> Please don't use "Europe" when comparing unless it applies to all 50 countries.

As someone who lives in a smaller European country, I can empathize. At least on HN, it seems like both Europeans (in the regional sense) and non-Europeans are guilty of this. However, while the parent claim may or may not be accurate in this case, I think the use of "Europe" can reasonably be interpreted as referring to the region in aggregate, just as North America or Oceania might be used.

My larger problem with the parent and GP comments is that they both make specific claims about "Europe" that aren't self-evident without any citations.

That seems a bit unfair since I was replying to someone that was making positive generalization about Europe.

Also, at the risk of moving the goalpost, having more trees than some arbitrary point in time isn't particularly reassuring. In central Europe, at least, 1925 would have been near an all-time low. The deforestation in central and northern Europe has been going on for millennia (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-18646-7)

Not to forget, trees used in paper store a lot of CO2, CO2 that is not released until said paper is ultimately burned. Which takes a while.

As wth everything, hyper industrialisation didn't do anything good. Sustainability used to be a hallmark of forestry. If we could just go back to that, and adopt it to maximize CO2 capture, it would be great. As would be going back to pre-industrial animal farming, better for the animals, better for the environment, better for the farmers and better meat.