Peak Everything, Overshoot, & Collapse

Preface. I wrote in “Life after fossil fuels” that as energy declined, it would be hard to cut down distant forests with limited oil supplies.  I thought this because even in Britain, so denuded of trees people turned to filthy coal, forests still existed. This was because trees needed to be near rivers or waterways to transport their timber to towns and cities. Overland horses could transport wood perhaps 10 miles or less since roads were awful if they existed at all.  But today due to the war in Ukraine and Russia cutting off oil, gas, and coal to Europe & Ukraine, people are driving to forests and cutting them down for heat in the winter since oil still exists at reasonable prices.

Forests in Europe and elsewhere are already being decimated by Europe’s need for wood — biomass is over half of the EU “renewable” energy. Though there are forests inaccessible due to lack of roads or too far from towns and cities, such as the boreal regions.  But even these forests may disappear as they go up in smoke from global warming wildfires and bark beetles.

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