
Map Shows Millions of Acres of Lost Amazon Rainforest - infodocket
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2019/04/three-million-acres-brazil-rainforest-lost/
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magicfractal
The only solution is a massive embargo on products that are causing
deforestation (eg Ipe hardwood, soy, cattle) until there’s a system of
tracking where these are coming from in whole supply chain with international
verification.

The future of the amazon forest cannot depend on governments such as
Bolsonaro’s that are clearly anti-science and anti-environment.

~~~
tengbretson
This would likely result in the opposite of the desired effect.

History has shown that the only reliable way to make a people more
environmentally-conscious is to make enough of them wealthy enough to have the
free time/energy/sentimentality to care.

~~~
TaylorAlexander
Aren’t wealthy people more responsible for consumption of the beef that is
being grown on clear cut forest land?

~~~
tengbretson
If you look inside the refrigerators of 100 wealthy people and 100 poor
people, in which group would you expect see more packaging with the following
phrases:

    
    
        "Organic",
    
        "Sustainably Raised",
    
        "Cage Free",
    
        "Dolphin Safe"?

~~~
p1necone
But the poor people just wont have any meat in their refrigerators.

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rixrax
In the articles such as this, I would always want to see a paragraph about
basics of what is carbon dioxide, about its increase in atmosphere during last
hundred years or so and of what many scientists suggest this increase will
entail in changing global climate. And how deforestation at this scale greatly
contributes to the release of co2 to the atmosphere.

Many among us will of course know all this and more, but for a large swaths of
people, these fundamentals are lost in all the hand waving about climate
change making it just a bit easier to not pay attention. Repetition.
Repetition.

------
tepidandroid
Until the locals have an alternative means of income, I don't foresee a
solution to this problem.

It's all too easy for those in affluent countries to criticize the
recklessness and irresponsibility of developing nations, but people such as
cattle farmers (who are responsible for much of the land clearing that's going
on) don't have the luxury of worrying about the world environment 50 years
from now. As far as they are concerned, that's a far away and abstract threat
vs the more immediate concern of how they are going to feed their families.

Maybe the advent of new technologies like Beyond Meat, or new advances in
construction materials (that could disincentive the use of unsustainable types
of lumber in a meaningful way) will be the kinds of things paving the way
forward for rainforest preservation.

~~~
ricardobeat
Don't be fooled, this is 99% the work of big corporations, and not individual
farmers or loggers (if such a thing still exists). Most of the workers will
have moved to the area _because_ of the jobs.

~~~
tepidandroid
This may be true, unfortunately I couldn't find any hard statistics about who
is doing the land clearing and cattle ranching. I'd be curious to read about
it.

I found a line in a wikipedia article [1] that says "In 1995 nearly half, 48%,
of the deforestation in Brazil was attributed to poorer farmers clearing lots
under 125 acres (0.51 km2) in size" though that was 24 years ago so that
figure has probably changed.

There is a pretty in-depth study on Amazon deforestation here [2] that says:

>In Amazonia as a whole, large (officially defined in Brazilian Amazonia as >
1000 ha) and medium-sized (101–1000 ha) actors have traditionally predominated
in deforestation (Fearnside, 1993, 2008b); but the relative importance of
small (≤ 100 ha) farmers has been increasing, as indicated by the decreasing
average size of new clearings (Rosa, Souza, & Ewers, 2012)

They also seem to lack hard numbers on who is doing the deforesting:

>Two key questions affecting the relationship of population and deforestation
are (a) who are the actors, such as ranchers versus small farmers, and (b)
what population and land use is being replaced. If the situation is one of
small farmers replacing “unoccupied” forest, then a greater population (of
small farmers) translates into more deforestation. If it is ranchers who are
replacing “unoccupied” forest, then the same relationship applies, although
the number of people will be lower and the amount of deforestation per capita
will be much greater. If the situation is one of ranchers replacing small
farmers, then the human population will decrease and the rate of deforestation
per capita will increase, resulting in a negative relationship between
population change and deforestation rate.

They summarize with:

>It is not enough to prohibit deforestation and punish violations—alternatives
must be offered for supporting the small farmers who sustain themselves by
clearing forest, for both subsistence and commercial production.

[1][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deforestation_in_Brazil#Cattle...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deforestation_in_Brazil#Cattle_ranching_and_infrastructure)

[2][https://oxfordre.com/environmentalscience/view/10.1093/acref...](https://oxfordre.com/environmentalscience/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780199389414.001.0001/acrefore-9780199389414-e-102)

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baxtr
Reasons for this: "Ranching, mining, soy production". The world eating more
meat is probably a huge driver for this demand. We will literally eat the
planet to its death.

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skilled
It's fine. We can just replant a single specie of a tree and pretend the world
has more trees than ever! HN adores using this analogy when it comes to the
stupidity of mankind.

~~~
ourmandave
I think the Tree of Heaven (Ailanthus altissima) qualifies.

Those damn things grow 6' a year in adverse conditions. They also spread seeds
like mad.

And produce toxins that suppress surround plant germination so they're perfect
for the One-Tree-To-Save-Us-All plan.

Except Minnesota labeled them a noxious weed but we can charge them an air tax
if they don't get on-board.

~~~
pvaldes
I hope that this is sarcasm. Ailanthus is one of the most dangerous species of
trees in the planet. There is not excuse, this is known since decades.

If the goal is to destroy nature in the stupidest way possible, Ailanthus is
the weapon of choice.

~~~
lwansbrough
Care to elaborate on the dangers?

~~~
pvaldes
> Care to elaborate on the dangers?

Can cause allergies

Is toxic for domestic animals

Their wood is useless, too soft and brittle to be usable. Being toxic, its
sawdust is a biological hazard in carpentry.

Is bad for biodiversity. Virtually unerradicable when enters in a forest.
Grows in dense thicks that compete and displace native plants. If chopped
regrows much faster and multiplies aggresively.

Is toxic for other plants. Drips its own herbicide from the leaves, killing
all other tree seedlings around.

Therefore is toxic for crops also.

Is a huge economic disaster. Damages foundations, streets, railways, sidewalks
and water channels.

Is bad for cultural inheritance. A nightmare for conservation of hystorical
buildings. Must be removed routinely from the roofs (unless you want 3m high
trees growing trough the roof of your 800 years Cathedral in three years). One
single female tree can produce around 100.000 seedlings each year that fly
with the wind.

Has caused more than 5 millions of Euro of damages in just one of the Deustch
landers, including 1,5 millions Euro just by allergies. And has been naively
introducted in 30 countries.

Oh, and the male flower stinks.

~~~
deogeo
If it spreads so quickly and efficiently, how come it hasn't overwhelmed most
ecosystems yet?

~~~
pvaldes
In just 250 years has conquered most European countries, appears in all USA
states, can be found in India, Australia, New Zealand, Mexico, Colombia and
Argentina.

Looks like a perfect example of world conquest to me.

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GreeniFi
There is no basic agreement as to what causes climate change; bear with me...

\- Climate scientists think it’s CO2e emissions

\- Environmentalists think it’s deforestation

\- Conservation biologists think it’s over population

\- Neoclassical economists think its failure to internalise externalities into
the price signal

\- Marxist economists think it’s the pathology of capitalism

\- Sociologists thinks it’s because people are poor/because people are rich
depending on their mood

\- Development economists think it’s because societies are not rich enough to
invest in environment as a luxury good

\- Bankers think it’s because environmental management does not produce
investment opportunities

\- Policy makers think it’s bad policy

\- Game theorists think it’s prisoner’s dilemma

\- Evolutionary psychologists think it’s our evolutionary mindset

\- Technology dystopians think it’s bad technology

\- Technological utopians tell us not to worry

\- The Daily Mail thinks it’s immigrants

\- Donald Trump thinks it’s fake news

\- And Jordan Peterson thinks it’s cultural Marxism

In a sense they’re all right within a certain context (except the climate
scientists who have the easiest diagnosis and Peterson who is definitely not
right on climate change).

But increasingly climate change is one of those issues that we throw our welt
anschaung and tunnel vision at.

To paraphrase: “we don’t see climate change as it is, we see it as we are”.

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ajnin
In other news, Brazil's minister of the environment, Ricardo Salles, recently
criticized the Brazilian constitution for imposing too many obligations, and
the previous left-wing governments for having slowed down the economic
development of the country through bureaucratic and ideological means. He also
said that his job was more about undoing that doing.

It looks like the current Brazilian government is not going to try to prevent
deforestation, to the contrary.

(source in French: [https://www.lemonde.fr/planete/article/2019/05/02/au-
bresil-...](https://www.lemonde.fr/planete/article/2019/05/02/au-bresil-la-
mise-en-place-d-une-politique-de-destruction-de-l-
environnement_5457231_3244.html), original interview in Portuguese but I can't
understand it unfortunately:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzzIbojpIuE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzzIbojpIuE))

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0n0n0m0uz
What’s the consensus on that assertion from The Matrix in which the human race
is actually a virus on the planet, slowly consuming its resources and sucking
the life out of it and AI is actually going to save the planet from the virus?
Other species do seem to have no issue living sustainably within the
environment. Humans on the other hand......

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IngvarLynn
According to the same report of Global Forest Watch :
[https://gfw2-data.s3.amazonaws.com/country-
pages/country_sta...](https://gfw2-data.s3.amazonaws.com/country-
pages/country_stats/download/global.xlsx) Russia comes as close second for
years 2001-2018 and a strong leader for last years.

------
user17843
There are many deserted regions around the world.

Desertification in those areas is increasing, especially North Africa, and
Central Asia.

The focus of environmentalists on the Rainforest is not productive. Solutions
need to be future-oriented, and not directed towards restricting economic
growth.

In other words, it is of primary importance for enivornmental organizations to
create a positive vision of a greened planet, with a systematic forestation
program for Africa and Central Asia, to create a prosperous environment and
give Africans and Asians a future.

This vision is central to the
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Marshall_Plan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Marshall_Plan)
as well as
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holistic_management_(agricultu...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holistic_management_\(agriculture\))

Meanwhile, let Brazil have their wealth and prosperity with cutting a couple
of their trees, they have too many anyway.

~~~
feikname
You do realize it's not just about the trees, right? You exterminate an
uncountable amount of species of fauna and flora too alongside the way,
including ones that could very well have been used for medicinal research.

~~~
user17843
Some comments are just tongue-in-cheek.

As long as environmentalists only complain about the bad things, instead of
actually building from a positive vision, nothing will happen.

For example, why is Greenpeace et al. suppressing the knowledge from Allan
Savory?

~~~
GreeniFi
Because Allan Savory’s holistic grazing system is context dependent. And Allan
Savory is also held in suspicion because of his elephant culling policy -
later much regretted - from the 80s.

~~~
user17843
hmm ok, he says everyone ignores him and he gets no money from any NG0, and
that his system could regreen the entire planet.

~~~
GreeniFi
In the real world, when you have a good idea, you prove it out at a basic
level and then try and show it works in other contexts. In the environmental
sector you bitch and gripe about no-one listening to you!

