General Question

LostInParadise's avatar

How are you using your tree allotment?

Asked by LostInParadise (31904points) November 12th, 2008

I heard an interesting statistic on the radio. It is estimated that there are about 61 trees per person. Since the tree cover is declining that means we must on average be exceeding our allotment. This is not really a question, but I just wanted to share the info and get your comments.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=96758439

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6 Answers

breedmitch's avatar

This smacks of socialism. ~

wundayatta's avatar

I’m not sure I believe it. I’m not sure the satellite photos are that specific, nor that they’ve estimated the number of trees correctly.

Other than that, it’s not really news. We know the forests, particularly the rain forests, are being cut down. We know we are losing biodiversity. Well, we believe we are. Since we don’t know what we don’t know, it’s hard to say how many species are out there dying out before we find them.

This story is more one of those cute scientific things. I don’t think it means much. It’s not as if we have an allotment of trees. The trees we have are the trees on our property, if we are lucky enough to have property. I have three trees, personally. I live in a city. My parents must have several hundred trees. They live in the country. So what?

The real issues are carbon sequestration, and loss of biodiversity. This cute statistic doesn’t really help people understand that any better.

aidje's avatar

I’m breathing.

squirbel's avatar

Each day a new person is born, that allotment gets smaller.
Each hour a new person is born, that allotment gets smaller.
Each minute a new person is born, that allotment gets smaller.
Oh wait, how many people are in this world?
We don’t know exactly.
When dividing something up, you have to know exactly how many to divide it by, for fairness’ sake.
OMG!
We’re wasting our time trying to figure out how many trees belong to each person…
The number of people is changing…
The number of trees is changing [due to fires, hacking, slashing…].
OMG!
I can’t divide a moving number by a moving number!
OMG!
What will I do!?

augustlan's avatar

Plant a tree, of course!

boffin's avatar

“It is estimated that there are about 61 trees per person.”
We have at least that many on our acre of dirt….So were good…

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