Greeks Raid Forests in Search of Wood to Heat Homes

[NickB79]

EGALEO, Greece—While patrolling on a recent cold night, environmentalist Grigoris Gourdomichalis caught a young man illegally chopping down a tree on public land in the mountains above Athens.

When confronted, the man broke down in tears, saying he was unemployed and needed the wood to warm the home he shares with his wife and four small children, because he could no longer afford heating oil.

"It was a tough choice, but I decided just to let him go" with the wood, said Mr. Gourdomichalis, head of the locally financed Environmental Association of Municipalities of Athens, which works to protect forests around Egaleo, a western suburb of the capital.

Tens of thousands of trees have disappeared from parks and woodlands this winter across Greece, authorities said, in a worsening problem that has had tragic consequences as the crisis-hit country's impoverished residents, too broke to pay for electricity or fuel, turn to fireplaces and wood stoves for heat.

Crosspost from LBN: http://www.democraticunderground.com/1014365789

[CRH]

1. People will survive economic hardship how they must, ...

It is an illustration of what happens when economies fail to provide a future for the growing population. The effect is they use the trees for fuel, the deforestation adds to the feedback loops warming the planet, then the climate becomes uncooperative as well. The deforestation contributes to two known feedbacks happening now, more absorption of heat in the soils, and less absorption of CO2 in the land based heat sink, the forests. And so goes the cycle of degradation both socioeconomic and environmental.

Not many trees left in Haiti.

[phantom power]

2. The only thing keeping humans from consuming the biosphere like locusts is cheap energy

Which might give people pause for thought, as the era of cheap energy may be drawing to a close around us. But Honey Boo Boo won't keep track of herself. Or something.