This made me feel sad - what's a good charity to donate $500 to?
As mentioned above, https://www.rainforesttrust.org/ seems to be a good one.
Amazon deforestation accelerating to unrecoverable 'tipping point'
21–30 of 67 posts
Re: Amazon deforestation accelerating to unrecoverable 'tipping point'
#22I’m interested in this but not knowledgeable. What is a “tipping point” in this context? The article doesn’t say. How does the overall size of a forest affect its ability to re-expand? Wouldn’t this happen at the edges once those are no longer maintained, regardless of the overall size? Does “unrecoverable” mean “via natural processes”? Wouldn’t it be possible for human intervention to reforest? Thx.
Re: Amazon deforestation accelerating to unrecoverable 'tipping point'
#23Until we find an economic solution, this trend will just continue. Unfortunately, people only want to profit at all costs and governments usually want to be enablers of that, so the economy grows and they can have more votes in the next election. I think the real question is: can equivalent money to logging/beef be made from tropical forests? If we can come up with an answer to that, maybe we can revert this trend.
Is this the question? Could rainforests produce enough "economic value" to justify their existence?
Re: Amazon deforestation accelerating to unrecoverable 'tipping point'
#24How much money is made from the farmland from deforested regions... how much from the lumber and how much from the reuse of the land? How many countries are trading with Brazil for consuming those goods? It's a big problem, but without some input from trade partners globally and/or other support, I'm not sure what the solution really is. Also, not just in Brazil, but other areas with grasslands that have seen deserti…
The only real solution will be for wealthy nations paying Brazil to not exploit their natural resources, which seems like a very very high ask for all parties involved. Otherwise we'll see the continued destruction for at least another 30-40 years until there's a global demographic peak. We're also going to see the destruction of the Canadian Boreal forest as temperatures rise makes such land viable for industrial fa…
Canada (and the Boreal in particular)is absolutely huge. I'm not convinced that much of this land is any more economically viable than the copious amounts of "undeveloped" wilderness to the south.
Plus, climate change is also about variability. Much of this land could see wild extremes of weather, sounds risky for agriculture.
Re: Amazon deforestation accelerating to unrecoverable 'tipping point'
#25This made me feel sad - what's a good charity to donate $500 to?
As mentioned above, https://www.rainforesttrust.org/ seems to be a good one.
Cool, just donated some benjamins - https://imgur.com/a/ZOuZMXA
Re: Amazon deforestation accelerating to unrecoverable 'tipping point'
#26Until we find an economic solution, this trend will just continue. Unfortunately, people only want to profit at all costs and governments usually want to be enablers of that, so the economy grows and they can have more votes in the next election. I think the real question is: can equivalent money to logging/beef be made from tropical forests? If we can come up with an answer to that, maybe we can revert this trend.
If carbon was priced to reflect its negative externalities the Amazon [Rain Forest] wouldn’t have to generate money because clearing it for agriculture would be prohibitively expensive.
Re: Amazon deforestation accelerating to unrecoverable 'tipping point'
#27How much money is made from the farmland from deforested regions... how much from the lumber and how much from the reuse of the land? How many countries are trading with Brazil for consuming those goods? It's a big problem, but without some input from trade partners globally and/or other support, I'm not sure what the solution really is. Also, not just in Brazil, but other areas with grasslands that have seen deserti…
The money is not made on the lumber, but on agriculture. I recently read that, most of the deforested regions are used for low-density cattle (0.5 cow / hectare), which gets transformed into beef, mainly for export.
As a Brazilian, I'm trying to imagine the logistical costs of running any type of large scale export oriented agriculture business in the Amazon. There is no railroad, no paved roads, no electricity, no workforce (human density is lower than 1 per square Km, let alone work aged humans), nothing. There's a lot of dense forest and water. Feeding cattle in large scale must be a huge expensive challenge in the Amazon region. Processing meat and moving it to ports, an insanely expensive work due to the lack of basic infrastructure. On the flip side, there are other regions in the country with at least 3 decades of accumulated expertise in animal protein production for the international market, good infrastructure, including proximity to sea ports. I don't see how a serious globally competitive animal protein group could make the decision to run business in such an isolated infra deprived area. It would be like someone from the Silicon Valley deciding to run a tech business in Antarctica for the sole reason the datacenter could be kept cooler at a lower cost using what nature has to offer in abundance in that region: cold weather. Amazon offers cheap land and water (period), but that is not enough to make a profitable animal protein business.
Re: Amazon deforestation accelerating to unrecoverable 'tipping point'
#28How much money is made from the farmland from deforested regions... how much from the lumber and how much from the reuse of the land? How many countries are trading with Brazil for consuming those goods? It's a big problem, but without some input from trade partners globally and/or other support, I'm not sure what the solution really is. Also, not just in Brazil, but other areas with grasslands that have seen deserti…
The only real solution will be for wealthy nations paying Brazil to not exploit their natural resources, which seems like a very very high ask for all parties involved. Otherwise we'll see the continued destruction for at least another 30-40 years until there's a global demographic peak. We're also going to see the destruction of the Canadian Boreal forest as temperatures rise makes such land viable for industrial fa…
"The planet is fine."
Re: Amazon deforestation accelerating to unrecoverable 'tipping point'
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
Stop eating meat could be one of answers.
So is "stop having more than 2 children". Another one is "stop buying things you don't really need". But yeah, good luck convincing people to get behind that.
You’re being down voted, but you raise a valid point. We are helpless. Even our first world governments are helpless to save the amazon. It’s just so damn sad.
Re: Amazon deforestation accelerating to unrecoverable 'tipping point'
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
Stop eating meat could be one of answers.
So is "stop having more than 2 children". Another one is "stop buying things you don't really need". But yeah, good luck convincing people to get behind that.
It's also going to make those you convince of this less genetically fit than those who ignore the advice. So the people who choose to have ten kids are going to be more represented in the population a hundred years from now.