The issue remains of whether you want exotic pine trees to be growing in New Zealand, or whether you'd rather have the native vegetation. Still, the point is that by doing it this way, you have saved all the other forests, because like agriculture, all of the logging is being intensified on a very small portion of the forest land. Globally, if we could have plantation forests on about 5 percent of the forest area, and if those forests were well managed, they could supply all our needs for paper and lumber. And that would mean the other 95 percent of the forests would remain natural. That sounds like a positive proposal.
Water pollution is better too.
We don't have very good measures of that, but the fact is that most rivers in the United States are not open sewers any more. It can be hazardous to your health. Now, of course, people boat, fish, and swim in it with no problem whatsoever. I also point out in my lectures the trends of expanding forests in the U.S. and Europe, greater food security around the world, increasing human life span. If you look around, most of the trends are fairly positive on the global level.