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Quotes about Deforestation from the world's top natural health / natural living authors

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"The rapid planetary deforestation is decreasing the local supply of oxygen, air pollution combines with and ties up oxygen in the air, and the combustion of our automobiles and industries takes it from the local ground level atmosphere. Stress causes oxygen deficiency within the organism. For example, stress from toxic environmental substances in our air, water, and food uses oxygen for detoxification. Chemical pollutants, chlorine in water, and fumes from combustion of petrochemicals from our cars all require that we use our body supply of oxygen to protect us." - Gabriel Cousens, M.D., Spiritual Nutrition: Six Foundations for Spiritual Life and the Awakening of Kundalini (Get the book.)

"Introduced species, habitat degradation, overhunting, deforestation, and pollution imperil species, speed the rate of extinction, and decrease biodiversity. Managing Planet Earth: Environmental Challenges Lie Ahead by Andrew Revkin Nearly 70 years ago, a Soviet geochemist, reflecting on his world, made a startling observation: through technology and sheer numbers, he wrote, people were becoming a geological force, shaping the planet's future just as rivers and earthquakes had shaped its past. Eventually, wrote the scientist, Vladimir I." - The New York Times, The New York Times Guide to Essential Knowledge: A Desk Reference for the Curious Mind (Get the book.) "Many theories have been advanced to explain the sudden decline of Mayan civilization, including prolonged drought, deforestation, excessive devotion of resources to warfare, and the encroachment of the Toltec from the north. In any case, the Post-Classical Mayan world does seem to have come under at least the loose control of the Toltec empire; Toltec and Maya alike would be conquered by the Aztec after about 1300." - The New York Times, The New York Times Guide to Essential Knowledge: A Desk Reference for the Curious Mind (Get the book.) "On the other hand, lack of development also has negative environmental consequences, including deforestation, soil depletion and desertification, and overexploitation of wild species, while development can produce benefits such as substitution of energy-efficient devices for wasteful burning of fuels, and the preservation of selected environments for recreational, aesthetic, and conservation purposes. The postwar period has seen a significant increase worldwide of national parks, UN World Heritage sites, wildlife refuges, and other protected areas." - The New York Times, The New York Times Guide to Essential Knowledge: A Desk Reference for the Curious Mind (Get the book.)

"Climatic change and deforestation are threatening the mountain forest systems that are the source of many medicinal species. Most importantly, the high Andean ecosystems and sacred lagoons where many medicinally active species are found are in danger of being destroyed by large-scale mining activities [112, 113]." - Rainer W. Bussmann and Douglas Sharon, Plants of the four winds - The magic and medicinal flora of Peru (Get the book.)

"Europe's Judeo-Christian tradition, the rise of western science, the rise of European mercantilism and capitalism, Britain's deforestation coupled with its coal deposits, etc.). Behind these and other proximate factors, I saw an "Optimal Fragmentation Principle": ultimate geographic factors that led to China becoming unified early and mostly remaining unified thereafter, while Europe remained constantly fragmented." - Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (Get the book.)

"However, it has been brought close to extinction by deforestation and over-exploitation. Conservation schemes have been proposed, but it is too early to be certain whether the species can be saved from extinction. AGRICULTURAL AND BIOTECHNOLOGICAL PRODUCTION Most important medicinal plants arc now produced under controlled agricultural conditions (Franz 1999). Such production systems require certain conditions for each species with respect to: • Temperature and annual course of temperature. • Rainfall (if it is not possible to irrigate the fields). • Soil characteristics and quality." - Dr. Michael Heinrich, Joanne Barnes, Simon Gibbons and Elizabeth M. Williamson, Fundamentals of Pharmacognosy and Phytotherapy (Get the book.)

"Reforesting our Earth is a critical component of saving our atmosphere: Some scientists estimate that a full third of global warming is the result of deforestation. For peoples of the forests who have lived for centuries from the forests without destroying them, deforestation means the entire loss of their economy and their way of life. The next two chapters show how we can reforest the Earth. Table 15.1 Actions to Reduce Net 1987 U.S. C02 Emissions by at Least 20% (figures shown represent midpoints of ranges based on initial NRDC estimates) Action Reduction in U.S." - H. Patricia Hynes, Earth Right (Get the book.)

"Hemp farming could reduce deforestation 50% worldwide, and bring in revenues for small farmers. Hemp stalk fibers are among the strongest and most flexible in the world even under harsh conditions, made into rope for towing icebergs, used in canvas; outlasts cotton, linen, and rayon in textiles; interwoven with linen in fine clothes; used in paper, medicines, oil, and for fuel. The world's first printed book (the Gutenburg Bible) and the Declaration of Independence, were printed on Hemp paper." - Joseph E. Mario, Anti-Aging Manual: The Encyclopedia of Natural Health (Get the book.)

"Two drugs obtained from a rainforest plant known as the Madagascar periwinkle, now extinct in the wild due to deforestation of the Madagascar rainforest, have increased the chances of survival for children with leukemia from 20 percent to 80 percent. Think about it: eight out of ten children are now saved, rather than eight of ten children dying from leukemia. How many children have been spared and how many more will continue to be spared because of this single rainforest plant?" - Leslie Taylor, ND, The Healing Power of Rainforest Herbs: A Guide to Understanding and Using Herbal Medicinals (Get the book.) "RAINFORESTS, PHARMACY TO THE WORLD It is estimated that nearly half of the world's approximate 10 million species of plants, animals, and microorganisms will be destroyed or severely threatened over the next quarter-century due to rainforest deforestation. Edward O. Wilson estimates that we are losing 137 plant and animal species every single day. That's 50,000 species a year! Again, why should we in the United States be concerned about the destruction of distant tropical rainforests?" - Leslie Taylor, ND, The Healing Power of Rainforest Herbs: A Guide to Understanding and Using Herbal Medicinals (Get the book.) "If deforestation continues at current rates, scientists estimate nearly 80 to 90 percent of tropical rainforest ecosystems will be destroyed by the year 2020. This destruction is the main force driving a species extinction rate unmatched in 65 million years. The Amazon Rainforest has been described as the "lungs of our planet" because it provides the essential service of continuously recycling carbon dioxide into oxygen. THE AMAZON RAINFOREST . . . THE LAST FRONTIER ON EARTH If Amazonia were a country, it would be the ninth largest in the world." - Leslie Taylor, ND, The Healing Power of Rainforest Herbs: A Guide to Understanding and Using Herbal Medicinals (Get the book.)

"Despite the lukewarm response to the CBD by nation states, the global shift in awareness concerning tropical deforestation provided an opportunity for ethnobotanists to assert that everyone has an interest in preserving rainforests because they might contain compounds that could cure cancer, HIV-AIDS, and other diseases [86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91]. In addition, income derived from the marketing of traditional medicinal knowledge was seen as an PLANTAS de LOS CUATRO VTFNTOS instrument to alleviate poverty and to finance conservation efforts [86,92,93,94]." - Rainer W. Bussmann and Douglas Sharon, Plants of the four winds - The magic and medicinal flora of Peru (Get the book.)

"Trees and shrubs that, unlike evergreens, lose their leaves and become dormant during the winter. deforestation (dee-fawr-uh-stay-shuhn) The process of destroying a forest and replacing it with something else. The term is used today to refer to the destruction of forests by human beings and their replacement by agricultural systems, fa deforestation is considered to be a main contributor to the greenhouse effect. deoxyribonucleic acid (dee-ok-see-reye-boh-nooh-klee-ik) See DNA. dinosaurs Reptiles, now extinct, that were the dominant life form on earth for many millions of years." - James Trefil, Joseph F. Kett, and E. D. Hirsch, The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know (Get the book.)

"And though we often hear about the loss of Amazon rainforest to ranchers raising cattle for fast-food franchises, soybean farming has wrought even greater devastation, causing the deforestation of an area larger than the state of New Jersey in less than a year.6 Yet the soybean is promoted as the salvation to world hunger and a "green," environmentally sound alternative to meat production. The soy industry even claims that its modern processed soyfoods are the natural heritage of people of Asia." - Kaayla T. Daniel, PhD, CCN, The Whole Soy Story: The dark side of America's favorite health food (Get the book.)

"The concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has risen by 32 percent since 1750, mainly because of the use of fossil fuels and changes in land use (such as deforestation). About 60 percent of this increase has occurred since 1959. Such a level of interference in the balance of nature has significantly reduced biological diversity around the world: during the last hundred years, the coefficient of species extinction has increased a thousandfold compared with the average over the whole history of our planet." - Carlo Petrini, Slow Food Nation: Why Our Food Should Be Good, Clean, And Fair (Get the book.)

"Trees and shrubs that, unlike evergreens, lose their leaves and become dormant during the winter. deforestation (dee-fawr-uh-stay-shuhn) The process of destroying a forest and replacing it with something else. The term is used today to refer to the destruction of forests by human beings and their replacement by agricultural systems, fa deforestation is considered to be a main contributor to the greenhouse effect. deoxyribonucleic acid (dee-ok-see-reye-boh-nooh-klee-ik) See DNA. dinosaurs Reptiles, now extinct, that were the dominant life form on earth for many millions of years." - E. D. Hirsch, Joseph F. Kett, James Trefil, The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know (Get the book.)

"The land, once moist forest floor hosting a riot of lush green vegetation, became hard brown dust, barely nutritious enough to support the most sparse crop life. The deforestation of Africa, as elsewhere, is a sad tale of environmental devastation caused by a series of ill-considered actions. After speaking with various herbal vendors in Makola Market, Joseph and I headed to a small, shaded outdoor bar, where we drank some cold Star Beer, brewed in Accra. The dewy bottle felt refreshing against my sweaty, dusty face. Joseph spoke about himself." - Chris Kilham, Hot Plants: Nature's Proven Sex Boosters for Men and Women (Get the book.)

"The destruction of Britain's forests has been suggested as the reason behind its early lead in developing coal technology, but why didn't deforestation have the same effect in China ? This discussion does not exhaust the list of reasons proposed to explain why societies differ in their receptivity to new technology. Worse yet, all of these proximate explanations bypass the question of the ultimate factors behind them. This may seem like a discouraging setback in our attempt to understand the course of history, since technology has undoubtedly been one of history's strongest forces." - Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (Get the book.)

"Scientists estimate that we are losing more than 137 species of plants and animals every single day because of rainforest deforestation. Surprisingly, scientists have a better understanding of how many stars there are in the galaxy than they have of how many species there are on Earth. Estimates vary from 2 million to 100 million species, with a best estimate of somewhere near 10 million; only 1.4 million of these species have actually been named." - Leslie Taylor, ND, The Healing Power of Rainforest Herbs: A Guide to Understanding and Using Herbal Medicinals (Get the book.)

"The loss of forest cover, since the agricultural revolution, has accelerated at an alarming rate. deforestation causes soil erosion, flooding, reduced agricultural capacity, loss of biodiversity and climate changes. In the past half-century, fossil fuel use has increased by 500%, and the number of automobiles has gone from 53 million to 520 million.31 Carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, has increased by 30% in the earth's atmosphere in the past 150 years, contributing to global warming,32 and a cascade of environmental complications." - APC Books, Healing Our Planet, Healing Our Selves: The Power of change Within to Change the World (Get the book.)

"By around 5,000 years ago, pollen analyses testify to widespread deforestation of highland valleys, suggesting forest clearance for agriculture. Today, the staple crops of highland agriculture are the recently introduced sweet potato, along with taro, bananas, yams, sugarcane, edible grass stems, and several leafy vegetables. Because taro, bananas, and yams are native to Southeast Asia, an undoubted site of plant domestication, it used to be assumed that New Guinea highland crops other than sweet potatoes arrived from Asia." - Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (Get the book.)

"America has the power and resources to reverse global warming, to save the ozone layer, to prevent chemical pollution, stop deforestation, to curb the human overpopulation problem and to prevent the rape of space. Make no mistake —your voice can become loud if you get creative. The money that America invests in killing must now be redirected urgently to the preservation of life. America must rise to its full moral and spiritual height to reach its intended destiny ?the nation that saved the world." - APC Books, Healing Our Planet, Healing Our Selves: The Power of change Within to Change the World (Get the book.)

"The cooling of the Little Ice Age provoked the deforestation of England and the increased use of coal, and therefore led to inventions for improving coal extraction, namely the steam-powered pump for removing water from coal mines, which soon led to steam-powered railroads and the whole industrial explosion, in which more versatile oil and gas came to replace coal. The brief fossil fuel interval of the past two hundred years has accompanied another warming period, perhaps even stimulated it." - James Howard Kunstler, The Long Emergency: Surviving the End of Oil, Climate Change, and Other Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century (Get the book.) "The future deforestation of North America (and Europe) could be as rapid and dramatic as the extermination of the American bison in the decades after the Civil War. Methane Hydrates An immense amount of methane, natural gas, equal to at least twice the amount of all known fossil fuels on earth, is thought to be trapped in the ocean sediments as a gas hydrate. This is a kind of "ice" consisting of methane molecules, each surrounded by a "cage" of water molecules, stable only at low temperatures and extreme pressures typical of water depths below about a thousand feet." - James Howard Kunstler, The Long Emergency: Surviving the End of Oil, Climate Change, and Other Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century (Get the book.)

"The large-scale collection of plants from natural stands, but also deforestation and erosion, resulted in the rapid depiction of wild populations, which is still going on. Most obviously general strategies such as appropriate information policies, environmental and resource management, and in situ/ex situ conservation programs are necessary. Domestication of intensely used wild-growing species is needed for a sustainable use as well as for the maintenance of biological diversity." - Amarjit S. Basra, Handbook of Medicinal Plants (Get the book.) "The expanding international market along with the rapidly rising populations lead to ecological problems—not only because of overharvest-ing of medicinal plants for home use and export purposes but also because of deforestation by logging and conversion of backwoods to pasture and agriculture.3 This global development, together with increasingly restrictive conservation laws, will finally lead to considerable reduction of the still-dominant exploitation of natural resources in favor of cultivation." - Amarjit S. Basra, Handbook of Medicinal Plants (Get the book.)

"Demineralized Soil, Over-Cropped Land, Agri-Poisons Rain Forest Depletion, deforestation Desertification (Manmade; Caused by Poor Irrigation, Over-Cropping, deforestation, Over-Grazing) Fresh Water Contamination Drought Torrential Rains, Flooding Contamination From Agri-Industrial Runoff Severe Erosion Unusual and/or Severe Weather Patterns Chronic Crop Failure Nuclear Contamination Acid Rain Severe Overpopulation Genetic Extinction of Plants and Animals O. Ozone Depletion D. E. F. G. H. I. J. K. L. M. N." - Dr Bernard Jenson and Mark Anderson, Empty Harvest (Get the book.)

"This has contributed to the reduction of oxygen in the atmosphere. If deforestation continues at its present rate, 4% of the earth's surface per year, there will be no forests left by the year 2035. There is genuine worldwide concern about deforestation because trees play a crucial role in the cleaning of our air supply. The fact is that there is no simple solution to the series of problems related to atmospheric pollution but scientists and ecologists are diligently working." - Francisco, M.D. Contreras, Health in the 21st Century: Will Doctors Survive? (Get the book.)

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