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FLASHBACK: USSR COMMUNIST DICTATOR JOSEPH STALIN HAD HIS OWN CLIMATE CHANGE SCHEME (PDF FILE)

Junk Science ^ | 2010 | STEPHEN BRAIN

Posted on by E. Pluribus Unum

ABSTRACT

On October 20, 1948, the Soviet government announced the worlds first statecentered program to reverse human-induced climate change, a grandiose plan to construct 5.7 million hectares of forest in the Russian south. However, the plan collapsed upon Stalins death in 1953 because of a fundamental contradiction at the plans heart. At first, the Stalin Plan advanced a basically conservative vision of restoring the steppes to an imagined prehistoric state, but soon a group of radical scientists advancing untested silvicultural theories managed to take control. The resulting struggle between the old approach and the new brought about the plans collapse.

TWENTIETH-CENTURY DICTATORS liked trees. Although the environmental record of authoritarianism offers a dismal list of failures, including the nuclear accidents at Chernobyl and Chelyabinsk-65, the fouled air of Beijing and Shanghai, the vanished fisheries of the Aral and Caspian Seas, and the acidified industrial wastelands of Bitterfeld and Katowice, afforestation projects represent a notable exception. Indeed, afforestation on a massive scale was the environmental panacea of choice for dictators in the twentieth century. The Nazis and their Reichforstmeister, Hermann Göring, in addition to making the conservation-spirited Dauerwald the preferred forestry method for the German Reich, initiated a sweeping National Afforestation Program in 1934, focused on creating ecologically sound mixed forests, a program which succeeded in increasing the overall forest cover of Germany despite aggressive industrialization and the rigors of war. Benito Mussolini created a National Forest Militia, a black-shirted paramilitary group under the direction of the General Command of the Voluntary Militia for Natural Security, to assist in technical work, reforestation and propaganda in the field of silviculture.

Mao Zedong devoted little attention to forestry matters, and his Great Leap Forward (19581960) and Cultural Revolution (19661969) resulted in widespread forest destruction, but his followers have taken afforestation very seriously,...



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To: Army Air Corps

Ping.



To: E. Pluribus Unum

Recycling was a big thing in USSR before anyone heard of it on such a scale elsewhere. People throwing away old newspapers and unused metal stuff were shamed and in order to buy certain desired books you had to bring a certificate proving that you sold certain amount of scrap paper.

People selling scrap metal were awarded expensive kitchenware or given TVs and stereos and they had competitions for whose who scrap the most awarding them with automobiles. It made obvious excesses with the most zealous scrappers stealing and dismantling functional property for scrap. Afforestation was another mania and produced different sarcastic jokes like: shoot the beaver, save the nature (the tree). That both hinted lewd context and mocked the fact that the actual beavers were just like trees among protected species and banned as a game.



To: E. Pluribus Unum



What was once the Aral Sea

What was once the Aral Sea

To: NorseViking

“Shoot the Beaver” advises The Kremlin.

Spasibo Bolshoi!

(Thanks very much)



To: Army Air Corps

Although the environmental record of authoritarianism offers a dismal list of failures, including the nuclear accidents at Chernobyl and Chelyabinsk-65, the fouled air of Beijing and Shanghai, the vanished fisheries of the Aral and Caspian Seas, and the acidified industrial wastelands of Bitterfeld and Katowice... Extras - in case we need even more proof communism/socialism is a total failure...



by 6 posted onby GOPJ (We renew our resolve America will NEVER be a socialist country. We are born free we will STAY free!)

To: Fiji Hill

Strange place for a U.S. Coast Guard ship to be marooned.



by 7 posted onby TigersEye (This is the age of the death of reason.)

To: TigersEye

...or to find a Joshua tree which grows in California.



by 8 posted onby Nateman (If the left is not screaming, you are doing it wrong.)

To: E. Pluribus Unum

Forgot Napoleon and his pine forest in South West France. Back then wood was strategic energy, though.



by 9 posted onby JudgemAll (Democrats Fed. job-security in hate:hypocrites must be gay like us or be tested/crucified)

To: E. Pluribus Unum

bmp



by 10 posted onby gattaca ("Government's first duty is to protect the people, not run their lives." Ronald Reagan)

To: JudgemAll

Forgot Napoleon and his pine forest in South West France. Back then wood was strategic energy, though. To keep its rail network going, I seem to recall reading that the Ottomans deforested coastal areas along the eastern Mediterranean.



To: NorseViking

Same with recycling in Japan. I remember metal toys that were made in the JA Pan company that when you looked inside the soup can label was still on the metal. 1950’s and 1960’s



To: E. Pluribus Unum

Hey E-Plu-U — thank you very much for posting this. It’s super-interesting to me,and I’ll read it more carefully later this morning.



Do you ever wonder where all the eucalyptus trees came from in Northern California? They were planted there, because they are fast-growing tree and the need for railroad ties was extensive.



by 14 posted onby Clutch Martin (The trouble ain't that there is too many fools, but that the lightning ain't distributed right.)

To: E. Pluribus Unum

bkmk



To: Nateman

I noticed that too. Photo Shop is fun for everyone! :)



by 16 posted onby TigersEye (This is the age of the death of reason.)

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