Forest envy (n.)
The feeling that is being expressed when rich
industrialised nations demand that poorer, less economically advanced countries
stop cutting down all their forests on the grounds that those are pretty much
the only ones left on the planet now that all the rich nations have already cut
down theirs (which is, to a large extent, the reason that they became rich in
the first place).
Although deforestation is widely known to cause
‘desertification’, global warming, loss of countless animal and
plant species, and quite possibly the demise of Western civilisation as we know
it, the best economic case that the world's richest nations have so far managed
to present for its cessation is ‘Erm, could you stop that
please?’.
Many of the poorer nations, whose see their forests as a natural resource to be plundered and exploited just like all the other natural resources in the more developed parts of the world (e.g. Saudi Arabia, North America, Antarctica, etc.) are justifiably unimpressed with this line of reasoning and demand to know just who the hell the rich nations think they are trying to tell them how to run their countries like that, and that they (i.e. rich nations) are only jealous because they have already cut down all of their own forests, so nah-nahnah-nah-nah, and so on, and so forth.
After a while the whole business will no doubt be sorted out, but by that time the last tree will have been felled in the Amazon and we will all be speaking Chinese, so there's no need to worry about it yet.
Many of the poorer nations, whose see their forests as a natural resource to be plundered and exploited just like all the other natural resources in the more developed parts of the world (e.g. Saudi Arabia, North America, Antarctica, etc.) are justifiably unimpressed with this line of reasoning and demand to know just who the hell the rich nations think they are trying to tell them how to run their countries like that, and that they (i.e. rich nations) are only jealous because they have already cut down all of their own forests, so nah-nahnah-nah-nah, and so on, and so forth.
After a while the whole business will no doubt be sorted out, but by that time the last tree will have been felled in the Amazon and we will all be speaking Chinese, so there's no need to worry about it yet.
Posted on Wednesday - May 04, 2005 at 12:05 PM
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Published On: Sep 07, 2007 08:02 AM
