A Dam-Building Boom Is Transforming the Brazilian Amazon
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But no, instead we've got first world countries which give us always very shitty trade deals speaking about what we do with our own land, when they complete wrecked theirs. And if you check their energy solutions, it's always coal, or they all got cars, or anything. They've got their own problems, which are potentially even worse for the environment but they keep looking at a poor country, just as they did in the past, to perhaps steal gold, slave people, make money... They want us to follow their crappy and shitty agenda when they can't even get decent politicians, they get shitty ones as we do, they go on middle-east and make fucking wars everytime, killing millions. But no, we can't do whatever the fuck we want with our forests.
The sad part is that much of Brazil has succumbed to environmentalists from abroad. If those who complain about it would go to Brazil and try to live a middle-class life there with a job in shitty conditions going through a crisis every decade, always feeling things aren't stable enough to make a living. Perhaps living in a big city, taking 2-3 hours to go to work, then 2-3 hours to go back, I've bet that they wouldn't care too much about Amazon or whatever countries from abroad says... but they don't, they come from privileged backgrounds, sometimes they say that they know poverty, sure, everybody can look at a magazine, but did they ever feel it like they do in a country like Brazil?
my 2 cents, thumbs down as much as you feel like.
ps: I completely get the point of environmentalists, but this will never work out while people are still hungry. Perhaps you should ask for your country to help Brazil to reach its enlightenment and then have enough cash and businesses to be willing to protect its own forest. But no, you just make the situation worse.
My point isn't only with forests, but also with everything else. And I'm not being populist, or nationalist, left-wing or right-wing... just being real. Once I've moved abroad and stopped living in Brazil, I started to understand how other countries and cultures, from the first world, are pretty much immune to this kind of debate, or are the ones setting up standards on how everybody else should behave and do things.
And how this feeds poverty and confusion... and in the very end, as counter-intuitive as it seems, damages the environment.
We need no fucking agendas to follow, if they aren't of our interest, it's not like we've got 50k+ dollars an year per capita in a very egalitarian society to start caring about this, at least to the degree that those who doesn't have any fucking forests anymore, cares. In the Capitalist world we live in today, managing a country it's about picking up the right battles, there isn't an infinite overflow of money coming in so we can both educate 200mi of brazilians, feed them, give them the good life and in the end, still be 100% green.
which is not what is happening in Brazil. There are enormous opportunities for energy generation far away from the Amazon. In fact, a lot of foreigners don't know but the vast majority of Brazilian population lives nowhere near the Amazon. Creating an energy grid in the forest is a great way to waste energy due to traveling long distances in transition cables.
Like where?
The Amazon is 50% of the area of Brazil, and the only place where most large falls aren't harvested yet. Besides, most of the Brazilian rivers are there by number, and an even bigger share of them by volume.
There aren't enough articles criticizing Brazilian solar farms. That's probably because they are expensive. As they get cheap enough to turn a profit, you can be sure the articles will appear.
Don't forget about the ability of our political class to divert money.
More simply modern economy gains little from farm land as there exists such an over supply of food that farming tends to be break even or be a net economic loss.
That said, people will always be interested in extracting value from pubic lands at the public expense.
In Michigan we have a few little pockets of real old growth forest and national forests the size of a small country.
Destroying the world's most biodiverse ecosystem (seriously, read some statistics on number of species in the Amazon -- it's mind boggling) to grow the GDP by 10% is not just incredibly selfish (supposedly exchanging a global treasure for national gain). It's not even the best for our own interests; it's myopic, greedy, inhumane. Even the actual direct economic value of scientific research with industrial applications such as biomimicry research, plants with applications in medicine and food industry, etc. would completely dwarf a one time 10% gain. And then there's the hardly measurable value of lost knowledge and natural richness.
Don't be the child exclaiming "But my brother was greedy too!". This is our treasure, and our responsibility.
If greed ends up winning and most of the forest is destroyed, Brazil will find itself without a national treasure, and likely be economically worse off for it.
Some of the worlds major economic success stories are countries with few natural resources, Taiwan being a common example. At the same time, there are a number of countries heavily exploiting their resources, yet seemingly without alleviating their poverty.
There are plenty of places trying to re-forest, which also suggests that you might get stuck with the long term cost of trying to undo the damage done.
But policies and agendas, imposed from countries abroad, changes the mindset of everybody very fast.
Funny thing. 8%. completely comparable to the amount of land in Brazil is owned by the government, or is regulated and so on.
It's no wonder that regulation and enforcement has improved things lately(in Brazil!), but why the fuck do we need to follow agendas from abroad, just like I've said before, getting shitty trade deals? :-)
But, I can see your point.
The thing we never discuss here in Brazil is that foreign countries are the natural enemy of a nation, not its own people, like most middle/upper class thinks here.
A lot of the deforestation in Brazil is not small farmers cutting down a few hectares to scrape out a living, but industrial agro-business. These corporations are not about lifting the poor out of poverty but the rich getting richer.
Deforestation of the Amazon by all Amazonian countries is a real problem.
Western countries dictating to impoverished countries not to use the resources the same as their countries did is a mark of hypocrisy, however there is an argument to be made about the sustainable use of the forests as opposed to clear cutting and making way for mega soy / palm oil / cattle plantations.
There are also global repercussions for the devastation of the Amazon (as well as serious local problems: drought, desertification, loss of lands which must not be put aside for a quick $ for the few.
The world should be concerned and be involved in the process. However, I am not hopeful after Correa (Ecuador) tried and failed to initialize a new plan where funding is generated to not exploit oil reserves in bio-diverse areas.
For example, they might buy the land, or encourage the local government to classify it as a park.
They don't try strong arm tactics because they aren't effective in the long run.
Poor Brazilians, today, eat better than middle class Americans. Basic conditions have been improving considerably since the center-left took power. The neo-liberal right has swung back into power recently and we've been seeing things worsen in lockstep with their re-ascension.
Don't listen to this guy. Building these dams does nothing to improve general welfare. It doesn't make energy cheaper. Energy prices continue to rise dramatically. Furthermore BNDES is funding these projects at 6% NEGATIVE interest. 20bi at 6% is a lot of money. How are these projects supposed to help anyone other than BNP, Alcoa, Camargo Corrêa, and Odebrecht??
>If those who complain about it would go to Brazil and try to live a middle-class life there with a job in shitty conditions going through a crisis every decade, always feeling things aren't stable enough to make a living.
I am a US citizen, who has been living in Brazil continuously for 10 years. I've made 200 a month and 10000 a month. Right now I live just fine with a wife and kid on R$2000-3000 per month, in Sao Paulo.
Brazil is not impoverished like it was in the nineties. The main problem today financial irresponsibility. Decades of inflation and an endemic infatuation with American Consumer Culture has bred a system of financial priorities that run contrary to what is considered correct in many other countries.
>Perhaps living in a big city, taking 2-3 hours to go to work, then 2-3 hours to go back, I've bet that they wouldn't care too much about Amazon
I have spent 6-7 hours in daily commute. It did not affect my concern for corruption, unjust appropriation of traditional lands, or deforestation. I continued caring. This is a question of education and contact with nature, not money.
Brazilian has an unfortunate hertiage of institutionalized domination. It was one of the most effective mass-misinformation apparatii in the world.
I am appalled by the behavior of the traditional ruling elite and their shameless pandering to Europe and the US. They have been selling off water, oil, land, and mineral rights to multinational interests for pennies on the dollar for centuries. To this day it continues as the default business practice.
If you are an American living in Brazil, you didn't see too much of how it's to to be born there in a very poor family suffering all kinds of abuse as in less developed regions you barely got light or proper education. I didn't live exactly like this, but I too come from a poor background and could see this happening across the street. Many teachers on those regions barely got any education and it's hard to get smart people to move to those regions. There isn't much opportunity there. Things has been improving over time, but we need more than a century to get where other more developed regions(such as Sao Paulo) is right now.
Actually, it's so problematic that for instance, a big percentage of my circle, the one who had opportunities and took them, moved abroad, as soon as they could(like I did). The ones who end up staying in the country are the ones in need, that can't leave because they are stuck there, and the riches, which need to stay there because of their businesses. You do learn about brain drain there at school and it's a common topic, but given all the other big problems, it's not often talked about in the media.
Of course that there is a lot of people who enjoy living there, I did a lot too, but it's only possible if you don't get caught with the amount of shit happening right now. I don't have much intentions of coming back right now, but would definitely would like to help it once I'm in a certain life stage I can afford moving there to change things, so like many other Brazilians who move abroad.
BTW, it isn't the ruling elite that give out the good stuff there for free to other countries, it's actually our inability to get good trade deals, just because we are the bitches of the first-world, we take care of our forests to them, meanwhile we get nothing. My point is that if they want to pay cents for our bananas, sure, we still sell them, but we don't give a single fuck for whatever they say and instead focus on developing our country.
That being sa(i)d, does not justify bad behaviour from both parts and a mutual understanding can only arise when both sides have a dialogue to work together on these issues.
If you want people not to burn forests to grow cattle then you need to understand why there's economical sense on that and mitigate the issue on it's root instead of trying to enforce a law that's very difficult to apply. Same thing for energy requirements of a country vs exploitation of it's environment where it's so much easier to point a finger than to propose and help on a solution. Case in point: http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2013/09/02/216878935/ecuad...
> President Correa said scrapping the program was one of the hardest decisions of his presidency. "The real dilemma is this," he said in a televised address last week. "Do we protect 100 percent of the Yasuní and have no resources to meet the urgent needs of our people, or do we save 99 percent of it and have $18 billion to fight poverty?"
I also looked for a translation of a great speech form Cristovam Buarque for when there was pressure to internationalize the Amazon, it's worth the read: http://www.diaplous.org/amazo.htm
> If the Amazon Region, from a humanist΄s point of view, has to be internationalized, then we should internationalize the oil reserves of the entire the world as well. Oil is just as important to the well being of humanity as the Amazon Region for our future. Nevertheless, the owners of oil reserves feel it is in their right to increase or decrease oil production and to raise or lower the price. The rich of the world, feel they have the right to burn this valuable possession of humanity. Similarly, the financial capital of the wealthy nations should be internationalized. If the Amazon Region is a natural reserve for every human being, then it could not be burned down by the decision of a landowner or a country. To burn down the Amazon Region is so tragic, as the unemployment provoked by the arbitrary decisions of world wide speculators. We cannot permit that the world΄s financial reserves serve to burn down entire nations according to the whims of speculacion.