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Comment by senorjazz | Hacker News Reader

The same for Europe, although it was all cut down longer ago. The same of parts of the US.

The trees and land are a resource for these countries with vast numbers living in poverty. Telling them they cannot use these resources just isn't going to work.

If we non-Amazon countries want them to stop deforestation, we have to dig into our pockets. But we we don't. Ecuador tried it, requesting funds for not drilling for oil. They were offered next to nothing, so the drilling is going ahead, which means roads and roads mean deforestation.

I speak for someone from the UK. We cut down our forests for the industrial revolution. We reached and passed peak oil in the north sea for the (supposed) benefit of the country as a whole. How can we expect other countries to not use (abuse) their resources the same?

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> 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.

> Another perspective would be that they attempted to blackmail

How is it blackmail if it's a viable option they are going ahead with? Are you suggesting they are/were bluffing?

> home to uncontacted Waorani people

It is unconscionable we do not contact these people and bring them basics like modern medicine and education about proper hygiene. Basically they are animals in a zoo for our pleasure atm.

> It is unconscionable we do not contact these people and bring them basics like modern medicine and education about proper hygiene.

And destroy their culture and way of living in the process? Why? We don't have any right to force on them what you think is 'better' for them. That's happened so often in history, it's time that people finally realize that they do way more harm than good by forcing their views and 'standards' on others.

> 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...

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.

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.

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.

I remember my cousin pointing this out to me when we were in Idaho—the new trees are smaller, knottier, and all-around not as 'normal' looking, but they sure grow fast.

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.

"[..]the few evil people in those countries who look at its natural resources and see dollars instead."

The evil people are not only from those countries.

Those are the biggest mining companies: http://www.mining-technology.com/features/featuremining-gian...

Just an extract:

"Anglo American's wholly owned Minas-Rio iron ore project in Brazil and Sishen mine, part of its Kumba iron ore operations in South Africa are among the world's 11 biggest iron ore mines."

> 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.

Tell that to the ivory poachers. All a ban accomplishes is turning an industry that has demand underground, meaning they can now operate off the books, illegally, not pay proper wages, operate completely without regulation and if they run into competition, instead of working side one another they often kill each other.

Prohibition has literally never worked for literally anything.

>Prohibition has literally never worked for literally anything.

But, sanctions have.

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.

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