Lil' Green Patch
I feel that as an ecologist I need to say something about this popular facebook application. I added it a while ago just to see what it was about, but shortly afterwards forgot about it because I realized it really wasn't worth my time. But for some reason, it's become the most popular app on facebook, boasting over 5,700,000 users. So you'd think...with so many users sending so many electronic flowers and plants and whatnot, they must be saving a lot of rainforest, right?
Wrong.
If you look at the numbers, what this app is saving isn't even a drop in the bucket in the greater scheme of things. They've saved 9 square kilometers of rainforest total...that may seem like a lot if you're unfamiliar with landscape level ecology, but if you look at just the rate of deforestation in Brazil alone, which has an average rate of 50,000 square kilometers of rainforest lost each year, all they've done is save one fifteenth of one day's rainforest loss in Brazil. (I pulled that number from a slightly out-of-date student project at http://kanat.jsc.vsc.edu/student/callahan/mainpage.htm#defrates, I don't particularly feel like searching the literature for a rant)
I don't want to say this thing is bad, I just don't want people to give it more value than it actually has. From reading some of the comments, it seems like the users think that by wasting their time sending invites to everyone on their friends list, they've done their civic duty and helped saved the environment for one more day. And that's plain stupid. There are much better ways to conserve energy and preserve the environment, and if anything this app should be trying to promote those kind of habits rather than promote a silly gimmick that makes people feel better about their own wasteful lifestyles. And with 5.7 million users, they could be doing a whole hell of a lot more good!
In my opinion, the whole idea of buying up rainforest is the wrong approach. We need to educate the public about why it's important to preserve it, and in that way we may see societal changes that allow for sustainable harvests in those areas and greater protection of intact ecosystems. The biggest problem we face is the rapid conversion of forest land to pasture and agricultural fields, and a solution to the need for those areas would bring about a solution for the preservation of the forests that now stand where they would be. That is an economic and political problem and is outside my range of expertise, but I do know that trying to chip away at the problem rather than address the heart of it is absolutely the wrong way to solve it. It's gonna take a lot more than tree hugging and half-hearted 'go green' BS to make things happen.
Wrong.
If you look at the numbers, what this app is saving isn't even a drop in the bucket in the greater scheme of things. They've saved 9 square kilometers of rainforest total...that may seem like a lot if you're unfamiliar with landscape level ecology, but if you look at just the rate of deforestation in Brazil alone, which has an average rate of 50,000 square kilometers of rainforest lost each year, all they've done is save one fifteenth of one day's rainforest loss in Brazil. (I pulled that number from a slightly out-of-date student project at http://kanat.jsc.vsc.edu/student/callahan/mainpage.htm#defrates, I don't particularly feel like searching the literature for a rant)
I don't want to say this thing is bad, I just don't want people to give it more value than it actually has. From reading some of the comments, it seems like the users think that by wasting their time sending invites to everyone on their friends list, they've done their civic duty and helped saved the environment for one more day. And that's plain stupid. There are much better ways to conserve energy and preserve the environment, and if anything this app should be trying to promote those kind of habits rather than promote a silly gimmick that makes people feel better about their own wasteful lifestyles. And with 5.7 million users, they could be doing a whole hell of a lot more good!
In my opinion, the whole idea of buying up rainforest is the wrong approach. We need to educate the public about why it's important to preserve it, and in that way we may see societal changes that allow for sustainable harvests in those areas and greater protection of intact ecosystems. The biggest problem we face is the rapid conversion of forest land to pasture and agricultural fields, and a solution to the need for those areas would bring about a solution for the preservation of the forests that now stand where they would be. That is an economic and political problem and is outside my range of expertise, but I do know that trying to chip away at the problem rather than address the heart of it is absolutely the wrong way to solve it. It's gonna take a lot more than tree hugging and half-hearted 'go green' BS to make things happen.