Waldsterben: the 1980s German panic with modern parallels
On the 'ecological Holocaust' that gripped the German public but had little basis in fact.
Dear Reader,
Anyone looking for historical parallels to the events of the past year could do worse than reading up on the mass panic that gripped Germany in the 1980s over the allegedly irreversible extinction of large swathes of its forests.
The obsession with Waldsterben was ignited by a couple of scientists who saw themselves as prophets whose role it …