You ’d have to be living in the center of a really thick-skulled forest not to recognize by now that the world ’s forest are disappearing little by niggling . And while it ’s rightful that they still track about 30 percent of the earthly concern ’s land area , swaths the size of Panama are lost each and every year . At the current rate of deforestation , the cosmos ’s pelting timber could completely disappear in a hundred years .
So that ’s the future , which looks fairly grim . But what about the past ? Here are three other grim moment in story that might pale by comparison , but are still deserving knowing :
1. Way too Platonic
In Greece , around 650 BC , hillside once handle with flora and productive Olea europaea trees became stark , seriously affect the Greek ’s saving and political top executive . Plato would write about the deforestation problem in one of his late dialogues , Critias :
2. Your Mother!
Jared Diamond , the evolutionary life scientist , adds this extreme - factoid , which I launch onWiki :
Yes , it ’s the classic " your mother" vilification , something as universal as the tree diagram itself . Here ’s hoping the two never disappear totally .
3. When in Rome
Similar problems cropped up , if you ’ll relieve the wordplay , during the quaternary and 5th centuries in Italy . Along with the well - document papist political decay , serious disforestation and the ill-treatment of other natural resources greatly contributed to the fall of the imperium , as well . But the seeds were already being sow during Caesar ’s rule . When the Gauls or Britains would escape his mighty legions and take to the Wood , many Roman full general simply burn the forests to the priming .
