A century of reforestation helped keep the eastern US cool (2024)

I recall a factoid from growing up in southern New England: that Connecticut had more forestland in my youth than it had a hundred years earlier, because so much agricultural land had been abandoned to nature. Presumably farmers wanted soil without an annual stone harvest.

It was largely wool, as I understand it. Those rocky hills are terrible for row crops, but fine for pasture, so you stack up some rocks into fences and fill them with sheep.

Then people stop wearing wool, and here we are.