Largely affected by steel production being outsourced to China

https://worldsteel.org/steel-topics/statistics/world-steel-i...

I think we might have run out of trees.

> 90% of the old-growth forests that existed in the contiguous United States in the 1600s have been cleared.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old-growth_forest#Logging

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deforestation

Locations of remaining tracts

  35% in South America
  28% in North America
  19% in northern Asia
  8% in Africa
  7% in South Asia Pacific
  Less than 3% in Europe

We have absolutely not run out of trees. 31% of land is still covered by trees, 66% of what it was before agricultural development. It’s more accurate to say we have run out of a need for deforestation.

The definitions in the Wikipedia article also state other figures. For one thing, in another part of it, they state that "Barely one-third (34 percent) of the world's forests are primary forests." After centuries of industrialization and explosive population growth in the human species, that percentage is surprisingly decent.

Secondly for your U.S. figure, bear in mind that their baseline for the age of the cleared forests is almost 400 years. Even among trees, many don't live that long. You could easily have a truly ancient forest by any measure, that hasn't seen invasive human presence in centuries, filled with extremely old trees, but consider it what, secondary forest just because it's from the early 1700's instead of the 1600s?

Pursuing fairness at all costs seems dumb to me

Deforesting land is unnecessary at this point. The main use of large tracts of rural land is agriculture, but the world has enough agricultural land to feed everyone already.

This would be a significant concern if agriculture was still a large proportion of the world economy, but it's ~4%. They can do something in the other 96%.

From what I hear, most of the rich world is now re-foresting.

The Spartans got to throw their babies into a chasm.

I find it unfair that I’m not allowed to commit infanticide just because I’m late to the party.

You aren't deforesting the Amazon for you. You're deforesting it for us.

First world paying emerging economies money for their non-renewable resources at what seems like reasonable rates only because they haven't the resources to use them for themselves yet, and by the time enough money accumulates to do so, they've shipped off a regrettable proportion of that resource to other countries. Tale as old as colonization.

it's more accurate to say that we've out sourced it.