Wow! That did not take long. I expected it to take a little longer than now, but here you have it, the first player of COP26 is already making excuses that the deforestation 2030 promise might not be kept. The article (at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-59169547) gives us ‘Indonesia criticises ‘unfair’ deal to end deforestation’. I get it, Indonesia is reliant on their brown gold and cannot let go, even as the setting is 8 years away, they already have an issue and when we consider the original statement (by yours truly) “a joke optionally forgotten by January 1st 2029, when most signatories are no longer in office and a landmark adjustment is made towards 2035, optionally 2038”, I made the comment 2 days ago in ‘Fake it till you brake it’ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2021/11/03/fake-it-till-you-break-it/), yet it turns out that I was the optimist, I thought they would take longer, but the BBC gives us “Indonesia’s natural wealth, including forests, must be managed for its use according to sustainable principles, besides being fair”, this sounds fair, but how many people actually benefit this? And when we consider some sources, one giving us that in one month 387 containers of lumber were shipped and we get it, there is a lumber and wood requirement on a global setting and there are 8 years left, but consider the image below.
How much of this you see was needed for a road? On average a road is lets say 10-15 meters wide, and goes on for miles, so how much of this was optionally meant for a road and how much for something else? The ink of the COP26 agreements have not even dried yet and Indonesia is already complaining. I reckon that they are not alone, the others will wait a year, or wait until the next person is in office. And then there is the Sydney Morning Herald. They give us ‘The Greta effect: is Glasgow fuelled by real momentum or just blah blah blah?’. They also give us (at https://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/the-greta-effect-is-glasgow-fuelled-by-real-momentum-or-just-blah-blah-blah-20211104-p595ul.html) what is interesting is the time line they give us on times that Greta spoke (an anagram for ‘great’ I reckon). It shows some of her statements going back to December 2018 and she was right time after time (as was I), but the Indonesian setting shows just how much of a joke the COP seemingly is, the ink hasn’t dried yet or the first signatory is complaining. And I get it, Indonesia is in a tough spot. And I reckon I am about to make it worse for them.
In 1700 a wooden cabinet was only an option for the really wealthy, they got:
Now this is not about the wealth, it is about what they wanted in those days, it is also what others needed and there is the larger rub. You see, I do not mind that we all need bookcases, but the consumerism made a joke about furniture and places like IKEA made a killing, we suddenly were able to get a new furniture look almost EVERY YEAR. That is not on us or IKEA, what was rare was suddenly all around and a brown gold economy was created. Soon there after were investor portfolios in brown gold all over the place and it was a lucrative setting, but we seemingly have reduced the forests by one third over the period 1990 – 2015, a freaking whopping 5,670,000 ha of forest are GONE! Over 25 years one third is gone and we need to wake up, we need to wake up really quick. The sentiment of ‘Planting ‘millions of trees’ may not be the answer to deforestation’ (source: the Guardian yesterday) is wrong, not because of the statement, it comes with the underlying “can impact negatively on hydrology and local land rights, writes Prof Tim Forsyth”, which is fair enough. My personal uneducated view would be that any deforested area could be repopulated with trees and should be as soon as possible. It is essential for several reasons and if it was deforested there would be no local land rights (well in most cases anyway). The larger state is that we see floods and they are horrid, yet how much of that water would be good enough for feeding trees? Not enough I reckon, but it might take have some impact on waters. Tim Forsyth has got a decent point, also one that is made with “The desire to do something about climate change and deforestation should not blind us to asking important questions about whether proposed solutions are actually feasible, or might generate other difficult problems”, he has a point. Yet former NASA engineer Mark Rober showed us forestation options and they work, so far we saw ‘Mark Rober and MrBeast Team Up to Plant 20 Million Trees’ and so far they exceeded this, at this point they are at 23,000,000 trees. They did what the whining political population seemingly cannot achieve, a group of two that did not require a marketing entourage.
Now they are in a setting of team seas and there they are making waves as well.
And now the bad news (for Indonesia) they are setting a few more goals and I think that there is more that can be done. You did not think that I pushed a picture of a pretty cupboard just because it was pretty? This would be a decent reason, but my idea goes towards changing place like IKEA as well. You see all that regained plastic from recycling and cleaning the oceans are nice, but what than? I am thinking of uniting a Meccano and IKEA approach to set a new sort of construction kit, plastic fundamentals replacing what we have now as furniture. Do you think that my upholstered bed will care what is under the cloth? If it is a sturdy plastic frame instead of wood? I can’t see that and a lot of furniture is now coated wood anyway. As we start replacing wooden items in the house for recycled plastics we solve a larger setting. As woods are less needed brown gold will lose value. We can to some degree repopulate the 33% of forest we destroyed and after that we can do more. We need to take another look on how we waste materials. Does my nightstand need to be wood? I do not think so and plastic can be just as lacquered as wood or glass is and when the lacquer holds, can we tell, do we need to be able to tell? We need real solutions and we need them a lot sooner then we think we did. Did anyone consider the fact that we destroyed 33% of our trees? To do something we need more than mere promises, we need to change the way we see wood as brown gold, we ned alternatives and as we see forced changes (there is no longer any other way) we see that the loggers will lose their incomes and will need to go to other places making their margins slim down. It is unfair on places like Brazil, Indonesia and a few others. Brown gold is all they have but it can no longer be seen as fair on us all and we too are to blame, we need to be cool and get something new from IKEA, because we already had that same piece of furniture 2-3 years. Our stupid mindset is part of this problem and I reckon that if we have an alternative, we can feed the sense of change, but now using plastics we kill two targets with one recycled piece of furniture.
We could time the COP objections with an egg timer, I wonder how many more will object before 2025? At least I am thinking out of the box (as are several others). How many more are needed to change the waves and show the politicians that they are the jokes that too many already claimed they were? And that is before I get angry (like I did with a few others this week) and personally I still believe that Randy Lennox owes me $25M, but that is a fight for another day, yet I am feeling frisky, so it might not take too long and even as he might hand the invoice over to Gary Slaight or Jeff Bezos, is basically equal to me. I played the straight pointless game for too long, so far it got me nothing, time to get the limelights out. Indeed pissed me off today a little more than I was comfortable with. It just sucks to be me today.
Have a great weekend!
Lawrence van Rijn - Law Lord to be 