Brazil to open 860K acres of protected Amazon rainforest to logging, mining, etc

> Ecuador tried it, requesting funds for not drilling for oil.

Another perspective would be that they attempted to blackmail the rest of the world by threatening to open Yasuni National Park to drilling, a World Heritage Site, home to uncontacted Waorani people, and one of the last locations with large land mammals left in the western Amazon.

I spent a lot of time in the park and in Block 16, an area to the west that was opened to drilling in the 1990s. There are no easy solutions, just a lot of gray, corruption, and suffering. The whole no drilling thing was a complete charade. They were already building the roads.

There was some clojure(IIRC) talk on youtube where the speaker took a picture of old english forest. It was random, dense and beautiful, like a painting. Then a picture of post industrialization forest, where trees where replanted aligned to help processing, it felt like a loss.

This argument never really made sense to me. Sure Europe/USA did tremendous environmental damage to get where we are, but better alternatives were invented in the process. That knowledge is available to developing nations. They don't need to repeat the same mistakes as others.

Yes, trees and land are a resource. But unfortunately, it brings wealth for too little people because unlike in UK we aren't using these resources to fuel industries here in Brazil. In fact, our local industry is currently shrinking and we are just exporting natural resources and importing products created by foreign industries. I don't know any country which became rich just with farming and wood. It would be possible only in a country with a lot of land and little population. Otherwise, you can't build a lot of GPD per capita with just these activities.

> The same of parts of the US.

Actually, there are more forests in North America than there were 100 years ago. Caveat: there are fewer old-growth forests and the tree diversity is not as great.

https://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/wilderness-resources/stori...

The model where rich countries keeping paying to poor countries in exchange of not cutting down their own forests is unworkable. If people there are looking for genuine progress then they have to build schools, bridges, cities and so on. You won't be able to say that hey you guys live like how you used 1000 years ago and here's few dollars.

However the bigger issue I think are the few evil people in those countries who look at its natural resources and see dollars instead. They just want to log, mine as much as they can, export it all out and basically make free money. Their business strategy is simple: buy off government personals, acquire natural resources that was supposed to belong to people and sell it off to other countries in the world. You are not going to be able to prevent this either.

One effective way to discourage this is put a worldwide ban of exported wood from Amazon. If major countries can come together on this then this could actually work.

I could not agree more. How dare we tell others what to do in their sovereign territory when we have never acquiesced and would never acquiesce to the same.

The "this time its different now that the whole planet is in danger" brigade really annoy the hell out of me. Say what you will about people who would plunder the earth for its resources, at least they're nominally honest about their dealings. But those who would tell the so-called less-developed what to do with their resources …

We've industrialized but they're meant to what? Survive on hand-outs? They're meant to skip the industrialization phase and leave their resources untapped. That's super fair. Given that the industrialized nations have caused the damage then why don't we roll out safe nuclear power and electric cars or something instead of trying to artificially hobble others who share our planet. Of course if you suggest that to the "save the rain-forest" brigade they'll start whining about how unsafe nuclear power is when all the time pollution from coal/oil/gas-powered stations and internal combustion vehicles ruins the lives of how many more each year?

I live in a country that used to be covered in dense medieval oak forests. Practically all gone now. How about we replant ours instead of telling others to stop cutting down their.

Exactly this. You can't sit in a land of plenty and ask hungry people to not use their most valuable land for personal gain.

Yes, we all share one globe. Yes it would be for the benefit of the globe to protect these regions. But most decisions like this are economic decisions, and the economics support slash and burn.

"If the people of Brazil value the rainforest at all, it is a lower priority than whatever they are dealing with in their day to day life."

You assume Brazilians are represented by their government. In theory, yes. In theory.

There's barely any old growth forest left to cut in the US.

I think that is true for wood/ pulp for paper, but agriculture is a big component. In the US, we really didn't have to wipe out forests to make room for agriculture.

also, although unpopular, its easy to bull doze over our forests, do our thing, and let it grow back.

where i grew up every 15~ years tractors and such go through wiping out many of the trees and reshaping the landscape, but it doesnt take very long before you never would know they were there.

that doesn't apply as well in many parts of the Amazon

Native Americans practiced setting fires as a forest management technique for thousands of years and the forests of the Pacific Northwest survived. It took less than a hundred years of logging by the USA following the Indian Wars of the 19th century to wipe all of those forests out.

The Caledonian Forest of Scotland was destroyed in roughly the same amount of time during the 19th century by the English following the Highland Clearances.

Obviously there are economic and political forms of organization that do not result in massive environmental destruction. Saying that "it's not capitalism because the USSR did it too" when clearly the example of the current situation in Brazil is capitalist is disingenuous.

You've been downvoted but your answer is spot-on.

I wish someone knowledgeable about forestry could explain why replanting is not done. What are the costs and subtleties, beside political friction I mean. Or maybe it's only political.

That's not the reason. Here in Bavaria most of the forests are in the hand of the state and there are growing forests since roughly 100 years.

More likely a driving force is the internalization of agriculture. All the cows and pigs raised in Europe are fed with south-American soy.

I agree with you, but air has no borders.

And I'm not arguing for war.