As Bzuci has already noted, this devastation has really lasted for several thousand years as far as recorded and verifiable history is concerned. Much of the Middle East was forested, the territory of present-day Lebanon was covered with cedar forests, which were cut down for shipbuilding (Lebanese cedars are also mentioned in the Bible, about three thousand years ago it was a really famous article), as well as areas of ancient Sumer (approx. today’s Syria, Iraq) were significantly more forested and fertile than today, but massive deforestation due to the acquisition of arable land, changes in the Euphrates and Tigris flows to irrigation canals in the wider area meant significant changes and contributed to the subsequent conversion to semi-desert. In our country, in the Czech Basin, it came much later, but in the 10th century it was a region of dense forests, which did not apply only 300 years later, when much of the area was deforested due to arable land. Massive deforestation followed due to the mining and processing of metals, especially silver, later due to glass production. It was quite common to set up a glassworks in the woods, operate it for twenty years, harvest all the trees within a few kilometers, and then let the glassworks be and move on. It was not until the reign of Maria Theresa that the reforestation of most of today’s forests began to take place.Man has really changed the landscape since the beginning of his history, initially mainly for agriculture, but also very quickly for ore processing, construction and more. It’s not just a few centuries.On the other hand, if we as humanity are to develop further, we need raw materials and energy. Mining them in space is the only sustainable solution. In our solar system alone, there is enough for millions of years to come. Even if we extract oxygen on the Moon, it will not be such a problem – comets are mainly made of water ice, most of the asteroids contain rocks similar to lunar regolith, the moons of more distant planets are also full of raw materials. If this also means that we will start saving more of the Earth and restoring it in the same way as the forests were restoring in the time of Maria Theresa, then I am only in favor. Let’s expand, move mining and production into space – doing a great service to the Earth.
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