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Comment by omosubi | Hacker News Reader

Regardless of whether this particular article is fake news or not Western countries should join together and pay Brazil not to burn down the rainforest. Models show that reductions to the Amazon would lower rainfall in the western United states, a place with a growing population and already bad water usage problems nationalgeographic.com/environment/2018/11/how-cutting-the-amazon-forest-could-affect-weather

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Projects in this regard already exist, some of them were set up by ex-president Lula da Silva and European countries. In response, Bolsonaro has recently verbally attacked Germany and Norway, saying that Brazil doesn't need money from foreign countries to control the Amazon.

>Western countries should join together and pay Brazil not to burn down the rainforest

I'm sorry, but, WHAT?! I agree we should preserve the rainforest but why should the West pay? That's like asking my neighbors to pay me to not burn down my flat.

Up to you. Well, more like I own a park next door to your home and you don't want me to turn it into an office block. Well, if you want it to stay a park, you're going to have to pay.

To make it better, the destruction of America's old growth redwoods means you already built an apartment building on the park you owned and now you don't want me to do that with my park. Well, you're going to have to pay me for that.

We should ensure both positive and negative externalities are captured in the market.

You may be right, but being European, I fail to see how this responsibility falls on the shoulders of countries here from Ireland to the Ukraine. I mean, wages have stagnated here for the lower-mid class, basically we've never left the recession, what you're saying is a tough sell here.

Not saying we don't care, I'm saying we can't afford to care.

I mean, the West has been giving taxpayer money and aid to Africa for decades, to compensate for colonialism and it has mostly ended up in the hands of corrupt despots and warlords, ironically making life worse for some people there.

So giving more taxpayer money to other corrupt regimes is not something we should quickly jump to.

You chopped your forests down to industrialize. Now, the planet's coming to collect on its debt and your names are on the lien. Now's not a convincing time to tell someone else not to take on a loan of their own. Now's not a convincing time to tell someone else to pay down your debt.

Sure, but most gains from industrialization were sucked up by big corp shareholders and are stashed away in tax havens. How about we collect from there instead of average Joe working 2 jobs to make ends meet.

The MO of industrialization has always been corporate profits on environmental destruction while having taxpayers pay for the aftermath. Privatize the winnings, socialize the losses.

It's time to have corporations responsible for fixing the aftermath of their quarterly targets.

When did anyone suggest that to not be how governments might go about fundraising their payments to preserve the Amazon?

Our countries have a lot of forest. This eternal apologizing of the greatest culprits of ecological catastrophe (i.e. mostly non-Western countries), is the actual problem.

People following your ideology don't care about global warming, they care about blaming the West (the ones making an effort to clean things up) at every turn while giving a pass to the countries actually polluting the planet (just as long as they aren't westerners).

Are you kidding me? The US contributes as much carbon to the atmosphere as China while sustaining a third as much people. Making an effort to clean up, my ass.

Your facts are completely wrong.

China now produces more CO2 that all other 1st world countries together [1], while having increased their emissions by 300% in the last 30 years and are set to increase them a further 30% during the next 10. [2]

USA maintained their emissions during the past 30 years and are set to slightly reduce them in the next 10. [3]

EU reduced their emissions by 25% during the last 30 years, and are set to reduce them a further 20% during the next 10. [4]

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

[2] https://climateactiontracker.org/countries/china/

[3] https://climateactiontracker.org/countries/usa/

[4] https://climateactiontracker.org/countries/eu/

Whoops, out of date data for me. Yup, China is awful: 2x the emissions with 3x the people but each individual American is significantly worse. Individual Americans don’t get to blame Chinese people when all they’re doing is trying to catch up to American standards of living.

The best part is how easy it is to be carbon negative. I am, and lots of the people pointing fingers at China aren’t. So, take the beam out of your eye.

And this is not counting that what’s important is the area under the curve, not the present value.

Many countries in Europe, for example, have already destroyed majority of their forests. Not saying that destroying forests is good, quite the opposite, but unfortunately that's how it seems to go if you can't monetize the forests in some way and that's where western (and other) money could help.

>Many countries in Europe, for example, have already destroyed majority of their forests.

You have a source for that? Last I recall, countries like Finland have more trees now than ever before.

They replaced forest that were destroyed. Planting new forest is great,but not as great if we had the old forest were still there. Once you lose biodiversity, it is gone forever.

Around where I live, a good part of the village names refer to setting trees on fire.

This is a rain forest, Western countries don't have those, that's why it's special.

EU, USA, Canada, etc. have a lot of forest per country area, we actually took care of it or at least replanted what was destroyed centuries ago.

Canada has (temperate) rain forest on Vancouver Island. It is also under more or less constant threat of being cut down, some of it already has but a lot of it still standing. If you happen to be in the area it is more than worth taking a hike through Carmanah [1] for a real life Lothlorien/Middle Earth experience.

[1] http://www.env.gov.bc.ca/bcparks/explore/parkpgs/carmanah/

Not really, because your flat is on their property, they own that flat, you live there for free and they tell you in advance that it is going to happen in about 10 years so you have plenty of time to move your stuff.

If the Amazon is the earth's lung then that is a service Brazil provides which keeps it from monetizing it in other ways like hacking it to pieces and use it for whatever.

Welcome to the perverse logic of capitalism. And in that axiom space it is logical to pay them. I doubt, though, it would actually work because another part of that world is Gordon Gekkos like Bolsonaro will fuck you over with the rest of humanity the moment you turn your back to them.

I'm not saying I support the idea necessarily, but

> why should the West pay?

Because: 1. It needs the rainforests to exist and 2. It's very rich.

> asking my neighbors to pay me to not burn down my flat.

Which would also might make sense if: 1. You are deranged. 2. You tend to burn stuff. 3. My flat is next door to your flat. 4. I'm rich. 5. I can't reason with you about not burning your flat.

How about if Western countries simply stop doing business with you instead? Better yet, how about if Western countries take hold of that territory from you in order to properly manage it?

Why do you have this notion that Western Countries must be perpetually paying up to clean the mess non Western countries do?

Because the west are the people that are asking Brazil not to take advantage of one of its natural resources. Everyone else has had the luxury of exploiting their land and we'll suffer as a result if Brazil does as well.

So, you are saying that non-Western countries just don't care about destroying the ecology of our planet?

P.S. My country has been planting vast areas of forest since the 13th century for economic purposes. Not sure what you mean by "Everyone else has had the luxury of exploiting their land", since here (and in most of the EU) we have vast areas of forest and actually took care of them.

I never said non western countries don't care about the planet. My point is this: Brazil has a natural resource in the form of the Amazon. They can exploit this resource in 2 ways: either burn it down and use that land for agriculture/mining/whatever or ,because so many other countries are asking Brazil not to burn it down, ask others to pay for them to preserve it since the amazon affects so many people behind their borders. I prefer the second option

Sure, why doesn't your second option call for all countries to pay Brazil then? Instead of just western countries.

I can even accept that richer countries could pay somewhat more. But, still, there are a lot of non-western countries that are quite rich. So, why only western countries should pay?

You're right, using the term "western" was perhaps misguided, though countries closer to Brazil will almost certainly be more effected. Ideally everyone would help to conserve the rainforest, it's just that some countries have more to lose than others. I'd love to see china/Japan/Korea/etc to help pay for Brazil to conserve the amazon.

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