New York City Is One of the Biggest Destroyers of the Amazon Rainforest

Illegal woods, unsustainably harvested by indentured servants are cheap.

Bloomberg and the rest of the plutocratic crew running City Hall didn't get rich by buying high and selling low. Ever price building materials? Try it. Compare Trex to some of those cheapo woods from S. America. Cha ching.

NYC is big business. And big business doesn't care about the Yano-freakin'-Mamo or Inuit skating on thin ice.

PS: Big Business doesn't give a rip about you, either, or the methane-producing horse you rode in on.

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that's why we continue to do what we do. writing checks on an account that some day will be empty. your grandchildren don't need polar bears. they just take up valuable real estate.

it's how the sins of the father will be visited on his children, regardless of your religious belief system. take that you judeo-christian spawn.

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he's always about the bottom line, completely amoral, and the bottom line he's about uses the same shitty accounting that always ends up creating piles of slag and pollution for somebody else to pay to deal with.

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If Bloomberg and the New York City Council were true conservative capitalists, they would believe in COST/BENEFIT ANALYSIS.

Rather than keep replacing wood that has been vandalized with pocket knives/saws/paint and worse, they could use recycled plastic wood-replacement products that require less maintenance and have a longer product life. The fact that it is easier to remove graffiti (Bloomberg's *big* core issue) and require less maintenance should have him there--->YESTERDAY. Where is he? Busy discussing if/how/when he would/should run for President of the USA instead of if/how/when he would/should run and improve NEW YORK CITY to be environmentally and fiscally responsible to its citizens and the world's environment and economy.

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Lets post Bloombergs mailing address (anyone have it)....and get out a mass of letters to him regarding the continued deforestation. A "we know what you're doing", mass embarrassment can only help.

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Forest Stewardship Council "certification" does not have anything to do with whether the wood extracted is sustainably harvested. This is a real bone of contention among international environmental groups. Norway has banned the use of all FSC certified wood for public use since there are so many leaks in the process of inspection of the forests that it has no meaning. There is no way trees from ancient forests can be sustainably harvested. Ipe age ranges from 200 years to over 1,000..and they only grow 1 or 2 per hectare. Ocean City, NJ, is lunging ahead with the purchase of Ipe for its boardwalk. Over 1,000 acres of rainforest will be destroyed for this shipment. A federal ban on hardwood from the ancient forests should be implemented.

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If you want to see rainforest deforestation in the US, just Google Earth Humptulips, WA, look at the satellite view. If you zoom out, you can see the brown parts are clear cuts, the dark green on the zoomed out view is the edge of the Olympic National Park.
However, in the this part of the US, much of what is being clearcut is being replanted. Northwest Washington is one of the few places in the US with temperate rainforest. However, in the US, forest companies like Boise Cascade, and Weyerhauser are becoming land development companies, because the land is worth more sold for housing etc, than it is for growing trees.

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Show me some numbers. How much tropical hardwood does NYC Parks department consume? I doubt if they are the largest user of tropical hardwoods in the U.S.

They should try use domestic hardwoods instead. Plastic is not always better than wood.

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I don't see that the article supports the headline. New York is probably the greenest city in the USA. It's not that I'm not as concerned about deforestation as the rest of you; but I don't trust certification of lumber nor do I think we should stop using it. Recycled plastic isn't a bad idea but don't forget where plastic is coming from. The important issue is saving old growth forests and treating our forest land as forest land. We need to stop urban sprawl and plant trees in our own yards.

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liberal crying..NY has been the biggest destroyer of the rain forest for years???.. how long has Bloomberg been in office..and how often do you see park benches replaced in NYC..rarely..

so while the article is a nice attempt at saying the wood for these benches comes from the rainforest and NYC uses this wood more than any other city - to imply that our fine NY democrats are careless regarding our environment is hard to believe as is park benches in NYC ruining our earth!

That said, resin benches would last years longer than wood so why not use them instead!

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In marked contrast to the city of Chicago, the New York City Transit Authority continues to use tropical wood for its subway ties...

Keep in mind that the NYCTA is not under NYC government control, in any way, shape or form. Bloomberg doesn't even get an appointee to its board, does he?

The practice does seem stupid, though - I think the entire Northeast Corridor, for instance, now has concrete ties.

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New York would be a great place to live in if people over there were treated to good plant medicine and not the manufactured BULLSHIT !

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In my area all the rotted wooden ties are being replaced with cement ones.

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Soybeans are a big crop on deforested rainforest.
Please don't buy new wood...buy antiques or at least use sustainable wood.

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Thanks for all the great comments. I'll try to respond to a few.

i. Prairie Waif, you're absolutely right: a true fiscal conservative would recognize the superior value of using recycled plastic lumber (RPL). This is true in the short-
and long-term.

Also, many conservatives (like many people in the u.s.) recognize the importance of protecting the most biodiverse regions of the world.

ii. Mr. Newton, Kaptainspiffy, and Schnoggi, I share your apparent frustration with the slow pace at which those holding public office are addressing eco-devastation.

iii. RPL manufactured locally is preferable in most ways to rainforest wood shipped from thousands of miles away.

iv. vivadublin, I wholeheartedly agree re. your points on Forest Stewardship Council certification. It claims only to certify ‘well-managed’ forests, not sustainably
harvested ones. The problems w/FSC are being well-documented by some of its original supporters and founders at www.fsc-watch.org, an excellent resource. These problems are serious and systematic and, as you mentioned, have resulted in Norway’s absolute
ban on tropical hardwood imports (FSC or not).
Given Sir Nicholas Stern’s( and many other’s) report, I also agree that a federal ban on hardwood from the ancient forests should be implemented.

v. Yes, audreyw. I believe the U.S. contains 3% of its original old-growth forests. That said, the remaining 3% (and some of the second and tertiary growth) have remarkable ecological value. E.O. Wilson is focusing some of his conservationist energies on what remains of old-growth forest in alabama.

vi. Thanks for your skepticism, bperkins. Numbers are important. I provided some in the article. Exact numbers are being sought from the city itself, which has been
reluctant to share this information with the public. According to Tim Keating of Rainforest Relief, the city is the
largest consumer of rainforests for its boardwalks, benches, subway ties etc. Of course, brokers of wood contribute a huge amount to the destruction; but demand is driving the process.

vi. Activists in New York have been promoting Black Locust, a local hardwood that is considered invasive in areas to which it has spread, as well as RPL.

The savings in terms of diesel-fueled of trucks which haul municipal waste and land fill costs are important and the technology in producing RPL has made it much more
eco-friendly than timber (even domestic) which is treated w/chemicals to make it able to last outdoors. And then timber lasts less than half the time for which RPL
is ‘guaranteed’.

vii. Ray Wigton: many other cities do more than New York. I listed a few in the article. I think that learning from these other cities is something Bloomberg should do.

We can stop urban sprawl and plant trees w/out contributing to the destruction of the world’s pristine rainforests.

viii. War_on_tara, Bloomberg’s ‘green’ initiatives (e.g. plannyc and congestion pricing) call on the state govt. to work w/the city to address climate change and pollution. He could do that w/state agencies using rainforest wood as well.

ix. Rocketman: Bloomberg has been in office for 6 years. He has not addressed what will soon be the single-largest
contributor to climate change, industrial logging of rainforests.

x. ACTION is the antidote to despair!
CJ and others: write to Mayor Bloomberg about this through the following link:

nyc.gov/html/om/html/contact_the_mayor.html

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