Humanity Has Flipped the Amazon Forest from Carbon Sink to Source
commondreams.org
commondreams.org
The jungle was noticeably cut down since I had last been there 7 months ago. What had been just a hiking trail to our camp had been widened to the size of a road by all the tree clearing. The trees are pretty thin and not the best wood. I hear they're mostly used for making charcoal.
Next to where I was staying is land owned by a wealthy foreigner in Lima. She bought it to maintain it as jungle. But "ownership" is a funny thing. People moved onto her land and set up a community. It's what locals call an invasión. They had the backing of a politician, so the cops did nothing. The rumor was she was beating them in court and some people were going to jail. At the same time, a bulldozer was coming in widening the trail to the invasión into a road.
The land there is more like settling the frontier than buying a parcel in a suburb. People don't respect a barbed wire fence, no trespassing sign and a piece of paper. They will generally respect you living on the land. Residents visibly establish their ownership. Even the smallest town will have a giant sign welcoming you. Houses sitting on just two acres will have a sign and name (usually fundo something) and maybe even their claimed property borders on it. You need to reside in your home, or someone else might be when you get back.
I'm sympathetic to the tree-clearing locals. You're living in poverty, there are some trees sitting over there you can cut and sell, but you're not supposed to. Why? Because a foreigner in a big city has a piece of paper? Because some countries that exploited their own resources and launched themselves into modernity say you can't do the same? I get why you'd buy a machete and walk off into the jungle, then buy a chainsaw once you can afford it.
At the same time, I'd rather they didn't do that. I used to feel guilt about visiting the jungle. The boards that make our hut were cut from somewhere. Maybe the best thing to do if you love nature is live downtown in a city and send money to a preservation charity. But I also see the value of people who are stewards of the land. You have to cut down an acre to build the community, but that lets you protect many more. So I plan to keep visiting and keep supporting.
Yeah, you pretty much summed it up. If you're some huge land owner but you're not actually using the land for anything useful, people will notice and they will occupy it.
In my country there are lots of these rich land owners. People whose lands stretch beyond the horizon. In many cases they don't even use it for anything. It's like unused memory that never gets garbage collected, a memory leak. Agrarian reform could redistribute this land but the powerful do not want to lose their domains. So people will just move into the land and start living there.
“If we all just conserve enough…”
Flying, for example, emits 2% of global emissions. That’s 100,000 flights a day, every day.
We’ve just spent over 2 decades generating at least 40% of our electricity with coal. The carbon footprint of that was incredible.
While we’ve been waiting for solar and wind to replace it…
You are worrying about subtracting 0.000000000001 from the 1,000,000,000,000,000,000
Telling people not to fly isn’t a solution
[update]
Anyway, I see my comment isn’t understood again. Enjoy another decade of incredible emissions.
I’m sure sooner or later people will finally get it.
Those windmills are still coming!!!
We simply cannot continue to wait for other, more emission-intensive actors, to act first.
https://www.worldometers.info/co2-emissions/co2-emissions-by...
I think we're doomed, mostly because too many people want to believe we can fix this without losing quality of life, and won't accept anything less than that.
Oh well.
It couldn't hurt. If people put more effort into reducing their carbon footprint and being mindful of the carbon externalities of their lifestyle they'd also probably vote for people and pay money to companies who seek to reduce the carbon footprint of industry and government too.
We have to care before anything will get done.
The hierarchy of the three R's is 1) reduce 2) re-use 3) recycle. That's for a reason. No need to manage consumption that never took place. Like the agile mantra, maximise the work not done.
There are several reasons why people focus on flying:
- 2% globally, but distributed very unequally over population
- much of flying can be prevented, most of it is elected (you can video conf that meeting or go on holiday locally, you can't not heat your house)
- flights are trending up, when we should be trending down (and are managing in other areas)Might this be solved with direct financial subsidies of the locals and/or other investment? What is the COL and population count there?
https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/report/cool-earth/#2-what-do...
This applies really to any resource though. Even your home could be taken away if the threat of punishment from a higher authority didn’t exist.
But at the same time, efficiencies of scale in many land-intensive industries cannot be realized without large areas being combined for a single purpose.
Hard circle to square.
Things like this:
Anyway, that thing on the link you posted is not a forest, and really not the Amazon.
I live in the upper Amazon in Peru and I believe the problem shouldn’t be justified by poverty - which is a consequence - but by wrong / missing education.
Private companies and governments push a narrative to exploit the land, promising quick money at the expenses of the forests and the future of the local communities. People are easy to deceive here, they really don’t know, they are busy with bigger daily problems (as violence and bullying).
Anecdote - My neighbor followed this idea with his chacra: he deforested 5 hectares and put all cacao. With the pesticides they had to put, the plants weakened soon and a plague affected the crop so bad, that after five years he lost all the plants. Now the land has been abandoned, and my friend is poorer than before. Chemical companies finally developed a new pesticide against that bug, and started selling again to everyone at cheap prices. Sadly he has not the money to pay some “peones” to help restoring the cacao plants.
On the other side, when there’s a forst to clear everyone from the village goes to slash and burn, destroy, kill and catch any living thing in between.
Sometimes I think this violent attitude against the forest started during with the colonial times, were the imposed religion thought the people that nature is meant to be submitted and exploited by the mankind.
Sometimes I think the violent attitude towards the planet… you picked the wrong scale.
I’d rather the technologically rich and educated take a sober look at their educated destruction of the planet rather than think they have THE philosophy to teach indigenous peoples.
This is just getting absurd. Rich countries concern themselves with the fiscal cost versus the real cost. But let’s ignore that discourse to ponder the poor education of the natives, making them oblivious savages.
I don’t really know about “civilized society” these days. Seems just as entitled to living in an epistemology that’s completely decoupled from reality, and believing it’s their universal duty to boast globally how unhinged they are. Sounds pretty colonial still. Missionary like. Literally less violent to each other today, but just as driven to bring on the end times through mindless consumption. Witness me; like and subscribe!
Unfortunately there is data that shows old trees are better carbon consumers than young trees which is surprising. I expected the carbon required for physical growth would be much higher than needed what is needed for its basal(?) metabolic rate once it is mature. But I missed the fact that most older trees are still growing.
https://www.pacificforest.org/ee-old-trees-store-more-carbon...
They’ve been systematically reducing funding, relaxing laws and enforcement, and pushing international preservation fund backers away. The rate at which things have degraded is insane.
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2020/12/brazil-accele...
Surely you jest?
If it walks like a duck and implements duck policies.
It was amazing seeing the effect of political action on the satellite data: e.g. areas that were deemed okay (or not) to cut down were almost immediately protected (with lit borders to stop law-breakers) or destroyed.
If Brazil becomes a failed state, of course the Amazon will be destroyed. We know this due to the millions of examples of the ‘tragedy of the commons’.
It’s an interesting thought experiment as to what it would take for the world to force protection with an external military force (e.g. this might be the only solution, but the chances of it happening are zero).
Brazil would never tolerate that, nor should they.
On the other hand if you want to buy huge tracts of the Amazon and pay private security forces to protect it, that's doable.
Better though would be to make it in Brazil's interest to protect the Amazon. We all benefit from it being intact, so we should all chip in to create an economic incentive for the county of Brazil to maintain it.
Something like this exists in the Amazon Fund. Unfortunately it seems like it has broken down lately:
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-brazil-environment-norway...
It's really a sad little pretzel of hell that we (supposedly) need to create economic incentives for every human on Earth to not squander their local resources for short term gain when it is in fact economic incentives that got that ball rolling downhill in the first place. But yeah, I guess we'll find a way to throw globalism and money at a problem created by globalism and money.
But it's important to recognize where capitalism fails (tragedy of the commons situations, negative externalities) and address those.
I think the state should take on that role, but there needs to be a strong inventive for them to want to protect it.
Maybe we should start fixing problems within our own borders first before resorting to fucking weapons.
This collective blamming becomes tiring when the actions are self-contained in a small group of people.
The "responding to demand" is a complete cop-out. Stop blaming the consumer for the actions of the greedy.
I wouldn't be surprised if the consumer very often isn't even aware of the sources of the materials for a lot of the stuff they buy. And it doesn't help that the consumer is all too often worried about stuff that immediately affects them, leaving them no time or energy to worry about stuff that's they're not immediately aware of.
It's like blaming the consumer for the ridiculous amount of plastic corporations use for packaging when that's all that's available 99% of the time.
Oh, that's a huge pet peeve of mine. In some places I lived it was impossible to buy produce without plastic bags because the stores force you to use their own bags. Also you have to put different vegetables on different bags. Otherwise you can't buy.
Sure one can argue that I could just boycott all the supermarkets in my city, but those people forget that I also have to fucking eat.
Agree about the plastic though, that stuff is almost impossible to avoid.
I find it a lot harder trying to convince everyone to change versus forcing everyone to change through policy and enforcement through government.
Other options can be applied, but only really if we don't agree, usually due to personal choice being relevant (some drugs, prostitution, seatbelts and helmets) or non-linear effects in both the utility and externalities (most pollution). Or both (cigarettes, alcohol, sugar).
If you live in the US and drive a car or eat meat, you are likely to be co-responsible.
Soy culture is used to create a cheap protein feedstock for the meat industry.
Modern car fuel contains ethanol (10% in the EU). The ethanol is produced by having micro organisms convert biomass. The idea being that you use the short carbon cycle (already in the eco system) instead of the long carbon cycle (stuff that has been in the earth for 200My) thus effectively reducing carbon emissions.
Both of these are produced in Brasil, both have a footprint much larger than the gold or exotic wood markets (which are tiny, compared with meat and car fuel)
Most likely, you eat U.S.-raised beef and burn gasoline from oil that comes from the U.S. or Middle East. Surely you are adding to the global warming, but it has nothing to do with Amazonian forest being illegally cut.
In Brazil, most if not all cars run on ethanol [1]. The U.S. produce massive amounts of ethanol domestically [2] so, most likely, whatever gasoline you might be buying in the US, it's not using Brazilian ethanol, even though the U.S. does import some Brazilian ethanol [4], it's dwarfed by the domestic production [2].
U.S. beef is raised so efficiently that farmers manage to export it to Mexico an China, among other places [3], while receiving virtually no subsidies. You likely need to specifically look for gourmet Brazilian beef if you want to have a chance to taste a cow illegally raised on a pasture which used to be Amazonian forest.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethanol_fuel_in_Brazil
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethanol_fuel_in_the_United_Sta...
[3]: https://www.fas.usda.gov/beef-2020-export-highlights
[4]: https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/pet_move_impcus_a2_nus_epooxe_i...
https://www.statista.com/chart/19122/biggest-exporters-of-be...
Blends of E10 or less are used in more than 20 countries around the world, led by the United States, where ethanol represented 10% of the U.S. gasoline fuel supply in 2011.[1] Blends from E20 to E25 have been used in Brazil since the late 1970s. E85 is commonly used in the U.S. and Europe for flexible-fuel vehicles. Hydrous ethanol or E100 is used in Brazilian neat ethanol vehicles and flex-fuel light vehicles and hydrous E15 called hE15 for modern petrol cars in the Netherlands.[2]
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_ethanol_fuel_mixtures
Also US-raised beef also occupies the area of destroyed forests. American beef didn't destroy the Amazon but it destroyed the environment anyway and is every bit as guilty of producing global warming.
Here at Brazil, ethanol is produced from sugarcane. And sugarcane farming is actually illegal in the Amazon. The President tried to make it legal, but fortunately his decree was suspended by the Judiciary [1].
I don't doubt there may exist a few illegal sugarcane farms in the Amazon, but given how huge sugarcane farming is in southeastern Brazil, I don't think any Amazon sugarcane would significantly contribute to Brazilian ethanol production.
> Soy culture is used to create a cheap protein feedstock for the meat industry.
Soy is more of an issue for Amazon than sugarcane. But, just as you said, it is used to feed cattle, and the main issue resides in the cattle. Cattleman in Amazon usually adopt the extensive breeding system, so lots of area are required to breed cattle.
[1] https://www.conjur.com.br/2020-abr-21/juiza-suspende-decreto...
It‘s a maximum of 10%, but you almost never actually get that much. E5 fuel contains 0-5% ethanol, E10 contains 5-10%.
This collective blaming becomes tiring when the actions are self-contained in a small group of profit seeking investors.
On top of that destruction of environments around the globe is what allows us to have such wonderfully cheap products here in the US (and Europe). Those cheap solar panels that everyone is excited about are because they're being built with energy from burning coal in China (the biggest factor in the price drop was going from minimal solar pv production in China to 80% today).
One of the best methods of estimating CO2 emissions at an individual level is dollars spend. Highly paid technical workers getting paid from and buying goods from Amazon.com have an indirect but real relationship to the destruction of the actual Amazon.
It is also worth noting that the HN community has aggressively flagged and remove many of the climate change article that have made it do the front page. I used to immediately upvote any articles I found and just wait to see how many minutes they would last.
Not that placing blame does anything to solve these issues, but collective blame is appropriate if you really look at the systemic nature of all of these problems.
The big deal with forests is they keep a large amount of carbon out of the atmosphere on a rotating basis. We really need that right now.
1 if you harvest sustainably and use the lumber for building long lived structures, it might be a sink in the timescale that's important for combating global warming.
2 these forests have been sinking a lot, stands to reason they could alternatively be expanding, which would make them a carbon sink for the duration of the expansion
I guess "could" can be safely replaced by "will".
BTW, the science behind planetary greening is that higher carbon dioxide helps plants to be more water-efficient. This allows them to grow in areas which would otherwise have been too dry for them.
https://theconversation.com/rising-carbon-dioxide-is-making-...
"Evolution is cleverer than you are" - Leslie Orgel
Water is also good for you, yet you don't live at the bottom of the atlantic ocean.
Birds do more for nature using only their assholes than humanity could do with their entire beings... The birds don't even need to think about it.
Are you sure, from nasa.gov itself:
> which is thought to be due to intensive agriculture to feed growing populations and ambitious tree-planting programs
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/greening-of-the-earth-mitigates...
> Birds do more for nature using only their assholes than humanity could do with their entire beings..
And what do humans do to birds ?
> Human activity is the greatest cause of bird extinction around the world. The top human causes of bird extinction involve: the increased human population, destruction of habitat (through development for habitation, logging, animal and single-crop agriculture, and invasive plants), ...
It is well within humanity's capacity to, potentially permanently but at least for tens of millions of years, end the Earth's ability to host macroscopic life. Within a few decades, we'll likely have the ability to end the Earth's life-supporting ability period.
I get the message behind the meme. But unfortunately, our actions have consequences beyond our selves. It's easier to think we're just fucking our own when in fact we're doing much worse.
We’re within a few decades of a global superpower being able to deflect a large asteroid which would, after millennia or even centuries, impact the Earth with enough energy to melt the crust several kilometres down.
We don't even have enough nukes to wipe out the human race, let alone the biosphere. Building enough to would likely need more uranium than we can access with known technology.
There are big re-greening projects going on in China and Africa to try and stop the encroaching of the deserts there though (due to deforestation and agriculture). They HAVE to add forests, else they'll get the same thing that happened in the US early 1900's, the Dust Bowl where a lot of fertile ground just blew away because there was nothing holding it down.
Evolution also works at longer timescales than we do. Sure we may end up with 60 foot ferns again 10k years from now as plant life rebounds in the carbon rich atmosphere, but that doesn't help your grandkids.
Literally the first hit on Google for this phrase is exactly about this [1].
[1] https://theconversation.com/yes-more-carbon-dioxide-in-the-a...
You're repeating easily debunked denialist talking points and claiming insight when people have studied this problem for decades and discovered that no, on balance, abrupt changes in CO2 are not good for our biosphere.
This sounds like something that you would read in a whitepaper for TreeCoin
I'm not familiar with the details of this topic -- Are actions by locals significant-enough/at a large enough scale to yield these results? I'm thinking of Native Americans' hunting v. colonizers' actions.
If something catastrophic happened that suddenly killed an existing ecosystem and the air and water vapor currents in the local climate changed enough to prevent new growth you could wind up with something like that.
Obviously, burning a forest is still bad from the CO2-in-atmosphere point of view. Not because you have destroyed a carbon sink but because you released carbon from an existing carbon reservoir.
Not never [1]. But never ca. 300 m.y.a.
[1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/mushroom-evolutio...
Although yes, if the old trees don't decompose (for whatever reason), then the forest becomes in fact a carbon sink.