Between 500 and 1350, forests went from covering 80 percent of western and central Europe to covering half of that. Historians estimate that the forests of France were reduced from being thirty million hectares (about seventy-four million acres) to thirteen million (about thirty-two million acres) between 800 and 1300. Forests covered 70 percent of Germany in the year 900 but just 25 percent by 1900.22 And yet developed nations, particularly European ones, which grew wealthy thanks to deforestation and fossil fuels, are seeking to prevent Brazil and other tropical nations, including the Congo,
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