, Sutlej and their many tributaries.
What then happened, reports by Pakistani journalists and environmental campaigners have steadily established, was truly terrifying.
Trees felled by so-called illegal loggers - an infamous "timber mafia" that has representatives in the Pakistan Parliament in Islamabad and connections right to the top of government and the military - are stacked in the innumerable nullahs [steep narrow valleys], gorges and ravines leading into the main rivers. From there they are fed into the legal trade, earning the mafia billions of dollars yearly. "Other than landslides, soil erosion and the occasional homes and crops being swept away, it [the forest denudation] was not considered a disaster and hence didn't make the headlines," wrote Ayesha Tammy Haq, a columnist with the Pakistan daily Express Tribune newspaper.
But the deforestation and other actions of the timber mafia were ticking time bombs waiting for a trigger to set off explosions.
This year's monsoon lashing northern Pakistan with unusual intensity would historically have been absorbed by extensive forests, much like multiple layers of blotting paper, allowing the rains to run off more sedately than in modern times.
But this month the mud and water deluge cascaded off the tree-bare mountains and hills with exceptional force and barrelled down towards the plains in mammoth fury. In a trade-off, the timber mafia had allowed the mountain poor to raid the logs stacked in the nullahs to make doors, window frames and furniture for their homes. But, propelled by the force of the run-off, the logs turned into instruments of destruction, smashing all in their wake. Rivers and dams turned black with timber. Relief workers said bridges, homes and people were destroyed and swept away by the hurtling and swirling logs before the waters spread on to the plains below, engulfing an area of more than 60,000 square miles, more than twice the land area of Scotland.
The United Nations' Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs estimates that some 8000 schools were either destroyed or partially destroyed by the torrents.
It is not only the mountain forests that have been devastated. When Pakistan became independent from Britain and separated from India in 1947, thick riverine forests lined the Indus on its thousand mile journey across the plains.
"These forests used to absorb the ferocity of the floodwaters," said Tahir Qureshi, a Pakistan-based forestry expert for the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
"The riverine forests were the first line of defence against the raging floods [which have inundated the plains annually for thousands of years]. They have been cut everywhere from Murree [a hill station on the Jhelum River before it fans out onto the plains] to lower Punjab [in the heart of the plains] to upper Sindh [the province where the Indus flows into the Arabian Sea via a massive delta]."
Just before this year's monsoon broke over Pakistan, local journalists reported that a landlord, a leading member of the plains branch of the timber mafia, had sent in hundreds of employees, equipped with guns and heavy machinery, to chop down thousands of trees in one of the most important remaining riverine forests in Sindh, the Khebrani and Rais Mureed Forest along the banks of the Indus.
Despite a ban on the cutting down of forests, local journalist Salam Dharejo reported that the landlord, with support from top forestry and environmental protection officials, established a camp for his labourers "and within two nights cleared 180 acres of forest land by chopping down 90,000 trees".
Dharejo continued: "As a consequence of political interventions, the corruption of forest officials and the nexus between land grabbers and the timber mafia over the last 25 years, the riverine forests of Sindh are on the verge of extinction ... They have been ruthlessly exploited by the law enforcement agencies, politicians and bureaucrats for their own vested interests. Policemen took bribes from the timber mafia in return for allowing them to fell trees."
Dharejo quoted a forest department official as saying of the Pakistan government's much trumpeted reforestation strategy: "You will not find a single fresh forest. The reforestation exists only on paper, while on the ground you will find ruthless deforestation. Forestry officers are involved in unauthorised wood-cutting and issuing of unauthorised passes for the transportation of forest wood and disposal of government machinery."
Ghulam Hussain Khoso, a cattle herder resident within the Khebrani and Rais Mureed Forest, said: "I have been born and brought up here. Over time I have seen the rapidly decreasing size of the green patches. I do not trust that the forest department will ever improve forest conditions. The dacoits [traditional fabled bandits] were better custodians of the forest than the forest department itself. The thick forests served as a hideout for the dacoits: therefore they protected them and did not allow anyone to destroy them."
Dawn, Pakistan's most widely circulated English language daily newspaper, said 80 million trees had been chopped down in the "protected" Khebrani and Rais Mureed Forest in the three years before the floods inundated the plains this month. In just 36 months the forest had shrunk from nearly 20 square miles to barely three square miles, causing serious damage to the environment and hurting the livelihoods of local herders, like Ghulam Hussain Khoso, whose ancestors had grazed their livestock in the woodlands for generations without devastating the ecosystem.
"The claims and slogans of officialdom are completely divorced from reality," said Dawn in an editorial. "The government is promoting ‘Green Pakistan' even as trees continue to be slaughtered across the country in the name of development. The timber mafia is denuding the country's woodlands. The situation is desperate and is deteriorating by the day."
Some 900 miles to the north, in the mountains north of Murree, the story is similar. In the Ayubia National Park - legally a government-protected forest - the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reported, before the current flooding happened: "The forest is disappearing fast, threatening the lives and livelihoods of thousands of people."
A forest official, quoted by the UN agency on condition of anonymity, said government officials were encouraging the forest mafia to extract trees from the Ayubia Park. "The first major illegal tree-felling took place in 1988," said the official. "About 400,000 cubic feet of forest wood was illegally cut in that year, and one million cubic feet was extracted illegally in the next three years. Huge fellings continue."
The official said the government allowed the illegal timber to be exported to other provinces without a fine, which encouraged the timber mafia to cut down ever more trees knowing it had political clout. "The government did begin to fine fellings, but the fine was so small that it encouraged the timber mafia instead of discouraging them," the official added.
By 2005 Pakistan had lost 25% of the forest cover that existed in 1990. Experts predict at current rates of exploitation - more than 100 square miles of trees clear-felled annually - the remaining forests will all be gone by 2010. It means this year's catastrophic floods will be repeated again and again, and all the aid in the world will do little good until someone, somehow, begins a reforestation programme. As John Muir, the great Scottish naturalist, once said: "God has cared for these trees, saved them from drought, disease, avalanches, and a thousand tempests and floods. But he cannot save them from fools."
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42 Comments so far
Show AllExactly. You can write the message on a hammer and whack their foreheads with it, and it still won't go in.
We won't stop until the whole planet looks like Haiti. Maybe not even then, as the wealthiest will occupy armed compounds on the last bit of forested land with the last clean water source.
So, in a way, international aid subsidizes the crimes of the greedy.
Start developing a taste for roasted rat and mud cookies.
Rapanui, here we come.
True enough, R.B.
Personally, i have a feeling 'they' have a way off the planet.
"Personally, i have a feeling 'they' have a way off the planet."
Yeah, it's called death, and their behavior hastens it.
Just as the Maine Woods are being denuded, and the Amazon Rainforest. Trees not only hold back floods, they supply our oxygen, and are habitat for millions of species.
Use less paper, recycle what you do use, educate others, write letters to the editor, etc. Do what you can to save the world's forests or we'll all see these scenes in person.
How many trees for one human to breath oxygen? How many trees to build and furnish a house? How many trees to stop a rampaging river coming down off of a denuded, of trees, countryside? How much greed and stupidity is there on this planet? It cannot be said by any that "it is not my fault"; we are all connected. Tony
Towards the end the writer states 'more than 100 square miles of trees clear-felled annually'. This would be an area equal to a square with ten miles on each side. In a country the size of Pakistan with more than 300,000 square miles this would truly be a miniscule amount of clear cutting. Perhaps the writer meant an area 100 miles square. This would be an area of 10,000 square miles. If Pakistan were just 10% forested, then cutting 10,000 square miles each year would denude the forests in just three years. Since the major illegal tree felling began in 1988, according to the article, all of the trees would have been gone long ago! So...whatever the true facts are, this author did not take the time and effort to get them right. But surely the article is correct in its general idea. And it's the thought that counts. Not the facts?
Thanks to the interwebitubes, we can all check facts now: http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/the-newspaper/local/35-pakistan-has-highest-annual-deforestation-rate-in-asia-ak-03
"Since the major illegal tree felling began in 1988,..."
This date is mentioned in regard to just one forest, not all of Pakistan's forested regions. I suggest you reread the item and reform your hypothesis.
The last paragraph states that in 2005 Pakistan had lost 25% of the forest that was existing in 1990. That means that in 2005 75% was left. It then states that if 100 square miles is lost each year then it will all be gone by 2010. So...five years times 100 square miles per year gives 500 square miles as 75% of what was available in 1990. Then, 100% of what was available in 1990 was 667 square miles. Or, an area equal to 67 miles by 100 miles. Pakistan is about 300,000 square miles. So, in 1990 the area covered by forest must have been about one fifth of one per-cent of the area of Pakistan. My 'hypothesis' is that this writer got the facts wrong. To me, these numbers simply are not credible. My 'hypothesis' stands.
2010 should probably be 2100?
kayaker:
Excellent! This is the first time I have met a CD reader who takes the mathematical facts of the world seriously rather than recycling the "good thought - - deforestation is bad" cliché ad nauseam. But that is, as I have come to realize over the years, the wont of numerically challenged, otherwise quite smart literary people who are most vocal in the comments. I have taken to task many a writer on CD who gets his/her facts wrong on economic, financial, climate change and overpopulation, among other issues. These facts are not details - - they are the scientific core of the article without which the article has no credibility or knowledge substance. Nevertheless, many an innumerate but literate defender on CD jumps to the defence of the scientifically challenged pundit, especially if he or she is some sort of favourite of the resident comments mafia.
As expected, someone has jumped to the defence of this article by accusing you of getting the "date wrong" without understanding that you have wiped out the entire basis of this article, which otherwise is well written.
I have given up hope on literate but innumerate/unscientific (historian, sociologist, poli-science, poetry and similar) liberals and progressives because all they do is whine here and claim the end of the world is near like the stoned street walker carrying a sign "the end is nigh", without assessing the situation properly in quantitative terms and articulating a well researched solution. And when they do venture to add facts and figures in their comments, they get facts such as the "100 square miles" versus "300,000 sq.mls" for the whole country that you caught, wrong. Most don't even know how to write 100 million or 1 billion in numbers with the proper number of zeros, but comment heartily on the economy and the mess it is in without having any clue what the mess is, where it is exactly located and why, and what a meaningful Administration can do. It seems, though others see it as deliberate destruction of the US economy in conspiratorial fantasy, Obama, the quintessential innumerate lawyer and gutless wonder, Uncle Tom has been stymied because he cannot articulate elementary mathematical facts to the population in the same soaring rhetoric by which he fooled "let's all sing Kumbaya" liberals into voting for him. Partly because his own eyes likely "glaze over', so it seems, when people such as Paul Krugman and Joe Stiglitz, Nobel prize winners unlike that fake Larry Summers, visit him in the Oval Office, as they did in 2009, to tell him that his pitifully timid, right wing-terrified stimulus of 780 billion was not going to get a 15 trillion economy roaring again. Thus we are now facing an onrushing Great Depression II within 6 months if Obummer and Helicopter Ben don't their asses into gear by November at the latest. At that point, the unthinking American masses are going to elect Regressive Republicans in a landslide and shut down every Federal programme for the middle classes and give the stinking rich a massive tax cut of several trillion dollars over the next 10 years.
In Pakistan's case, as I have pointed out elsewhere, and every truthful and knowledgeable Pakistani intellectual knows, the deadly combination of fundamentalist, non-scientific Islamism and a moneyed elite completely devoid of any sense of humanity, let alone Islam of any kind, and a corrupt, brute-force military, will wreck that place. They will put, within a few years at most, the whole world in danger if their nuclear weapons-on-missiles fall into the hands of some crazy Islamist. It is shameful to me that I was born a Muslim but that Islam, as practiced around the world, especially in Pakistan, the Arab Middle East and Africa, Afghanistan and other such benighted "Islamic" countries is so many centuries backward in the sciences. They are more concerned with a mosque in NY than the tens of thousands of little children who will die of cholera in Pakistan very soon without medical aid. The 180 million dirt poor Pakistani people, of whom 20 million are now under water and dying like flies, are so much in thrall of Islamist anti-science misogynist ideology, that they cannot get rid of the 100,000 or so stinking rich, inhuman moneyed elites, who are like leeches on them, in a French type revolution.
These Pakistani landlords ("zamindars' in local parlance), of which "President" Zardari is Capo di Capi, Don for the last 30 years with nearly $10 billion held in Swiss banks, cannot even raise a measly $100 million for the worst natural disaster in Pakistan's history, largely of their own making by clear cutting and no reforestation, to alleviate human suffering. If the rich Pakis have no humanism for their fellow humans, then why should the rest of the world?
To conclude, I agree with you the math facts of the article are pitifully misreported. The writer’s assessment that God cannot save Pakistan's forests and hence people, since it is governed by a clique of Islamist non-scientific, inhumane moneyed elite and military muscle-bound fools. The sooner Pakistan sinks into a failed state on the scale of Somalia, the sooner its population will string up these fools from the trees of the remaining forests and invite their sycophants to watch. Then they should plant thousands of trees on their remains.
Who here is disappointed that the blame for the floods cannot be attributed solely to global warming and U.S. burning of fossil fuels?
My disappointment is that the same lack of wisdom that results in global warming is leading us to other disasters too. We humans must learn that our actions on the environment have consequences.
You are right. And in addition to learning this, the people responsible need to be willing to act for humanity as a whole, as opposed to their selfish and immediate interest.
poitou, not sure if I understood your question correctly. First, there's the abnormally heavy rain and then the floods. The unusually heavy rains could be attributed to global warming and the jet stream that went further south than usual, dumping all that moisture in Pakistan, China and also northern India. The flooding and mudslides are most definitely aggravated by the deforestation - which also contributes in its own way to further warming, due to additional CO2 that is not absorbed by the forests. Burning of fossil fuels should be at the top of the list of culprits, though.
Also, I would like to see a comparison of the area of forests cut down in countries like Pakistan vs. that in the Amazon region, in Indonesia and Malaysia, and the main purposes for which these are cleared. While deforestation anywhere and for any purpose is clearly bad enough, I would think the clearing of forests for the purpose of growing animal feed is all the more egregious. Unforgivable.
yes you understood, and you make some good and interesting points.
so, if this is the true cause of the floods, then i guess pakistan can look forward to this catastrophe with each and every subsequent monsoon rains for many years to come............just as the article states.
a reforestation programme will take a long time..........
And many more oil spills and wars and financial meltdowns. Is it a kind of self-loathing that we allow ourselves to be destroyed by a handful of profiteers rather than identify them as criminals? Bankers, loggers, oil companies, soldiers, tin pot dictators commit horrific crimes in broad daylight, and when the rubble is cleared do we arrest them and lock them up so they can't do it again? Nope. We put them right back to work preparing for the next disaster. Hard to have sympathy for a race of people that dumb.
VOX: I submit it is neither about "we" or "self-loathing," but rather a concept of life that sees nature (and all Her bounty) as things, objects to exploit. This is where the shaman's understandng of the invisible chords that connect all living beings is SUPERIOR to that of the man-made sciences that not only place human beings "at the top" of a purported evolutionary pyramid, but then lend, through religious delusion, the idea that the earth exists MERELY for man's use and in so many cases abuse.
The rape of nature is a continuation of a mindset that is Mars-ruled. It's short sighted and based on a very limited way of regarding our planetary home.
Where nature recycles everything to produce no real waste, human beings take what they want and discard the rest. The Japanese in their relish for caviar are a prime example. Boatloads of fish gutted for the eggs, and tossed into land fills. It leaves a gaping hole in the food chain. There there's BP raping the ocean for more oil-beds instead of conscientious governments teaching their people to use less, respect the ethos of conservation, car-pool... and of course, secure financial incentives for more fuel-efficient (where possible, Green) technologies... THESE sane approaches, ones built on the understanding that human beings owe a symbiotic relationship to the Earth (and all its ecosystems) would favor sustainability. Instead, nation by nation, led by the WTO and World Bank speed towards the abyss.
Ideas like:
Might makes right
To the victor goes the spoils
God gave MAN dominion over nature
are KILLING us, and all things sacred.
"The Lorax" should be required reading in every elementary school on every continent. Dr. Seuss poetically did his utmost to teach sacred ecology. The children need these tools if they are to survive the wake that is about to meet them.
Do readers know that this book was actually banned in some Connecticut schools?
You identify the "criminals", yet you blame "race of people that dumb" for the actions of the criminals. It's not just another case of blaming the victims, you go beyond that to blame an entire race. It's hard to have sympathy for such confused thinking.
Tom? Was your post in response to mine? If so, I don't see the connection?
RE: Was your post in response to mine?
No.
"We" don't do much of anything anymore. what might have been at least partially our country has been taken over and is now occupied by a corporatocracy that is answerable to no one.
really not fair to denounce all of humankind like that. we did live happily and sustainably on this planet for a million years before the patriarchs came. all indigenous people still know how to take care of the earth and why we must. Capitalists know how to destroy the Earth for profit, and flim flam the people with flags and glory and wars and consumption. They have tremendous power and prohibitively scary armed forces and propaganda machines. it will not be easy to defeat them.
Ah yes. Yet Governments are concerned "Islamist Terrorists" will exploit the disaster.
We know who is doing the EXPLOITING , and it that old devil called Capitalism and consumerism and the philosophy that "A Tree is not worth anything until it chopped down".
There was actually a Politician in the USA several years back who claimed in response to an enviromentalist concerned about the denuding of forest cover in the Appalachians..
That there NO scientific evidence that removing trees from a mountain slope lead to a greater risk of flooding.
Good post. We should begin to conclude that today there is no such thing as a "natural disaster", that is, what makes the event truly a disaster is not caused by nature, but rather by the never ending drive for increased profits. Disaster capitalism indeed.
I invite people to go to google maps and look at Pakistan in light of this assessment: "By 2005 Pakistan had lost 25% of the forest cover that existed in 1990. Experts predict at current rates of exploitation - more than 100 square miles of trees clear-felled annually - the remaining forests will all be gone by 2010." Then look at the region of South Asia as a whole, particularly Burma and Thailand, and you'll see similar levels of deforestation.
In the last paragraph it states that "at current rates of exploitation -more than 100 square miles of trees clear-felled annually- the remaining forests will all be gone by 2010." If this is correct, then there were very few trees left even a decade or two ago. And now there are none.
A few days ago a Pakistani, a very decent man, told me that the worst of the flooding was caused by INDIA. India, he said, had released water from dams that poured directly into Pakistan. I didn't think my Pakistani acquaintance had thought up this idea by himself; and, sure enough, googling: pakistan,flooding,dams,"caused by India", I found this.
"In an editorial dated August 15, 2010, a leading Urdu daily warned Pakistan not to accept India’s offer of $5 million for the flood victims. ... According to it, India released excess water into the Sutlej and Beas rivers that caused the floods. Further, it reminded the government that since India was occupying Kashmir, help from it would weaken the Kashmir cause."
That's the glory of having an enemy. You never have to think about what you yourself have done. You never have to think about what your feudal and capitalist system is doing.
Kleptocracy and willful blindness are almost everywhere. All I know is to keep on building community. It may be that in the coming evolutionary shakeout, community may win out over blind greed in the unfolding of the next human civilization.
I fear it's hopeless. Human greed knows no geographic or ethnic boundaries, and it cares only for short-term profits.
There are places where long-term forest management practices are followed. It is my understanding that the indian tribe managing the reservation forest near Shawano WI has for many years followed sustaninable forest management practices . It CAN be done, but it requires uncommon wisdom.
Jim Shea
stop saying "human greed" as if it were an inherent trait. we humans lived happily on this planet for a million years and never did it any harm. because our style of living- a communal, human, sharing, way of being meant we took care of the earth and of each other, and could have gone on doing so forever.
all that ended when the patriarchs came with their religions, and finally capitalism. it does look like finally don't it?
We are changing the planet, slowly by written historical standards, but in seconds on geologic timescales. Stupidity. greed, ignorance---How do they always wind up with political power?
God has cared for these trees, saved them from drought, disease,
avalanches, and a thousand tempests and floods.
But he cannot save them from fools.
- John Muir
Speaking of fools and trees, I could never understand the monstrous thinking behind carving out the middle of a giant sequoia (or redwood?) tree for the "amusement" of tourists so they can drive their car through the tree and marvel at how big it was. The insanity and arrogance are unbelievable!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6G2LLQ0Yztk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3QmX-z8RPc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MdrUt_rV64k
Has anyone ever thought that it might be humanly impossible to recreate a forest once it is leveled? How do you bring back all the flora, fauna, fungi, soil, soil microbes, seeds, timing of species, etc. from barren land?
If it is so easy to do--for humans or Mother Nature, why haven't the forests regenerated on Easter Island? We can plant trees but recreating a forest is something else entirely.
Forests are not only absorb carbon dioxide and give off oxygen but they also act as natural air conditioners. Where would you rather be on a 100-115 degree day? Under shade trees or standing in the open desert as it radiates heat? Deforestation contributes to climate change and floods as much as emissions.
>>If it is so easy to do--for humans or Mother Nature, why haven't the forests regenerated on Easter Island? We can plant trees but recreating a forest is something else entirely.
The difference between Humans and Mother Nature is the concept of time. Humans feel there never enough time, and Mother nature has all the time in the world.
60 million years to rebuild from one mass extinction event to the next does not mean a whole lot to EARTH.
I think the species called Human would be wise to take a longer term view of things. If we want to survive as a species how can we do it with no forests?
Instead its all about a BUCK to be made and lets take down these trees and build something real important like a Gazebo.
Everytime you read mudslide think deforestation, it is happening through out the world.
Yes deforestation is a corporate plague,worldwide.
It's the cutters at the stump, but the investors
are the real criminals.... they drive "the market".
The other outstanding issue in these floods, other than the allegations against the Indians; which while hard to prove are equally hard to ignore.
The role of the "Barrages" on the Indus has been ignored as
well.
These British built irrigation schemes have diverted flood waters to the poorer Sind rather than the powerful Punjab .
Refer to Google Earth in order to gauge this tragedy.
Obviously, a decision was made at the top to save the Barrages,
spare the Punjab, and cause the flooding is the Sind.
Evo Morales, at the Summit for Mother Earth:
"We are here because in Copenhagen the so-called developed countries failed in their obligation to provide substantial commitments to reduce greenhouse gases. We have two paths: either Pachamama or death. We have two paths: either capitalism dies or Mother Earth dies. Either capitalism lives or Mother Earth lives. Of course, brothers and sisters, we are here for life, for humanity and for the rights of Mother Earth. Long live the rights of Mother Earth! Death to capitalists."
why didn't anyone in the so called developed world listen?
Evo's choices are very real. Do we really love capitalism so much we will sacrifice our Earth to it?
I don't think this is about capitalism. Greedy and wealthy people have destroyed environments and raped resources under feudalism and communism and socialism. Slash and burn agriculture existed before central governments and before Marx and even Julius Caesar. Some of the worst environmental disasters have been in the former USSR (yes, I know it was really state capitalism)
The story is timeless--corrupt leaders and greedy people. I also wonder what impact the gov't of the US had on encouraging this scenario.
This story seems to be one intended to reduce charitable contributions through making it seem like it is the Pakistani people's own fault that they have experienced terrible flooding. I traveled for a couple of hundred miles along the upper Indus river a couple of years ago. The mountains there are huge and rocky and the climate and plant community is that of a desert at the lower elevations where people live and the primitive roads exist. There aren't any more trees there than there are on the mountains of Death Valley. The mountains are very rocky and rugged.
We were on our way to K2. K2 is 28,250 feet high. The mountains there are covered with glaciers high and extremely dry deserts low. When torrential downpours occur, floods result. I would like to see forests protected, but when as much rain falls in a few hours as has ever fallen in the rainiest month ever recorded in such steep, rugged, rocky mountains floods are going to occur.
It's tempting to give Herst a sliver of credit for conveying a sliver of the truth, a geological/ecological explanation, albeit in a single small sentence, on the way that laissez-faire kapitalist plunder of the earth devastates communities of the innocents.
But it's a tiny sliver in a flood of kapitalist propaganda published by Herst over the years. Kapitalists have long understood that these little shreds of truth and enlightenment actually help support elites' domination over the people if dosed out in perfect proportions, kind of like how a dash of spice does wonders to a recipe, but too much spoils the whole thing.
No entity in world history has put more energy into promoting laissez-faire kapitalism, with the inevitable plunder/destruction of communities, ecosystems and the planet, than the Unitted Stattes of Amerikka, under the "invisible thumb of elites".
The way forward for the people is of course to support with our individual exchange/association only those producers/merchants who are willing to heed the demands of the people in service to the people's better interests. So typically the people will engage with small local producers who are MUCH more "down to earth" and connected to the people they serve. Small-scale producers typically have a cooperative attitude, needing to cooperate with nature, rather than conquer nature, as the elites aspire to do.
lost focus
controlling deforestation would have certainly minimized the ravages of the asian Tsunami, the landslides following catastrophic earthquakes and floods and the control of calamitous river overflows and torrential rains.
But lets not get tunnelvision. The source of these calamities is climactic extremes caused by warmer oceans and carbon emissions. The other major factor is western affluence and complacency. The West hads its day in the sun, they had the best resources and the best research & development. They used it not to alleviate humanity's suffering but to make a better shampoo, relieve facial wrinkle serums and the so great ipad & iphon.