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Comment by wtdata | Hacker News Reader

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

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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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