Earth’s biosphere was in balance before the first industrial revolution brought giant steam engines to factories in Europe. All living creatures, and all plants and trees lived in harmony with elemental forces. While carbon concentrations did cycle, natural forces brought them back under control. Trees played an important role in this, until the industrial revolution lead to mass deforestation.
What Deforestation Is and What It Does
Deforestation is the permanent destruction of forests to make land available for other purposes. It is hard to believe large trees once covered most of England. But they did, before the industrial revolution led to their chopping down.
Forests are essential to our continued existence. Trees use solar energy to convert carbon dioxide, plus water into carbohydrates and oxygen. Every act of deforestation makes the earth a poorer place.
Europe was an agrarian society prior to the first industrial revolution, living largely off the land within a feudal system. Mechanization brought new ways of thinking, and new technologies that changed this.
How Deforestation Spread Like a Wildfire
A new breed of engineers developed more efficient farm machinery and horse collars. This enabled deeper and more extensive plowing where old forests once stood.
Wood had been the primary source of energy during the medieval period. Wood was suddenly in short supply. Europe began burning coal, releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
The switch from wood to coal revolutionized transport. Railways arrived to move coal from mines to cities, and huge steamships followed. The first automotive vehicles ran on steam too, until the birth of internal combustion engines using processed crude oil. Ironically, nature derives this from fossilized remains of ancient trees.
What Can I Do to Stop Deforestation?
Stop buying anything made of wood from old forests. If you purchase wooden matches, interrogate the manufacturer about its origin. It is a good idea to purchase wood from renewable forests though. We need to plant masses of them to reverse deforestation, and the process must pay for itself to be economically sustainable.
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Preview Image: Deforestation in Rio de Janeiro
