William D McMaster
1 HN recommender · recommended in 3 months, 2014–2021
16:35 · 8.5M views · Jun 13, 2014
A short documentary about Jadav Payeng, who since the 1970s has planted a forest larger than Central Park on India's Majuli island, turning barren land into a lush oasis.
HN commenters share it as an inspiring example of one person restoring an ecosystem by planting trees.
3 comments from Hacker News
I also liked this documentary "Forest Man" this video "Since the 1970's Majuli islander Jadav Payeng has been planting trees in order to save his island. To date he has single handedly planted a forest larger than Central Park NYC. His forest has transformed what was once a barren wasteland, into a lush oasis. "
That’s not necessarily true. Some places have been ravaged by desertification and so actively planting trees can facilitate a forest where otherwise there wouldn’t be any. Second, you can choose trees which are particularly good at sequestering carbon for long periods. Humans are already animals that act as “ecosystem engineers” (like beavers or trees). [LINK] We just haven’t historically been very good at it (ie we’ve often historically reduced ecological diversity instead of facilitating it). I think we can do much better, and there are many examples of humans who HAVE done a great job at it (for instance, the man who planted a forest on an island in India). this video Do you think the planet would be better off if everything else was the same but his parents had decided not to have him? So this is why I think we can’t apply a broad average of human footprint to whether someone should decide to have kids or not. Instilling values, such as being a net-positive to the environment and the value of choosing to live a net-carbon-negative life (and support continued climate action), can be more important than just the marginal impact of not having kids at all. Also, negative-sum thinking ends up in a pretty dark place pretty fast if brought to its logical conclusion. And it seems pretty obvious what the long term result would be if all climate-conscious people had no kids but folks who don’t give a crap about climate action raise lots of children.
(I'm still not sure that this is on-topic ...) The Gizmodo article has more information (linked at the bottom): [LINK] Direct Youtube video: this video