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Comment by Dumblydorr | Hacker News Reader

This is so short-sighted and ignorant, it's hard to even read about. Brazilians should cherish their rainforest, legacy of millions of years of evolution, with wondrous biodiversity and an amazing carbon sink the planet desperately needs.

Instead, they're chopping and burning this vital carbon store to make room for beef production. This is so short sighted it's painful. We know beef has to be massively ramped down, it releases a ton of methane. Hopefully meat alternatives will render all these cattle farms obsolete.

Then what? Once we figure out artificial meat, all of these ranchers lose economically, and the million year old ecosystem is already destroyed. Sickening.

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While I agree that losing the Amazon, and all of its biological and human diversity is a catastrophe, I don't agree with this sort of finger pointing.

The same argument can be said of most, if not all, of the western countries whose primary ecosystems have gone extinct by mostly the same reasons. How come then that when the developing nations in the global south do so, they're short-sighted and ignorant?

Yes, Brazil has the sovereignty to protect the Amazon. But one also has to understand the political and economic pressures exerted both internally and externally.

Brazil was responsible for ~20% of the word's beef exports in 2018 [1]. Who is purchasing that beef? What trade arrangements are incentivizing this activity?

This is not to justify what's happening in the Amazon. This is to point out that the situation is more complex that being "short-sighted" and "ignorant".

[1]: https://www.ers.usda.gov/amber-waves/2019/july/brazil-once-a...

I often scold local loggers when I encounter them and got the reply: If you want forest, move to Brazil.

You're both right.

The same argument is true towards China. Everyone blames them for their carbon footprint, but in the end who is buying and who is profiting from it? The answer is clear. And let’s not even get started with “recycling”!

It’s a different context. What was done in the western countries many years ago is not right, but the difference is that we now know what impacts that had. Doing that in 2021 when we know how bad it is deserves finger pointing. I will continue the finger pointing if that can raise awareness, I don’t care if some other short sighted group of people did it before, that wrong doesn’t make it right.

In regards of the second half of your post, if Brazil cared about their environment and long term ecological stability, they would be smarter than this.

Do you not finger point at the drug cartels because “someone is buying it”?

I don't disagree with you. What I'm trying to say is that there are forcing functions which make it so Brazil continues to let this pass, many of which are entrenched in the history of Brazil. Calling them stupid or ignorant is to miss the forest for the trees, and ignores the fact that these activities were propelled by foreign institutions/corporations as well. To think this is Brazil's own doing is to disregard the effects of capitalism and globalization in the last couple of decades. Sure, Brazil could be "smarter" than this and act in its own interest but that hasn't bode well for most latinamerican countries in the last half century.

For Brazil to "care" the dollar value of keeping the forest untouched needs to be greater _for everyone involved_ than that of using it to graze cattle or cultivate soy. The dollar value is certainly greater all things considered (past, present, and future) but that value is less tangible to land owners and ultimately the country itself. You have to understand the socioeconomic and political context leading to these conditions.

Same goes for Indonesia and Borneo cutting down their forest for palm oil.

The methane aspect of cattle production sticks in people's minds, but you’ve highlighted the actual problem with it that doesn’t get covered much: land use change.

And it’s not just the grazing cattle, it’s the mind-boggling number of acres cleared and filled for monoculture animal feed production.

Not only does cattle production contribute directly to greenhouse gases through tilling and methane, it contributed indirectly by moving land out of forest — which sequesters carbon — and into pastures. Regenerative farming practices are many times better than conventional fields — but even that pales in comparison to natural forests. Baring a magical carbon capture device, we need to move a ton of land back into natural forests. That’s because the extreme weather we’re starting to see doesn’t even factor in all of our emissions over the past decade or longer - they lag. We need to sequester and the only practical means we have currently is through plants and trees.

Instead, we’re continuing to emit, and we’re continuing to deforest.

Humans are pretty good at nuking (literally or figuratively) entire ecosystems. See the Fertile Crescent, for example.

However, the damage we've done over the last ten thousand years may be reversible. There's at least one team working on a way to turn deserts into self-sustaining forests or even rainforests, and it's very promising.

The trick is going to be figuring that out before we make ourselves extinct.

The counter is right there in the article:

> Global markets don’t buy enough sustainably produced foods such as Brazil nuts or acai to keep people afloat, whereas the appetite for beef, grains, and timber seems bottomless. (In 2020, Brazil exported $35.2 billion of soybeans, soybean meal, and soybean oil, and only $128.3 million of nuts.)

When you're down at the bottom, living under a tarp, and barely making enough money to support yourself and your family, then you're going to chose the money.

>Brazilians should cherish their rainforest

Most do. But one of the worst human beings ever to walk this earth managed to get elected president.

Let's hope the people, the forest and country's young democracy survive him. Avoiding his reelection, or better, impeaching him is an existential issue. And that's not a hyperbole.

If it’s so important for the whole planet, why is no one paying Brazilians to keep the rainforests intact?

Why is Amazon, the one Jeff Bezos owns, not cementing its legacy here on Earth by paying to keep the Amazon intact? Seems like really bad marketing on some interdimensional cable commercials.

Buying land would be fairly trivial. Feeding the people that would otherwise raze it for money to buy food and housing? Much more expensive.

Norway (and others) did that for a while and they kind of got scammed.

See, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-brazil-environment-norway...

Norway, the biggest donor by far, has paid $1.2 bn over 10 years. In comparison, Brazil exported $35.2 bn of soybean products in 2020 alone. Seems like reneging on the deal is better from an economic perspective.

The big issue is that developed countries need to pay far more money to stop other countries' deforestation, but it won't happen because the payments will affect QoL of those living in developed countries and humans are inherently selfish.

Because the current government would use that money to accelerate the destruction instead. Bolsonaro and future are incompatible terms.

Brazilians received lots of money since 80's at least to help them to conserve the rainforests. It has not worked.

Maybe is time to start using the money in environmental projects in Europe or US instead. A couple of new national parks maybe?. Those would increase greatly the chance of success.

> This is so short-sighted and ignorant, it's hard to even read about. Brazilians should cherish their rainforest, legacy of millions of years of evolution, with wondrous biodiversity and an amazing carbon sink the planet desperately needs.

This sounds to me like a bit like telling Americans that they should cherish their planet and stop driving and flying all the time. We all know that that would help a lot, but (1) it dramatically reduces comfort and QoL in the short to medium term with no tangible benefits for the individual and (2) it only works if almost everyone else does it as well.

Still, it's a drop in the bucket. Half of the US is convinced that they can do no harm as long as they are "free" or whatever, while simultaneously taking pride in preparing for the end of times (conflict of interest much?).

All of China doesn't have a choice but to contribute to the destruction.

The rest of the world mostly falls into the "negative" side of the spectrum.

WFIO

So much finger pointing, always with the "they".

Root cause: too many people and a rapidly expanding middle class.

Fix? Lower population, lower quality of life, or massively accelerate the rising country overall to Norway like social economic level.

I'm open for suggestions.

The hard problem here is that you’re right; but who are we to tell them they can’t do the same things that North America and Europe did to survive and prosper? We have released ungodly amounts of green house gasses and clear cut millions and millions of acres to build our cities and factories. Who are we to finger point any day “yeah we did it and life is great but you can’t because we beat you to the punch and did it first and now the worlds fucked.”

Instead we have to have better solutions at hand to offer them that make more economical sense than clear cutting the rainforests.

I guess we know more about ecology and climate change in 2021 than in the 1600s? That's why.

Exactly. It is not a good argument 'we used to do the same'. We did that because we were ignorant of the consequences. So we can pay brasil to stop it instead of send in the army, but letting them do it because we used to is just weird.

That doesn't change the fact that we have to be able to offer them a better solution other than "you're forever stuck in poverty because we don't want you to use your natural resources while we live a lavish life after destroying all of ours".

Don't get me wrong; I do not under any circumstance support what's going on there. But it's also not fair for whole countries to be stuck in poverty because they're slow to the game.

Why not have first world countries adopt portions of the rain forest? Pay the Brazilian government annual fee's for them to protect the rain forest from being clear cut. The government can use the money collected to pay people who would normally be farming the land to do something else. There's a lot of trust that the Brazilian government spends the resources as intended; but that's another problem.

TLDR; telling them they can't do it from our ivory tower is not going to work so if that's the plan then we better be offering them alternative income sources that don't require clear cutting.

I'm not saying they need to be stuck in poverty, I'm saying the Government of Brazil, the UN etc, should stop this from happening because we know of the dire consequences of it.

If Brazil requires financial assistance, so be it. They shouldn't be allowed to destroy the Amazon rain forest because stupid people did it back in the gold rush.

At least we’re on the same page because I never said they should be able to.

In France the forest covers a bigger part of the territory than before the industrial revolution. I think it’s the case in several western countries.

If middle ages Brazilians knew how the Europeans were deforesting Europe they'd have probably said the same thing.

Sure, but is that a good argument? We used to make mistakes because we did not know better (for a long time anyway) so now, even though we do know better, we can let everyone make the same mistakes? Out of some weird sense of avoiding time-travelling hypocrisy? How far does that go?

Assuming you're not a short-sighted person, how would a poor country like Brazil protect, without make any money out of it, an area bigger than Europe?

It's interesting how rich countries made their money by exploiting our (and other poor countries) natural resources, but now they realized it's bad.

The solutions proposed by Macron and Biden is ridiculous, outrageous. But it's not surprising, considering Europe/US instinct of colonizers/exploiters.

"Assuming you're not a short-sighted person, how would a poor country like Brazil protect, without make any money out of it, an area bigger than Europe?"

Leaving it alone - like has been done for centuries - might be one way to protect it. We have also read in the media about Bolsonaro encouraging people to burn down the forests as a right, of shooting down the indigenous forest dwellers, and other such horrific things.

Yes, the rich have become rich by removing their own forests, looting their own citizens, and committing genocide-level destruction and looting of other countries and kingdoms. What's "interesting" about them realising this?

What about the rest of us who already know that looting nature is bad? What about the natives (not just the indigenous) who know (or should know) that it's bad? Why should we carry on the practice of looting nature _just_ _because_ the unapologetic rich nations have realised it's bad?

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