Logging restrictions and deforestation
Back? The future of books
Description:
Traditional books are printed on paper, which can be made from rags, grasses and mainly from wood and timber, and thus the price of paper is directly linked to that of wood. At the moment the price of paper is fairly low and the availability is high. But paper might not always be a commodity product or as cheap and available as it is today. A situation where this happens might be unavoidable and as a result producing anything that has paper as its main resource, like books, will see a decrease in profit. This in turn will most likely force publishers to drive up prices of books making paperless books like eBooks more interesting and profitable.
Enablers:
Environmental activists actions
Because of excessive logging, deforestation is a huge environmental concern; it is one of the major causes of the greenhouse effect and global warming and is causing changes to the habit leading to animal death and creation of wastelands and deserts. Trees are important because not only do they provide us with oxygen but they also remove toxic carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
Environmental activists like Greenpeace are everywhere in the world trying to limit logging and save forests from being completely obliterated. If they would succeed in this the availability of wood would go down and prices would go up.
Excessive logging
At the moment the amount of trees being cut is far greater that the amount of trees replanted. Rainforests are shrinking by the minute and forests are getting smaller and scarcer. If this trend continues at some point the availability of trees will be so small that only the larger logging companies will survive. The disappearance of competition in the woodcutting industry will most likely cause for a dramatic increase in price making wood not so affordable anymore. The paper industry would take a huge hit from this and paper, along with printed books, will get more expensive to produce, making eBooks a more viable alternative.
A stop to illegal logging
A fairly large proportion of all logging that is going on is done illegally in countries like Brazil, Peru, Cameroon and Liberia and is a major problem in almost all South American and African countries. For example In Brazil, 80% of logging in the Amazon violates government controls. Currently these illegal operations are free to continue and the US en EU is unable to ban illegally obtained wood from being imported. In the future something might be done about this problem and either illegal logging will be put to a stop or importing the wood or products made from it will be outlawed in the US en EU. Because the scale of these illegal operations is so great a large proportion of the industry will disappear leaving only the legal operating companies. This will greatly reduce the availability of wood, driving up the price of paper in turn
Forest fires
Wildfires are devastating for forests as they are often uncontrollable and can rage on for several weeks, burning down everything in their path. They are often so big they can be seen from outer space and are fueled by wind, trees and everything else that they can burn. Recent examples of these are the wildfires in Australia that destroyed more than 150.000 hectares of forest in the state Victoria alone. These fires pose a very serious threat to logging companies as whole forests with a wood supply for decennia can be destroyed completely. Wildfires do occur more often due to climate changes and when they start appearing too frequently could drive of prices on wood and timber gigantically.
Climate changes
Not only is the deforestation of the earth fueling the greenhouse effect and global warming, but in turn global warming is also fueling deforestation. Our climate is changes and the earth is becoming warming and water is getting scarcer. Lakes and other natural water supplies are drying up, rain disappears and the land changes to wasteland or dessert. This is a slow process but in time could get rid of a significant portion of forested land. This in turn could again drive up prices of timber.
Inhibitors:
New forest fire prevention and fighting techniques
Currently a lot of forest is lost because of world wide forest fires. Current prevention and fighting of forest fires are not very effective. Forest fires can be predicted but currently we have no way of preventing it from happening. Fire fighting techniques dealing with large forest fires are also not effective. Most often forest cannot be saved from the fire and fire fighters can only prevent the fire from spreading to fast. Human life can this way be save but the trees themselve are often completely lost.
New techniques in prevention or fighting of fire could make massive forest fires a thing of the past, or could at least prevent parts of forests to be lost during fires. Already research is going on to come up with better equipment to fight fires and testing is going on with large freight or passenger planes fighting fires with their immense water storage capacity.
Rise in availability of clothing and grasses
Paper is primaraly made of wood, but can also be made out of (old)clothing or grasses. If the availablity of wood would go down, or if it would see an increase in price, these two other materials could act as a substitude for wood and prevent a price increase of paper
More efficient paper recycling methods
Paper is a product that is very suitable for recycling. If not only paper recycling methods, but also paper collection would improve a lot more paper could be recycled. This could greatly reduce the amount of new trees needed to satisfy our paperneed and could therefore increase the availablity of paper and decrease its price.
Web Resources:
Deforestation Wikipedia
Deforestation in Amazonia
EarthWatch