small. Today, however, because of overpopulation and an unsustain-
able birth rate, any climate changes that produce crop failures can
mean only starvation and the loss of life through conflict. In tem-
perate climates, clear felling of forests does not normally lead to
desertification, but it affects the biodiversity, the fertility and there-
fore the long-term health of the environment.
Ten thousand years ago the whole Mediterranean region was
covered with forests, mainly of oak. Then about 5,000 years ago the
forests of Lebanon provided the timber for the Phoenician empire.
We don't know what happened to the forests of North Africa, but two
thousand years ago these lands were so fertile that the Romans
called them the breadbasket of the Mediterranean. They are now
arid desert. A thousand years ago 80% of Europe was forested; today
it is about 20%, much of which is monocultured industrial wood-
land, which lacks the biodiversity and the energy of natural forest.
In North America, the forest extended from the Atlantic to beyond
the Mississippi, and of course west of the Rockies.
Sometimes the forests were exploited to provide fast economic
expansion, regardless of the cost to future generations. In order to
provide a navy capable of ruling the seas, in the early sixteenth cen-
tury Henry VIII ordered the felling of a million mature oak trees,
virtually denuding England of its mature oaks. The world's forest
cover was reduced from about 75% at its greatest to about 50% in
medieval times. By 1900 it had dropped to about 35%. In the fran-
tic rush to get rich quick, regardless of the consequences, the figure
has dropped to 25% and every year we are still losing equatorial for-
est the size of Belgium.
Today, the unstable social conditions worldwide, and irresponsi-
ble political leadership favour greedy opportunists anxious to make
their fortunes, often illegally, by logging many of the finest stands of
prime forests on every continent. This destruction is likely to be
seen in the future as dangerous planetary vandalism, because their
consequences will bear heavily on the future global environmental
balance.
A moral tale
Easter Island, one of the most remote islands in the Pacific Ocean,
was occupied by a people about whom we know little, but who had
the most remarkable artistic skills (witness the giant statues they
- THE ROLE OF THE FOREST