Hello and thank you for tuning in. Today, we’re going to be talking about deforestation and pollution in Central and East Asia. Deforestation and pollution in East and Central Asia are deeply interrelated problems specifically harming the people that need to be helping. As I speak, every two seconds, an area of forest in East Asia the size of a football field is demolished due to logging. By the time I finish this sentence, 172,800 feet of forest has been logged. People are rapidly destroying precious forests, forests that enable life to humans and animals alike. The forests being destroyed help to regulate the climate and water resources, and are instrumental in the survival of about 60 million people living in Asia. In China, for example, only 2% of indigenous forests remain intact, and forests in this area are crucial to biodiversity and native animals in the area. The deforestation affecting Central and East Asia is additionally harmful in more than these ways; it is also causing global warming. Logging accounts for about one fifth of all greenhouse gas emissions. This forms a systematic loop in a way, because the rising of temperatures then damages trees and causes them to die, which then further releases greenhouse gasses and global temperature. Air pollution kills about 7 million people every year, that is almost one in eight deaths. Places such as China, Hong Kong, and Japan, children are growing up with asma only to be killed by pollution induced heart and lung disease when they are older. Just a couple years ago in China, one of the worst polluted places in both Asia and the world, 40% of the world's premature death were attributed to air pollution.
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