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Brazilian Amazon lost 18 trees per second in 2021

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Re: Brazilian Amazon lost 18 trees per second in 2021

#141

Post by ErikVandeWater »

specialp wrote: post #31

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 g…

I'm pretty sure most of the damage was done before people realized the significance of deforestation.

We certainly now know the impact of deforestation, and that it affects the entire planet.

Re: Brazilian Amazon lost 18 trees per second in 2021

#142

Post by rglullis »

ratww wrote: post #125
rglullis wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The number of people working in agriculture is only shrinking The number of people working doesn't matter. What matters is that the country gets through agriculture the resources needed to invest in the other sectors.

In theory that makes a lot of sense. Truly. In reality, believing that and going froward with this plan was an immense setback to the country and the population. Europe/US/etc letting Brazil keep doing what it's doing is mostly helping Europe/US/etc at the expense of Brazilians and the environment.

I am not arguing in favor of the US or Europe, and I am also not arguing that Brazil should keep putting down trees just to sell more soybeans for the US and China.

What I am saying is that the rich countries need to quit their double standard. The EU keeps putting absurd trade barriers to protect their own farmers. The US subsidizes their corn farms, effectively killing the Brazilian industry for biofuels. European NGOs are financed to disparage Brazil's investments in hydropower, while depending on Putin for gas and coal.

So, yeah, agro business is far from ideal, but now is the only feasible alternative for Brazil to come up with any chance of development, and they will also work against that? I'd be more than willing to listen what they have to say if they were setting the example...

Re: Brazilian Amazon lost 18 trees per second in 2021

#143

Post by is_true »

ratww wrote: post #101
cassianoleal wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Brazil is rich though, and largely because of those things. The fact that such richness is so unjustly distributed across the population is an orthogonal problem.

Yep. But one way of distributing this across the population is by favouring other sectors rather than strangling them to favour the primary. The number of people working in the agricultural sector has only shrunk and will keep shrinking due to mechanisation/automation. The general population won't see the benefits of the primary sector growing, unless we have a Soviet-style wealth redistribution.

There's a lot of people working in that automation. That earn much more and make the country more efficient, more production means more jobs down the road.

Also, countries like brasil don't export commodities just because they want, there 's a web of tariff to keep producing countries from industrializing those products.

Re: Brazilian Amazon lost 18 trees per second in 2021

#144

Post by ErikVandeWater »

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.

They have economically viable solutions. They're just not politically viable because the current system is designed for the profit of wealthy cartels.

Re: Brazilian Amazon lost 18 trees per second in 2021

#145

Post by cassianoleal »

ratww wrote: post #127
cassianoleal wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can agree on that. My point was not that the current model is a good one, but rather that its problem is not one of generating wealth but rather one of distributing it, which you just demonstrated as well. I guarantee you, I was not defending the current focus on developing /latifúndios/ at the expense of everything else.

Ah perfect, then we're in agreement. A lot of people assume I'm being a radical and saying Brazil should stop exporting meat/soy/etc. I'm not. What I'm saying is that Brazil needs is a plan that's not simply "keep fucking the country even though it's not really working". I'm not a fan of people from richer countries saying "Brazil should keep doing what it seems to want to do", because this is also way too favourable…

I'm not a fan of richer (or poorer!) countries saying much of anything about what other countries should or should not do. :) Everyone is biased. Everyone is hypocritical to some degree. We should find common ground, not impose or be imposed on.

Re: Brazilian Amazon lost 18 trees per second in 2021

#146

Post by juve1996 »

specialp wrote: post #89
dataflow wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The majority of deforestation took place prior to 1910, says Wikipedia. We didn't know nearly as much back then about the problems it would cause. So I'm not sure it's hard to criticize this when seeing it in 2022.

The USA could easily decide they would like to restore 50% of the forest by reclaiming farmland and exurbs and planting back trees. In 50 years it could be a large wild forest. Perhaps not old growth like before. So what is stopping this? It would cost a huge amount of money and drive food costs up dramatically. So even though it was not really as appreciated then to keep forests, it still is empty talk because nobod…

Brazil will face the same consequences as everyone else.

They can be mad that other countries got rich in the past, or they can put their big boy pants on and preserve something that is just as critical to them (probably more so critical to them) as everyone else in the world.

Re: Brazilian Amazon lost 18 trees per second in 2021

#147

Post by ratww »

is_true wrote: post #143
ratww wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. But one way of distributing this across the population is by favouring other sectors rather than strangling them to favour the primary. The number of people working in the agricultural sector has only shrunk and will keep shrinking due to mechanisation/automation. The general population won't see the benefits of the primary sector growing, unless we have a Soviet-style wealth redistribution.

There's a lot of people working in that automation. That earn much more and make the country more efficient, more production means more jobs down the road. Also, countries like brasil don't export commodities just because they want, there 's a web of tariff to keep producing countries from industrializing those products.

> There's a lot of people working in that automation.

Sorry for the pun, but Brazil isn't really reaping the benefits of agricultural automation to compensate for the issues being an exclusively primary-sector exporter causes. Automation scales very well. Also notice that I'm not saying Brazil shouldn't keep doing what it is doing, I'm saying that other more developed-country-ish sectors should be expanded too.

> Also, countries like brasil don't export commodities just because they want, there 's a web of tariff to keep producing countries from industrializing those products.

If that's the case, then saying "Brazil needs to import primary sector stuff before they grow fo' real like us" is even worse :) They want Brazil to suffer before it has a chance to become a developed country.

Re: Brazilian Amazon lost 18 trees per second in 2021

#148

Post by lvass »

ratww wrote: post #110
lvass wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you don't understand how the vast majority of goods made in your country helps your economy, you terribly need to read some economic theory. I suggest Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations. Brazil didn't suddenly deinvest other sectors out of a whim, they became less relevant thanks to economic pressure. To assume otherwise is accusing the entire country of incredible stupidity, which is laughable when you demonstrat…

Oh nice, more condescension. I'll let it pass. Here's a real reply: This might work in aggregate, but doesn't really help the average Brazilian, nor makes the country become developed. If the economic measures are only favouring the primary sector, the "vast majority of goods made in [my] country" is only making money for an extremely small part of the population. Plus, these measures are causing shrinkage of other s…

No post body was provided.

Re: Brazilian Amazon lost 18 trees per second in 2021

#149

Post by goatcode »

cute_boi wrote: post #44
panick21_ wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a good talk by an economist who basically said he was all exited to learn about optimal solution to those problems and then he went to a meeting where farmer were basically fighting people who wanted to reintroduce wolf. And he realized nobody cared how the optimal solution. Since then he works on trying to come up with solution that doesn't lead to the two groups trying to lynch each other.

Well, this is a common problem. Most of us don't care about each other if there are costs. We mostly care about self interest due to inner greed.

Very true -- even among those who put on a facade of altruism. Those who are extreme about it have often had other motivations, and it ultimately boiled down to selfishness (either for material resource or personal safety, or for social rewards for appearing a certain way). It truly is sad!

Re: Brazilian Amazon lost 18 trees per second in 2021

#150

Post by beeforpork »

specialp wrote: post #31

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 g…

Killing the Amazon is a crime. Nothing done in the US or anywhere else changes that, regardless of whether that was a crime, too.

It is also not hypocritical unless you personally cut down a tree, or unless you believe in the collective responsibility of nations. I don't think 'the Brazialians' are responsible for killing the Amazon -- it's probably a minority of people and we shouldn't care which nation they belong too. This is a serious global problem, and it accidentally happens in some country. Neither collective blame nor collective shame will help. This problem must be criticised.

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