"Trees are literally infinite. Just plant enough of them while you cut them down."
Nice in theory but there's a big, big problem in the interim: in many instances that interim exceeds 300-plus years before there's a solution (if there's a practical one at all)!
Many of the world's best timbers have been exploited to the point of extinction and the few trees that remain in the wild are strictly controlled by CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species) in that the export trade is strictly banned (just like elephant tusks - that means exporting any quantity no matter how small is illegal). Even so, illegal logging is now out of control and it's reducing their remaining numbers to critically low levels.
Demand for timbers such as the dalbergias: Brazilian Rosewood - Dalbergia nigra, Cocobolo D. Retusa, etc. and many other depleted species such as Lignum vitae is already so high that - like the drug trade - there are instances where people in the illegal trade are killing one another over 'territory' and the 'rights' to illegal smuggling.
Many good hardwood tree can take many hundreds of years to mature and despite many, many decades of the very best science chemical engineering has devised, it hasn't come anywhere near producing good artifical verions of these timbers. If we immediately started a planting operation of Manhattan Project size proportions to repopulate these trees to the level they were two hundreds years ago it would still take several hundreds of years before the world had sufficient timber to meet current (let alone the future) demand. And that's just the beginning of supply problems in the lumber industry.
So what's your solution for the next few hundred years?
Incidentally, in China, rosewoods (dalbergias) are revered with almost mystical significance, they are symbols of huge cultural and personal importance. With its newfound wealth, Chinese demand for these now rare timbers has skyrocketed and the Chinese will pay almost any amount to get their hands on them. As the population of more affluent Chinese grows, this problem will get steadily worse.
Now consider this is only one of many similar environmental problems the world is currently facing.
Quality energy (stored in a lower state of entropy, conveniently accessible and usable when and where we need it) is not infinite. This one is obviously not true today. If it were, people would not be complaining about increasing fossil fuel prices, since they would be happy using the cheap (due to infinite supply) “clean” energy.
I would really like to own a GShock, but I just can't get over how small the digits are. I know I would be frustrated reading the time from a space that is maybe 1/15 of the watch face surface area.
