Brazilian Amazon lost 18 trees per second in 2021 • Hacker News Board

Re: Brazilian Amazon lost 18 trees per second in 2021

#31

Post by specialp » Tue, Jul 19, 2022, 2:03 PM UTC

The United States once had one of the largest forests on Earth. The Eastern Forest covered almost everywhere east of the Mississippi. 2,560,000 km2 of forest. Now it is largely gone. Replaced with farmland and sprawl. So it is hard to criticize. Even areas that are now heavily forested like Vermont were clear cut almost entirely by the turn of the century.

The Amazon should be preserved, but to do that the world is going to have to pay. You can't tell a country you can't progress like the USA it is hypocritical.

Re: Brazilian Amazon lost 18 trees per second in 2021

#32

Post by mschuster91 » Tue, Jul 19, 2022, 2:03 PM UTC

zerop wrote: post #22

As consumers of Wooden furniture and so much new housing construction happening around the work, we all are to be blamed too. We need to invent alternate to wooden furniture.

The majority of the Brazilian rainforest isn't even being razed for furniture wood. It's simply burned down to provide for one season of feeding cows for meat or to plant soy to feed the cows.

Then it's gone. Forever.

Re: Brazilian Amazon lost 18 trees per second in 2021

#33

Post by makerofspoons » Tue, Jul 19, 2022, 2:04 PM UTC

zerop wrote: post #22

As consumers of Wooden furniture and so much new housing construction happening around the work, we all are to be blamed too. We need to invent alternate to wooden furniture.

Logging is actually only a tiny fraction of why the Amazon is being cleared: https://www.internetgeography.net/what-are-the-causes-of-def...

It's mostly being used for agriculture.

Re: Brazilian Amazon lost 18 trees per second in 2021

#34

Post by spillguard » Tue, Jul 19, 2022, 2:04 PM UTC

niahmiah wrote: post #14

Unless you live there, there is nothing you can do about it. Nothing to hack, no news.

I'm not sure I agree with this point. What if this news article is the spark that inspires someone to hack together a solution for awareness of the issue? Or maybe create an alternative for some of the imports that the Amazon is being cut down to create? This issue may be happening in Brazil, but it affects everyone (as the forest is a major carbon sink) and can definitely be affected by others, given time.

Re: Brazilian Amazon lost 18 trees per second in 2021

#35

Post by 01acheru » Tue, Jul 19, 2022, 2:05 PM UTC

If those living in high income countries don't support poorer countries to keep their forests healthy complaining about them being chopped is hypocritical.

I live in Italy, the Po Valley I live in was a marshland with lots of centenarian trees. Since Roman times marshes have been drought and most of the forests were chopped to make room for agriculture (and to build Venice, which sits on millions and millions of trees).

I recently went to Portugal, where most forests have been chopped and substituted with huge eucalyptus or cork oak monocultures.

The same goes for France, Germany, etc.

We destroyed our environment so we could have progress. Now we understand that the environment is precious and must be taken care of, so it's up to us to pay other countries to preserve their environment. This money will eventually be used to buy "progress" and end on our pockets once again so it's not even a bad deal economically speaking, it just takes the will (which is lacking almost anywhere).

Re: Brazilian Amazon lost 18 trees per second in 2021

#36

Post by linuxftw » Tue, Jul 19, 2022, 2:06 PM UTC

They're just doing what other continents did hundreds or thousands of years ago. If you want to save the forests, make them economically more valuable than converting them into other uses.

If there's 100M iphones in the world that retail for around $1000 each, that's $100B dollars. We could have invested that money into building some kind of park that welcomes visitors. No, instead we chose as a society to take pretty photos for instagram for fake internet points.

Re: Brazilian Amazon lost 18 trees per second in 2021

#37

Post by cute_boi » Tue, Jul 19, 2022, 2:06 PM UTC

fdsafdsfdsa wrote: post #25

What is morally and ethically worse - eating an animal fed and raised domestically, or eating soy-laiden "plant-based" foods that were grown on recently-raized rainforest several thousand miles away? It's our demand for goods that is causing this.

Most soybeans are used as animal fed. Also, the feeding animal 10KG to get 1KG looks rather wasteful? Lastly, you missed the methane pollution, water usage, ethics etc..

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feed_conversion_ratio

Re: Brazilian Amazon lost 18 trees per second in 2021

#38

Post by ratww » Tue, Jul 19, 2022, 2:07 PM UTC

hu3 wrote: post #13

If we really care about what happens in Brazil we should offer economically viable solutions rather than pointing fingers and accusing them of doing something that we did in the past for a long time.

As someone born in Brazil, I'm tired of this condescending bullshit.

There are several economically viable solutions, but Brazilian government should be interested in pursuing them, rather than only pursuing things that only benefits the current friends of the government (such as deforestation).

US/EU/etc forcing Brazil to get its shit together would be BETTER for the population. We don't need the deforestation to progress. Quite the opposite.

If Brazil were to wage a war on another country, would it be fine just because Europe/US also did it in the past?

Re: Brazilian Amazon lost 18 trees per second in 2021

#39

Post by collegeburner » Tue, Jul 19, 2022, 2:07 PM UTC

mschuster91 wrote: post #29

hu3 wrote: post #13

If we really care about what happens in Brazil we should offer economically viable solutions rather than pointing fingers and accusing them of doing something that we did in the past for a long time.

There are only four economically viable solutions: 1) Boycott or put drastic tariffs on Brazilian meat and soy, aka the products that are made out of the areas which were former rainforest. The problem: China won't give a fuck about Western sanction and Bolsonaro and his goons will happily sell to them (aided by the fact that China still has issues with pig fever in their domestic meat production). 2) Pay off Bolsona…

"regime change is bad except when it's for a reason i like"

Re: Brazilian Amazon lost 18 trees per second in 2021

#40

Post by Sporktacular » Tue, Jul 19, 2022, 2:07 PM UTC

hu3 wrote: post #13

If we really care about what happens in Brazil we should offer economically viable solutions rather than pointing fingers and accusing them of doing something that we did in the past for a long time.

Why should we also not point fingers? Deforestation fell dramatically under Lula while inequality fell and the economy grew quickly.

What "we" did in the past means environmental protection should be subsidised by the west, but our history doesn't let Brazil's government off the hook.