Brazilian Amazon lost 18 trees per second in 2021

https://www.batimes.com.ar/news/latin-america/brazilian-amazon-lost-18-trees-per-second-in-2021.phtml

by carride • 4 years ago

243 201 4 years ago

batimes.com.ar

29athrowaway• 4 years ago

The documentary "Surviving Progress" has a part that covers the situation in the Amazon. This is an extract of it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jeA7u5paQQ

hu32• 4 years ago

If we really care about what happens in Brazil we should offer economically viable solutions rather than pointing fingers and accusing them of doing something that we did in the past for a long time.

amelius• 4 years ago

Politicians don't care about long-term problems. This is what we should fix.

goatcode2• 4 years ago

This of course applies to all environmental issues, both foreign and domestic. There would be a lot more partnership and a lot less animosity if we universally adhered to your notion. We might actually get something done!

panick21_• 4 years ago

There is a good talk by an economist who basically said he was all exited to learn about optimal solution to those problems and then he went to a meeting where farmer were basically fighting people who wanted to reintroduce wolf. And he realized nobody cared how the optimal solution.

Since then he works on trying to come up with solution that doesn't lead to the two groups trying to lynch each other.

2OEH8eoCRo0• 4 years ago

Agree. Imagine outsiders telling you that half your country is untouchable. I wonder if some future carbon credit system could pay them for the carbon sequestration that the Brazilian Amazon provides.

Ekaros5• 4 years ago

And those countries really aren't making their own cities much much much denser and replanting trees in freed up space...

ratww28• 4 years ago

Imagine outsiders telling you that half your country is untouchable

As a Brazilian, I would be completely ok with that. We can handle people telling us those things.

mschuster914• 4 years ago

There are only four economically viable solutions:

1) Boycott or put drastic tariffs on Brazilian meat and soy, aka the products that are made out of the areas which were former rainforest. The problem: China won't give a fuck about Western sanction and Bolsonaro and his goons will happily sell to them (aided by the fact that China still has issues with pig fever in their domestic meat production).

2) Pay off Bolsonaro and his goons. That stops the destruction, but provides a fascist dictatorship with even more money.

3) Hope for Lula to win in the elections in October. The problem: Bolsonaro may manipulate the election to stay in power, either in front (by having Lula arrested or preventing him from campaigning, public debates etc.) or afterwards (outright vote manipulation). Or he might legitimately win despite his current lag in the polls, which makes the situation even worse than it already is.

4) Have the CIA do what they have a lot of experience in: get rid of Bolsonaro and his goons, either by abducting him and hold him to trial in the US similar to drug barons or by permanently eliminating him. That would be the cleanest way and send a signal to other criminal destroyers of nature, but without a whole lot of effort the resulting power vacuum may destabilize the region even more than it already is.

collegeburner• 4 years ago

"regime change is bad except when it's for a reason i like"

Sharlin2• 4 years ago

Trying to effect a regime change of a G20 member nation with a population of over 200 million? Yeah, can’t see how that could backfire at all…

Smithalicious• 4 years ago

I really don't think the CIA should be the global judge, jury and executioner. I don't think the US assassinating the leader of one of the world's largest countries to "send a signal" is conductive to world peace.

ratww28• 4 years ago

As someone born in Brazil, I'm tired of this condescending bullshit.

There are several economically viable solutions, but Brazilian government should be interested in pursuing them, rather than only pursuing things that only benefits the current friends of the government (such as deforestation).

US/EU/etc forcing Brazil to get its shit together would be BETTER for the population. We don't need the deforestation to progress. Quite the opposite.

If Brazil were to wage a war on another country, would it be fine just because Europe/US also did it in the past?

roflc0ptic• 4 years ago

This is also "sins of the father" style reasoning. The fact that other people did a thing in the past doesn't mean I agree or support it. I have ancestors who fought with the confederacy; does this mean I shouldn't be opposed to human trafficking in 2022? I think that would be an unreasonable jump to make.

hu32• 4 years ago

There are several economically viable solutions...

Such as? The sheer scale of what Brazil feeds to the rest of the world would hardly accommodate for "several economically viable solutions".

2020 paper about the issue: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2003270117

You can't simply tell a third-world country to halt a major part of their economy.

Sporktacular13• 4 years ago

Why should we also not point fingers? Deforestation fell dramatically under Lula while inequality fell and the economy grew quickly.

What "we" did in the past means environmental protection should be subsidised by the west, but our history doesn't let Brazil's government off the hook.

orbital223• 4 years ago

Both deforestation and inequality fall when the economy does better and rise in times of economic crisis.

The economic improvement "under" Lula was mostly due to international factors (the boon in the price of commodities) which is why it collapsed under Dilma (Lula's protegé).

Instead of using the economic surplus that fell into his lap to invest in infrastructure and industrialization, Lula used it to fund the largest corruption scheme in our history.

andrekandre2• 4 years ago

  > we should offer economically viable solutions rather than pointing fingers

while i agree with you, i cant think of anything off the top of my head...any ideas?

ratww28• 4 years ago

The current government is heavily favouring the export of primary and finite resources.

If people from other countries really want Brazilian economy to get off the ground, they should want Brazil to export processed and manufactured goods, or other sectors.

Treating Brazil like a big farm is doing neither Brazil nor the environment any favours.

The "We should't criticise Brazil, let them do what we also did before" is not only hypocritical, it's also counter-intuitive and very self-serving!

softcactus• 4 years ago

Economically we should think of it like this:

Our early industrialization contributed massively to global warming. It allowed us to become extremely wealthy, but also we incurred a "carbon debt" to the rest of the planet, since our atmosphere is a shared resource.

Now that others are trying to industrialize, we should repay that "carbon debt" to offset the cost of allowing them to industrialize cleanly, since we had the benefit early on of not having to worry about our impact on the environment. The gains that we made early on were at everyone's expense.

Sporktacular13• 4 years ago

There is definitely a debt, but primary industries aren't what they were when Europe and North America were deforesting. To use that an a justification now is a weak argument when there are alternatives that would add more value to the economy.

ErikVandeWater2• 4 years ago

They have economically viable solutions. They're just not politically viable because the current system is designed for the profit of wealthy cartels.

niahmiah• 4 years ago

Unless you live there, there is nothing you can do about it. Nothing to hack, no news.

thatguy0900• 4 years ago

Even if you live there, there is probably not that much to do about it. Too much money involved

spillguard• 4 years ago

I'm not sure I agree with this point. What if this news article is the spark that inspires someone to hack together a solution for awareness of the issue? Or maybe create an alternative for some of the imports that the Amazon is being cut down to create? This issue may be happening in Brazil, but it affects everyone (as the forest is a major carbon sink) and can definitely be affected by others, given time.

zerop• 4 years ago

As consumers of Wooden furniture and so much new housing construction happening around the work, we all are to be blamed too. We need to invent alternate to wooden furniture.

smileysteve• 4 years ago

Bamboo, Hemp, and post consumer paper /plastic/fiberglass composite.

mschuster914• 4 years ago

The majority of the Brazilian rainforest isn't even being razed for furniture wood. It's simply burned down to provide for one season of feeding cows for meat or to plant soy to feed the cows.

Then it's gone. Forever.

lvass3• 4 years ago

Forever

No. In fact, evidence suggests most of the rainforest was in fact laid by humans. It's artificially mostly made of trees with edible produce like açaí and brazil nut.

makerofspoons• 4 years ago

Logging is actually only a tiny fraction of why the Amazon is being cleared: https://www.internetgeography.net/what-are-the-causes-of-def...

It's mostly being used for agriculture.

Sharlin2• 4 years ago

Timber is a red herring. Beef is the real problem.

vixen99• 4 years ago

So if it isn't plastic made from fossil fuels, what do you suggest?

Apparently the global human mass excluding humans themselves who comprise 0.01% of the global biomass but including our constructions in concrete, asphalt, aggregates, bricks, plastic & glass exceeded the global biomass back in 2020. The same report claims that this anthropogenic mass doubles every 20 years. I wonder what the thermal capacity of all this is let alone other manifest concerns.

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-020-3010-5

pastor_bob• 4 years ago

Most American wooden furniture is Domestic hardwood

frozenlettuce• 4 years ago

I'm Brazilian and I have a blast watching Property Brothers. "Oh, and I placed brazilian hardwood for the whole living room floor" - that is fancy in Canada, but here I would be arrested if I did that. Guess that I should lower my head even more for not being self-hating enough.

is_true4• 4 years ago

Actually wooden furniture is a great way to sequester carbon

cute_boi4• 4 years ago

Well, western countries also have some role in such destruction if we look deeply. Brazil cut amazon for animal farming and wealthy people & countries are the ones who import beef. Countries like China, the US, and the EU are major importers of Beef. Maybe these news articles also blame them?

Brazil isn't a developed country and many people live under the belt of poverty. So, what are they supposed to do? In addition, corruption has made their life miserable. This is such a hard problem to solve.

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/617492/beef-and-veal-exp...

Sporktacular13• 4 years ago

This is economy vs. environment dichotomy is just lazy. "So, what are they supposed to do?" Not destroy a forest which belongs to every Brazilian to further enrich elite ranchers, agribusinesses and mining firms. This is the corruption you are talking about.

It's not a hard problem - we know good governance is the solution, as it has been in the past. The incompetence and corruption of the current government are costing Brazil far more than the opportunity cost of not exploiting the forest. Doing so is such an inefficient solution, providing temporary gains for a few while leading to enormous hidden costs for literally everyone in the future.

So sure, there should be import tariffs or bans on Brazilian beef, even sanctions on loggers, miners and ranchers etc. but the next significant step is to get this government out.

fdsafdsfdsa4• 4 years ago

What is morally and ethically worse - eating an animal fed and raised domestically, or eating soy-laiden "plant-based" foods that were grown on recently-raized rainforest several thousand miles away?

It's our demand for goods that is causing this.

kzrdude• 4 years ago

Many of the domestically raised animals still eat imported soybeans.

fdsafdsfdsa4• 4 years ago

How many of the animals that are

"Domestically FED and raised"

cute_boi4• 4 years ago

Most soybeans are used as animal fed. Also, the feeding animal 10KG to get 1KG looks rather wasteful? Lastly, you missed the methane pollution, water usage, ethics etc..

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feed_conversion_ratio

fdsafdsfdsa4• 4 years ago

I'm fully aware of that, which is why I said "domestically FED and raised".

Also, the feeding animal 10KG to get 1KG looks rather wasteful?

Depends heavily on what animal product you are producing. Obviously we won't be eating beef all the time. It also depends on what kind of farmland you have available, and what uses those crops have.

Where I am (Wales, UK), the combination of the farmer' lobby and the "Welsh culture and heritage" lobby has meant that largely unprofitable sheep farming has been subsidised, and what should be productive wooded hillside makes lamb that no-one wants. I'm not saying that raising animals is always the best use of land.

tambourine_man• 4 years ago

Its president is committed in destroying it.

This meeting between Bolsonaro and Al Gore seems like a comedy sketch:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=CPpH7FRFcY0&t=65

specialp3• 4 years ago

The United States once had one of the largest forests on Earth. The Eastern Forest covered almost everywhere east of the Mississippi. 2,560,000 km2 of forest. Now it is largely gone. Replaced with farmland and sprawl. So it is hard to criticize. Even areas that are now heavily forested like Vermont were clear cut almost entirely by the turn of the century.

The Amazon should be preserved, but to do that the world is going to have to pay. You can't tell a country you can't progress like the USA it is hypocritical.

EGreg2• 4 years ago

Why do governments not start an international reforestation / ecological fund and pay some of their GDP into it so that it would make economic sense for Brazil, Australia and others to preserve their forests, kelp, reefs etc. These carbon credit half measures are pitiful.

Western governments pay part of their GDP for NATO, but defending against ecological collapse might be higher priority.

Governments tax citizens by force all the time. If it’s going to be used for anything, it should FIRST AND FOREMOST be used to coordinate large scale activity to mitigate negative externalities. And there’s no bigger one than the ecosystem collapse we are starting to see around us.

(Printing more money btw will only accerate consumption. There is very little thought to sustainability in most human economic systems.)

coffeeblack3• 4 years ago

With my idealists hat on: that would be great. Plus, it would suddenly make economic sense to build desalination plants and pump water into deserts and plant trees there.

With my realist hat on: that money will disappear as quickly as dodgy ngo can write empty “project proposals”. Trees will be planted, press fotos made, and trees will die. 70 years of “development aid”.

andrekandre2• 4 years ago

  > Why do governments not start an international reforestation / ecological fund and pay some of their GDP into it

they are busy pouring their gdp into competing with one another...unfortunately,our current economic system is based on endless growth and competition instead of equity and cooperation; i doubt anything will happen until its too late...

ratww28• 4 years ago

So it is hard to criticize. Even areas that are now heavily forested like Vermont were clear cut almost entirely by the turn of the century.

As someone born in Brazil, I don't see why it's hard. Please criticise away. My country should be learning from the mistakes of others, not repeating them in order to favour some higher political caste.

To quote flaviojuvenal below, "Brazil had no trouble to grow in 90s and 2000s while reducing Amazon deforestation.". https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32152630

lvass3• 4 years ago

mistakes

Yeah, that's a very hard sell, when your country is in such a shameful state, your economy is hanging by a thread that's agriculture, and without it your currency would be so messed up you'd be unlikely to be able to pay for the device you're typing that on. When you pledge for your own country that's suffering from hunger to reduce agriculture, you're part of the problem.

is_true4• 4 years ago

Think of it this way:

The countries pointing fingers at Brazil all did the same to become more developed and to make their population richer, they just want to stop Brazil from doing the same so they can keep the prices of commodities they sell higher.

They cheated but now don't want you to do the same in order to keep other countries in check, I mean, Europe is burning more and more coal, they are just a bunch of hypocrites.

Fun fact: That "newspaper*" that published the article is from Argentina, which is destroying the "Chaco" region as we speak and burning large areas of wetlands to increase the area for growing cattle, a market in which it's competing with Brazil.

Even thought the article is from another source, the BA Times belong to a company aligned with the Argentinian government which supports Lula in Brazil.

rglullis6• 4 years ago

The point is that every rich country first became rich, then started worrying about the environment.

It is hypocritical from rich countries to ask Brazil to stop deforestation if that means halting its economic development. If the rich countries really believe that preserving the environment is more important than the economy, then they need to either (a) pay underdeveloped countries to preserve their forests or (b) sacrifice their own economy and spend their own resources to re-grow their forest land. Ideally both.

mistrial9• 4 years ago

two wrongs do not make a "right"

specialp3• 4 years ago

It doesn't and I am not advocating cutting down all the forests. But it is very easy to have had already done it, reaped the benefits of being an agricultural/economic powerhouse and then tell a developing country that was not good. Is the USA now reversing that mistake by turning farmland and sprawling suburbs back to forest? No. It could be done. It is just that will cost something to do. It is easier to tell someone else to not cut down their forest. That does not cost anything.

coffeeblack3• 4 years ago

Same goes for Europe.

We love to point the finger at Brazil and other developing countries, while profiting for centuries from deforestation of our own territory.

Maybe we should simply plant 18 new trees per second in the West?

Ekaros5• 4 years ago

Yes. Use eminent domain to crawl back the suburbia. Pay people what is the value of newly forested land. Then provide them some living place few square meters is proven to be enough by examples in East Asia.

throwaway6734• 4 years ago

The modern situation is different though. All those trees were used to bootstrap the current level of technological progress that Brazil doesn't need to do.

Ideally wealthier countries would purchase/subsidize these areas so they don't need to be logged

hiidrew• 4 years ago

Thanks for sharing, wasn't aware. The timelapse here is quite evident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forests_of_the_United_States#D...

dataflow2• 4 years ago

The majority of deforestation took place prior to 1910, says Wikipedia. We didn't know nearly as much back then about the problems it would cause. So I'm not sure it's hard to criticize this when seeing it in 2022.

melling• 4 years ago

So, now that we know should we replace some portion of the trees?

specialp3• 4 years ago

The USA could easily decide they would like to restore 50% of the forest by reclaiming farmland and exurbs and planting back trees. In 50 years it could be a large wild forest. Perhaps not old growth like before. So what is stopping this? It would cost a huge amount of money and drive food costs up dramatically. So even though it was not really as appreciated then to keep forests, it still is empty talk because nobody will pay to reverse those decisions as benefits are being reaped from it. So yes the USA is still not in a position to criticize without doing anything themselves or paying to preserve the Brazilian forests.

alimbada• 4 years ago

You are looking at this issue one-dimensionally. It is very easy to criticise given that we now know what the impacts of deforestation are a lot better than we did a century or three ago.

frozencell• 4 years ago

Optimizing profit since 1800. Didn't Napoleon sold Louisiana because of the consequences of Anglo-German bankers speculation on European economy?

pfdietz2• 4 years ago

The eastern US forests cover 1.55 million km^2. So, no, it is not "largely gone". Granted, a considerable fraction of this is regenerated after being clear cut.

coding123• 4 years ago

You absolutely can and we have been doing so since, probably the 1970s. I think this hypocriticalness should continue. The world is FULL of hypocrtical shit and it doesn't stop of from trying to do what is right.

flaviojuvenal• 4 years ago

Note this is probably a false dilemma. According to Brazilian federal police, the recent deforestation surge is caused by illegal logging, not agriculture or cattle raising. Source in Portuguese: https://www.cnnbrasil.com.br/nacional/pf-grilagem-e-madeira-...

Brazil had no trouble to grow in 90s and 2000s while reducing Amazon deforestation.

ratww28• 4 years ago

That's a very important post.

Brazil had no trouble to grow in 90s and 2000s while reducing Amazon deforestation.

Thanks for putting it into words in a way I couldn't.

vitorbaptistaa2• 4 years ago

Ilegal logging is the first step. Take down the valuable trees, burn the remaining, and finally start raising cattle.

ErikVandeWater2• 4 years ago

I'm pretty sure most of the damage was done before people realized the significance of deforestation.

We certainly now know the impact of deforestation, and that it affects the entire planet.

beeforpork• 4 years ago

Killing the Amazon is a crime. Nothing done in the US or anywhere else changes that, regardless of whether that was a crime, too.

It is also not hypocritical unless you personally cut down a tree, or unless you believe in the collective responsibility of nations. I don't think 'the Brazialians' are responsible for killing the Amazon -- it's probably a minority of people and we shouldn't care which nation they belong too. This is a serious global problem, and it accidentally happens in some country. Neither collective blame nor collective shame will help. This problem must be criticised.

ajot2• 4 years ago

Well, crimes should not go unpunished, and if we can, revert the wrongdoing.

What are US or Europe citizens, NGOs and governments doing to restate their forests to, at least, their pre-industrial magnitude? Recover your environments before lecturing and chastising us third world humans.

squarefoot• 4 years ago

It all depends on when it happened. We evolved as a species and what was perceived as normal way less than 100 years ago would be considered outrageous by today's standards. As an example, if you take 10 highly successful Hollywood movies from the 1950s, chances are that in 7 of them a woman is forced into kissing the male lead; do it today and your career is over. And we're talking about people, not trees. Back then we didn't know what damage we were bringing to the environment, now we do, so I think it's perfectly logical to call Bolsonaro a corrupt criminal while closing an eye on similar events from over a century ago.

helloworld11• 4 years ago

The Eastern Forest has fragmented a lot since it first started being settled, but don't exaggerate for dramatic effect. Vast tracts of it remain or have regrown and many of the eastern US states are thickly, heavily forested in ways that would make, say for example a European gaze in wonder at actually seeing them. Even many urban Americans simply have no idea just how many and huge the remaining or regrown eastern forest sections of the U.S are. They don't see them and their limited sight of woodland largely consists of scattered fragments around their cities, where obviously, the least forest would be visible. Also worth noting, they continue to grow back each year. You can largely thank industrialized, centralizad agriculture and urbanization for that.

01acheru2• 4 years ago

If those living in high income countries don't support poorer countries to keep their forests healthy complaining about them being chopped is hypocritical.

I live in Italy, the Po Valley I live in was a marshland with lots of centenarian trees. Since Roman times marshes have been drought and most of the forests were chopped to make room for agriculture (and to build Venice, which sits on millions and millions of trees).

I recently went to Portugal, where most forests have been chopped and substituted with huge eucalyptus or cork oak monocultures.

The same goes for France, Germany, etc.

We destroyed our environment so we could have progress. Now we understand that the environment is precious and must be taken care of, so it's up to us to pay other countries to preserve their environment. This money will eventually be used to buy "progress" and end on our pockets once again so it's not even a bad deal economically speaking, it just takes the will (which is lacking almost anywhere).

emadabdulrahim• 4 years ago

I'm from one of the so called poor countries and let me tell you, we aren't that poor. We just have much much higher levels of corruption and static generational wealth. Add to that extremely selfish and poor planning from politicians at the top.

01acheru2• 4 years ago

Static generational wealth, corruption, selfishness and poor planning are incredibly common in high income countries too.

My father is Brazilian and I lived there for almost ten years, from mid 90s to mid 00s, and indeed Brazil as a country is not that poor: if you could split the GDP equally amongst the population. Since this is not the case in reality there are millions and millions well below the poverty line and this is what makes a country a poor country, a country where a lot of people are poor.

When you have a lot of poor people many things go out of control, and also taking advantage of poor people is a piece of cake for those at the top of the money pyramid.

Deforestation in Brazil will not stop unless farmers and locals that live around the Amazon (or other green areas such as the Pantanal or the now almost destroyed Mata Atlântica) get paid to not touch it, help it regrow and pursue different agricultural styles or different crops. The Brazilian government doesn't have the money to do that even if corruption went to zero and private entities will not act since in most cases they are the ones fomenting deforestation.

The only hope for South American forests to thrive is foreign intervention: local governments won't act, local corporations won't act and most of the local population is simply too poor to care.

linuxftw2• 4 years ago

They're just doing what other continents did hundreds or thousands of years ago. If you want to save the forests, make them economically more valuable than converting them into other uses.

If there's 100M iphones in the world that retail for around $1000 each, that's $100B dollars. We could have invested that money into building some kind of park that welcomes visitors. No, instead we chose as a society to take pretty photos for instagram for fake internet points.

Sporktacular13• 4 years ago

They have a value that greater than just their economic value!

The environment created us, we created economics. It's an artificial concept that will never capture the true value of nature.

linuxftw2• 4 years ago

They have a value that greater than just their economic value!

Then investing at the economic value would be profitable, and people should clearly do this.

Ekaros5• 4 years ago

Maybe countries criticising Brazil should raise down their suburbs and plants even more trees there.

Sporktacular13• 4 years ago

The 500 IQ comment in its full glory.

Gravyness2• 4 years ago

Is the person you commented ugly too, or do you have an argument better than calling someone an imbecile?

slowhand09• 4 years ago

Interesting comments below. Just some food for thought.

Fertilized, less land is required to grow equivalent quantities of crops.

Petroleum products, especially natural gas is a raw material as well as fuel for nitrogen fertilizer production.

Higher petroleum prices mean higher fertilizer prices. Higher fertilizer prices mean higher food prices.

Scarcity increases prices. Worldwide food production is down for many reasons: weather, war, disease, lack of workers, inflation, and cost to fertilize. Expect prices to rise, significantly more than they have.

pfdietz2• 4 years ago

Or, PV will continue to crash in price, electrolytic hydrogen will get cheaper than SMR hydrogen, and fertilizer will remain cheap. The big concern with fertilizer is not so much energy use, btw, it's N2O emission.

hestefisk2• 4 years ago

First step is to get rid of their climate change-denying madman President.

Aerroon3• 4 years ago

What are you suggesting here? That western countries should assassinate an elected world leader? Or that western countries should influence the next democratic elections?

If you don't see an issue here, then imagine if you were talking about the USA. Should other countries "get rid of" the US president if they don't like his policies?

hestefisk2• 4 years ago

Of course it shouldn’t be an assassination :) it should be via democratic means similar to Trump in 2020…

hsavit1• 4 years ago

If humanity cares about its existence in the long term then we simply cannot clear cut the amazon.

Ekaros5• 4 years ago

If we really cared about climate we would ban everything wasteful. Like useless internet services and companies. Do we need social media or media in general to survive?

stonepresto• 4 years ago

There seem to be two lines of thinking:

1. Who are we (US, Canada, China - heavily developed nations) to criticize?

2. Bolsonaro is bad mkay

I think the root of the problem in both situations is people in power both in the government and out of it who do not seek sustainability and often are susceptible to corruption or influence. In both situations, the profits did not go to your average human.

daniel-cussen2• 4 years ago

People blame Brazil but I've met people outside Brazil who are like "Oh! Bonds!" "What kinds of bonds?" "High returns!" "Can't be government bonds then. Company bonds?" "Milk companies in Brazil!" Oh, cutting down the Amazon. Two parents I knew, this was like 18 years ago. It's been an emergency since the 1980's, a continual emergency. It's still an emergency.

And I think they got fucked anyway, both of them. They thought it was a good investment because it was such a shitty thing to do to something so beautiful, thought the secret to luxury was cowardice (and it is), but guess what the promise of shitty person heaven where all the shitty people are so shitty to everything except you because you're so special so much in common with them, say the same things, have the same ideas, know the same people, have the same passwords what a coincidence, bump into each other in the strangest places, twins, so that means...uh...nah you know what, it's a better lesson learned the hard way. Getting fucked is critical to learning how not to get fucked. Walkthroughs are uh...well police departments have websites, there's books on the subject. And you can't con an honest John. Well there's a limit to that, you also have to be informed, you need both. And entertain moral dilemmas, moral experiments, or like play-act with friends, that will help out a lot. And good alternatives.

Course the hard part is finding an alternative to that if you are conned. One way is to choose your second best choice. Not your first choice. Second choice. So then if the second choice starts getting shitty, stops whispering when you come around the bend, hey oh shit, guess the second choice school, say we're talking about Harvard 1 Yale 2, so Yale, really was second rank! I thought the 2 meant it was just as good, just another numeral from 1 to 10, like different days of the month! Wow, shit, wouldn't want to have to transfer to Harvard, that would suck, that was my first choice! Say I couldn't make it at Yale, damn!

daniel-cussen2• 4 years ago

I can barely follow this myself. Gotta shorten down those long sentences. It comes from Spanish, I also speak perfect Spanish, there the sentences are much longer and have different "ondulaciones de frase".

nonrandomstring• 4 years ago

Those saying this is an "unavoidable" catastrophe and inevitable consequence of economics are being selective about history.

We've taken strong conservation and violent prevention measures before against ecological practices of sovereign nation states that are detrimental to our lives.

Perhaps the only 'successful' part of the US "war on drugs" was coca eradication [1], including the use of biological warfare (pests), herbicides and crop burning. We probably would have napalmed the Afghan poppy fields, but in the end the Taliban did it for us.

The ivory trade is almost extinguished, let's be honest, not because we stemmed demand but because we were prepared to shoot the poachers. It's no secret the SAS operated "free-fire" in those parts of Africa, also training locals on "man hunting".

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coca_eradication

skilled• 4 years ago

It's not unheard of that in Africa many groups/tribes form together to fight back against poachers. Is there anything like this happening in the Amazon rainforest?

And if no, then why not? Do people think a politician with his fancy suit is going to step his foot into the swamp to try and meet halfway?

These assholes are literally destroying the world and the human race is none the wiser....

I sometimes wonder what would happen if rather than trying to evolve on a technological level, humanity evolved to protect and harmonize this world.

Holy shit it's not even funny the level of ignorance that permeates topics of destroying the Earth.

zach_garwood• 4 years ago

There have been fights between Amazonian tribes and landowners. The tribes are relocated (or killed).

dormento2• 4 years ago

We had deaths reported just this week, by Sonia Guajajara who represents one of the most prominent indigenous people's association and is running in the next elections.

The thing is, in the end, its often poacher/miners shooting at unarmed people, often in the middle of the jungle, far away from the effective jurisdiction of whoever else would care. And the very insitutions that could oversee and act to prevent violence have been sistematically dismantled by the current fascist-in-chief, either by removing key people or by being financially strangled.

But hey, at least now you won't lose your license for speeding and buying ammo is easier than ever.

vitorbaptistaa2• 4 years ago

Of course. The local tribes are fighting the invaders since 1500.

guilherme-puida2• 4 years ago

It's not unheard of that in Africa many groups/tribes form together to fight back against poachers. Is there anything like this happening in the Amazon rainforest?

There is. People just get killed and everything is swept under the rug.

harnomik• 4 years ago

That's 18 a second too much..

theropost• 4 years ago

So, lets fund the planting of 20+ trees per second to help counter-balance it. Someone can plant around 200 trees per day with basic tools (lower end - some can do upward of 1000) but lets go with the lower number.

24 hours per day X 60 minutes X 60 seconds X 20 trees per second = 1,728,000 trees per day = 8640 people required

This certainly seems feasible - we just need the economics to justify it.

rodolphoarruda• 4 years ago

Wood extraction in the Amazon is a crime. It's aggravated crime if done in indigenous lands. It's aggravated even more if done for illegal mining activities. The state police (civil and military) from the various Brazilian states that compose the Amazon forest has the legal obligation to investigate and arrest criminals within the region. The problem is the region is just too big. But let's assume that somehow all those criminals lose their ability to profit on the product of their crimes altogether, within a 5 to 10 years time span, all the vegetation would be naturally restored. The Amazon forest is unstoppable.

I live in the state of São Paulo, far from the Amazon forest, and the vegetation here requires a lot of work to be tamed. If you leave an empty allotment 2 or 3 months without any care, you will get knee height grass and all sorts of "exotic" plants coming out of the ground. The Amazon is orders of magnitude more aggressive than this one.

So once you stop the illegal activity, the forest will come back. The problem is not the forest, but the people -- indigenous or not -- affected by the illegal activities. Recently we saw headlines about the murder of two people in the region, an activist and a journalist. So many others have died when they crossed paths with criminals. This is a humanitarian problem before an ecological problem.

Sporktacular13• 4 years ago

The problem is that the current government doesn't WANT to investigate and arrest criminals. They cut funding, merged environmental protection and indigenous affairs into the agricultural ministry. This is well documented.

The forest is on the edge of becoming a net carbon producer for the first time. This doesn't simply reverse when it regrows from some saplings. Its capacity to create clouds to replenish water is already heavily compromised. When that stops this simply doesn't reverse. When you burn sections without first clearing it of its animal populations they perish, destroying the ecosystems that often needs animals to help germinate new trees. The mercury used for illegal gold mining doesn't just go out of the river and back into the bottle. Billions of animals die from these actions and the results will be irreversible.

To call the Amazon unstoppable, to say that the humans that are dying is the real problem, smacks of the ignorance that has led us to this point.

ElectricalUnion4• 4 years ago

The forest is on the edge of becoming a net carbon producer for the first time.

Forests in general are stable - _carbon neutral_, unless disturbed. Oceans are where most of the Earth oxygen is converted from CO₂.

The real reason why Brazil needs to save the Amazon, for South America, is water supply - rain forest induced water evaporation is main source of water for the Río de la Plata basin - where several of the biggest and developed cities in the South America are.

ElectricalUnion4• 4 years ago

But let's assume that somehow all those criminals lose their ability to profit on the product of their crimes altogether, within a 5 to 10 years time span, all the vegetation would be naturally restored. The Amazon forest is unstoppable.

Recent research points out that the Amazon (and in fact most Earth's supposedly wild) rainforest is a elaborate example of centuries of forest bio-engineering, and it doesn't simply recover if abandoned; decaying into desert instead. Further bio-engineering would be required to repair it to it's "original" state.

slothtrop• 4 years ago

China is not going to curb its demand for Brazilian products on this basis. The EU hypothetically could, but try to sell price increases to the public.

m1117• 4 years ago

It's about the same rate w/ how many americans die from firearms

acraabrazil• 4 years ago

In the Amazon Region of Brazil

- We integrate advanced agroforestry restoration systems

- Provide people living here with greater self-sufficiency and economic prosperity

https://acraabrazil.org/about

9dev5• 4 years ago

Maybe, and this is a big maybe, we should think about whether some countries have a disproportionately large access to, or responsibility for, resources relevant to all of humanity.

Specifically, I would like to question if Brazil can or even should be trusted to handle the Amazon forest in a responsible manner. Over the past decades, objectively, it has shown that the country, or maybe primarily its government, doesn't: The forest is continuously decimated, ever faster, with full and open support by the government itself.

Considering that the Amazon is of broader concern than just Brazil's jurisdiction alone, would it -- and I'd include other, similar areas around the globe here too -- make sense to move administration to a more responsible body, the UN for example (not specifically the UN, but you get the idea)?

This may sound offensive to you for all kinds of reasons, especially if you're Brazilian, and I sincerely apologise for that. But please consider that maybe the challenges ahead of humanity as a whole require new solutions, new ways to think about who "owns" land?

krainboltgreene• 4 years ago

Ah, the imperialist approach.

9dev5• 4 years ago

No, it's different. I'm not suggesting "the west" taking control of the Amazon, but humanity as a whole. The other option is hoping for the best or trusting a corrupt government to do the right thing for the rest of the globe. It hasn't worked well yet.

kennywinker5• 4 years ago

What that sounds a lot like to my ears is “white man’s burden”. I.e. we the developed world have a responsibility to control and parent the developing world because they can’t do it themselves.

I’m no expert in what’s happening on the ground in the amazon, but the story used to be clearing amazon to raise cattle to sell to mcdonalds. Idk if that’s still the case, but i’d be willing to bet that the thing driving deforestation is resource extraction for global markets.

It’s temping to try to police brazil’s extraction, but the far less paternalistic and colonial thing to do would be to police our own demand for what they’re cutting down the rainforest to provide.

9dev5• 4 years ago

What that sounds a lot like to my ears is “white man’s burden”. I.e. we the developed world have a responsibility to control and parent the developing world because they can’t do it themselves.

The difference here being that it's not about taking control of the developing world, but saving resources humanity as a whole requires to keep earth habitable for us - this affects everyone, poor or rich. It's just that Brazil, right now, has a very unfortunate combination of a corrupt government, very valuable resources, and responsibility for the integrity of the forest.

It’s temping to try to police brazil’s extraction, but the far less paternalistic and colonial thing to do would be to police our own demand for what they’re cutting down the rainforest to provide.

That isn't mutually exclusive. At the very least, there should be sanctions put into place until Brazil starts actually trying to prevent extraction, not actively supporting it. But I could still see a global organization responsible for keeping core areas intact.

Aerroon3• 4 years ago

And how many millions of people are you willing to kill for this? Because you're essentially suggesting that the rest of the world should invade and occupy the sovereign territory of a nation with 200 million people.

There is a snowball's chance in hell that anybody would willingly agree to this. Any kind of scheme you can come up with is guaranteed to cause more issues that will harm Brazilians.

Other people telling you how to live your life is a recipe for disaster. One that we've seen over and over again.

ElectricalUnion4• 4 years ago

Maybe, and this is a big maybe, we should think about whether some countries have a disproportionately large access to, or responsibility for, resources relevant to all of humanity.

The problem is that this logic extends to most very large countries in the world.

Are you gonna also appropriate Russia, Canada, China and United States of America land? Who is gonna police all of that? Does the rest of humanity have the collective firepower to stop, say, "just China" and "just the United States of America" from ruining the environment? I don't think this is feasible.

Mobius01• 4 years ago

It is not the responsibility if the Brazilian people to give up their sovereignty in order to save the world, particularly after other nations have burned their way to the top of the development scale. You seem to be oblivious to reality.

Pmop• 4 years ago

I live close and know people who livelihoods depends on that forest. Believe it or not, it's not the farmers or loggers fault. Their livelihoods depends on that forest. Farmers depend on the rain cycle. Loggers depend on the forest staying healthy, so new trees grow so they can keep their business going. Illegal logging does happen but it isn't their fault exclusively either.

The root cause is illegal occupation and settlement of land. People invade other people's land, often federal land, they cut down all of the trees, they burn it down, so they can clear it to set up makeshift camps. They then split and sell the land. Once there are people living on it, it's pretty much a lost cause due to how loosely enforced private ownership of land is, specially federal land. Also, it's a lucrative business, and involves corruption in all levels. People affected by it, like loggers who lose their property and livelihoods can hardly do anything, since the invaders will often get violent and the State wont do anything.

anigbrowl3• 4 years ago

that seems like a situation where one should fight fire with fire.

spywaregorilla4• 4 years ago

Just to be clear, you're advocating for setting fire to people's homes?

Wertigoyr• 4 years ago

There are plenty of satellite picture showing deforestation without people living on it.

Any further sources?

guilherme-puida2• 4 years ago

I really want to see some sources to those claims.

Illegal farmers and loggers have no interest in preserving the forest. They can just completely destroy some area, then move around to another one and start it all over again. Even farmers don't want to spend too much time in the same place if they can help it, the soil in the Amazon isn't that good for farming after a few harvests.

renewiltord• 4 years ago

Europe is still deforesting. Uplift all Brazilians till they have the same standard of living or sit it out.

agumonkey• 4 years ago

on the other hand there's a video of a guy planting one tree per minute here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbA-hoIuHM4

gonational• 4 years ago

In the 2.7 million square miles of rain forest, 114 miles[1] were lost.

That's 0.004% - huge.

1. Assuming 1 tree per 100 square feet.

Gravyness2• 4 years ago

What about 2020, and 2019? I'm more interested in the trend than in the absolute number.

impeplague• 4 years ago

Recent US elections made the people almost freak out because of the suspected Russia influence. In every developing country, not only Brazil, this is the norm and not the exception.

Bolsonaro's election received heavy support from the international (and national) finance sector. They projected a higher gain under his government. And most of these people are from developed countries.

People from rich country may not be really aware that the commodities come from somwere. The recent Russian war sure made this more clear. Developing countries are locked in that role.

If a country like Brazil, Russia or China reduces significantly its exports, everyone living costs rise. This is obviously true for high technology goods, but while you can survive with no smartphone, you can't with no food and energy.

I'm talking about this most obvious stuff to make this point: rich countries exports their poverty. USA still has a firm hand on the entire continent, and will not let it go, Brazil included.

As someone from Brazil, I really hope BRICS+ continues to grow. While the G7 can easily suffocate small dissidents, a entire block can not be. Sanctions against Russia stared to make European governments fall, what happens if you sanction half the world population?

I'm reserving judgment in the Russia's war in this post, becase most of these implications don't depends on who is right.

Brazilian Amazon lost 18 trees per second in 2021

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