"We need wood"

[peterbirks]

No, not the plaintive cry of a porn director who wants to get home for tea, but the rather worrying news that China appears to have lost 10% of its commercial forests without anyone outside China noticing.

That, in hard numbers is more than 20m hectares, and about $8bn worth of wood -- more than even the highest-paid porn star could ever claim.

The Butlers of the world might be ahead of you here, because I am, of course, going to talk about the inflationary impact of this. While oil was nudging back to $100 a barrel and wheat continued to increase in price, people hadn't been paying much attention to timber. But they should, because China has announced that it will be importing the stuff "in the short term" to make up for regional dislocations (basically, the wood needs to be imported to stop local processing factories from shutting down, rather than from a national shortage of timber).

Bad news for tree huggers, but worse for sweet animal lovers. Apparently some 30,000 protected wild animals were killed in the snow storms in China. More proof that nature, when it puts its mind to it, can make a rampaging humanity look like a little child in a playpen.

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Comments

[jaybee66.livejournal.com]

It's a case of "peak everything". Humanity has outgrown the planet. Either we find another planet to abuse or mother nature will slap us down with a big die-off.

It's hard for some to notice the world changing. If you live in the same place for year after year then you don't notice the gradual change. However, the world is a lot different from they way it was when we were children.

Oil, gas, gold, coal, uranium, wood, wheat. You name it, it's at a record high. Nothing to do with credit crunches, economic life-cycles or anything but too many people chasing too few resources.

Unfortunately, there are no answers. Gordon has promised cuts in carbon emissions that cannot be met and increases in renewable energy that cannot be met. At the same time Gordon chants the "infinite growth" mantra. More runways, more roads. Business as usual.

On my part I try to "inflation proof" my lifestyle. I am as self-reliant as I can be. I have not worked the 9-5 since 2002 therefore I have to avoid inflationary pressure on my investments. Do without the crap, the advertisers want me to buy. Eat a lot less meat. Walk rather than get the car out. When I get the new homestead then it will be back to growing my own and producing my own energy.

"Peak wood" will come to these shores. A few houses round here are burning wood in back boilers. That will become more prevalent when Russian shuts the gas taps. Then 60 million will clean out the forests to keep warm.

There are those who say that we need more nuclear power stations. I am not anti-nuclear but when you start seriously using uranium then the price of uranium will go sky high. There is nothing in current fusion research to say that fusion can be tamed. We can go "all electric" with solar cells but that will make cloudy UK dependent on others for energy. Not only that but nothing does all that oil can do so there will still be a need for downsizing the planet.

China is going to be a black hole for the world's resources. China's increasingly affluent population is sucking up wheat and meat stocks throughout the globe as Chinese people change to western lifestyle diets. India is not too far behind. Europe is rapidly turning into a backwater. The "knowledge economy" is a lie or at least a bad joke.

OK, back to the dark corner of the room...