As we covert to a more digital world, why is there still a “need” for so many trees? Is it just for farmland/livestock acres or other products?
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Wood used for paper and construction is typically farmed. It’s much cheaper and more reliable for the logging companies to operate farms than to cut down wild forests. We are not really at any risk of running out of farmed trees, any more than we are at risk of running out of corn or any other farmed crop.
Most deforestation happens for farmland/livestock land. A lot of this deforestation affects old-growth forests that take many decades or centuries to fully recover.
I’m really not sure that as we move to a more digital world, we are using less paper. Unfortunately, when the office computer was invented, so was the laser printer. It made it extremely easy to print multiple copies of very long documents. According to a newspaper report that I will not link to because I hate them so much, paper usage increased by 50% from 1980 to 2012.
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