In the beginning (not the very beginning, but before technology), Earth’s systems were in balance. Fires caused by lightning and the odd volcano generated CO2 for plants to turn to oxygen for creatures to breathe. The CO2 that escaped to the atmosphere helped keep global temperature moderate. We are losing this balance as one new football pitch size piece of Amazon forest disappears every minute.
One New Football Pitch of Trees Lost – That’s 1,440 a Day
David Shukman, science editor for Brazil says the rate of destruction has accelerated. We won’t involve ourselves in politics except to say the new president apparently “favors development over conservation”.
Our concern is that development generates more CO2 and there are increasingly fewer trees in Brazil to absorb it. The Amazon rain forest is the largest in the world and we will be hard-pressed to come up with an alternative. In an ideal world the richer nations would reach out with more helpful alternatives. However, this is unlikely in the light of the growing ‘our country first’ culture.
How They Clear a Football Pitch of Trees in the Amazon
We can almost hear tears dripping on David Shukman’s keyboard as he types out the brutal process. “Usually by bulldozers,” he writes “either pushing against the trunks to force the shallow roots out of the ground. Or by a pair of the machines advancing with a chain between them.”
What an ignominious end to a giant of the forest smashed to the ground, with “much of the foliage still green and patches of bare earth drying under a fierce sun”. Later, David Shukman continues “the timber will be cleared and sold or burned, and the land prepared for farming”.
Our Children Will Inherit a Poorer World
Those giant trees hold a vast store of carbon collectively. When a new football pitch size of trees rises as smoke into the atmosphere every minute, our children will surely inherit a poorer place. A place where the sun beats down on them more harshly every year.
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How Deforestation Started Climate Change
Preview Image: Pristine Amazon Rain Forest
