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Comment by amelius | Hacker News Reader

Yeah, but is it fair?

Instead of not buying from them, how about paying them for protecting the forest? That sounds more reasonable to me.

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If a business behaves in a way you don't agree with it's perfectly reasonable to cease purchasing from them. Of course this move punishes soy growers who aren't responsible and turns them into collateral damage, but a move like this isn't meant to punish the soy growers as much as it is the Brazilian government (who are much better able to control the situation than a foreign power) for allowing the behavior to continue.

It's more complicated than that. You can't stop a poor country from using their natural resources by not doing business with them.

You can't stop it absolutely, but you can in effect by taking away the economic reason that it occurs. The primary reason the deforestation is happening is to open up land to produce agricultural products for export (primarily soy and cattle). If the importing countries cease to import the product, Brazil loses the economic reason to produce more (and as much) and open up more land via deforestation.

Will you also pay Russia and Canada in proportion to the forest that they are not cutting? Because if you start paying for every tree not cut you will get bankrupt very soon and suddenly you will see a lot of tree that could have been cut everywhere.

Wellyou shoul be paying them for the oxygen you consume. It's an externality and if it's not moetised it won't get protected within a market capitalist framework.

My impression is that the current administration in Brazil really does not care at all about deforestation, and hasn't been the best at respecting contracts, so refusing to buy is more likely to work.

My understanding is that it's the current administration that's the one demanding payment from the world in return for forgoing the economic growth that might be realized by deforestation.

Considering that the Amazon is pretty essential for the global environment, this strikes me as an aggressively reasonable approach.

My understanding is that deforestation cannot be justified by potential economic growth.

And my understanding is that the entire world would be a better place if we could all hold hands and sing kumbaya.

These are fanciful ideals, but where the rubber meets the road, there are real tradeoffs with real consequences. The best we can do is make sure that we apply incentives to ensure that people do the "right" thing.

I think boycotts are fair, and protests, and labor strikes. These are the only thing that have ever moved companies to change their behavior.

Even tax hikes and stricter regulations they seem to skirt.

There's some who'd say boycotts are bad, stop cancel culture...except when THEY are doing the canceling. Look at the political right in America... STOP CANCEL CULTURE...but you can cancel Liz Cheney and Mitt Romney, we don't want them anymore...

I mean elections are all about "Cancel Culture" your vote can change who's elected canceling the person who was there before.

If you think Walmart is evil and Target is less evil you can vote with your dollars and only shop at Costco which is less evil than both of those... or a worker co-op like Winco (my favorite, but closest one is 4 hours away).

I'd be all for it if this actually worked. I'm just not convinced that their government would be willing to cooperate (and able) to enfore such the rules against farmers trying to clear the woodland.

Very relevant and entertaining article from Matt Levine: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-04-21/you-ca...

Why not about both?

How much do you pay someone to not do something? How many people get to pay? This doesn't work!

It does work. Besides, you don't need to pay people not to do things. Just punish them if they do. If I were to cut down my trees, I'd have to pay fines. If it weren't easier to slash and burn, they'd find ways to grow profitable crops in, or otherwise utilize, the existing forest.

Costa Rica changed its economy from fishing to tourism fairly effectively. Just have a conversation with a fisherman turned whale boat operator for some good lessons on that next time you're down there.

Pay no attention to the vast palm tree plantations that decimated the natural forest though. That's a side point.

Are there products from the amazonian rainforest that could be harvested in a sustainable way? We could buy those. I've seen some kind of "jungle peanut" for sale that purportedly only grows in dense forest - perhaps there are more items like this?

It also doesn’t work if some countries can capitalize on their natural resources, and others can’t. We also have something to gain from rainforest protection.

Would renting/purchasing the land itself be a possible approach? (perhaps a collateral held by a 3rd party could be involved?)

You set up an accounting framework just like carbon tax.

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