8 ms·

A Dam-Building Boom Is Transforming the Brazilian Amazon

55 points by Red_Tarsius 9y ago

aurizon 9y ago
And when those dams all silt up, what next - whining?
- mhkool 9y ago
  The silt is the key to fertile soil. Can you image what happens when soil becomes infertile?
  - sriacha 9y ago
    Yeah, that's also true. But the dams will still silt up. This is a huge problem worldwide.
    - aurizon 9y ago
      Yes, the foreigners put up the foreign aid to build it. The corrupt people running it simply thieve the $$ they sell the power for and do not manage the silt
  - aurizon 9y ago
    Yes, silt spread over the alluvial fan = good, silt trapped as deep layers behind dams = damn...
thiagooffm 9y ago
I think it's a fair move. A lot of people around the world and organizations try to do anything on their hands to protect Brazil from using its own lands. Meanwhile all countries have devastated their own forests to build ships and make wars, people from Brazil are hungry and the country must grow to make the lives of all the human beings there good. But no, instead we've got first world countries which give us always very shitty trade deals speaking about what we do with our own land, when they complete wrecked theirs. And if you check their energy solutions, it's always coal, or they all got cars, or anything. They've got their own problems, which are potentially even worse for the environment but they keep looking at a poor country, just as they did in the past, to perhaps steal gold, slave people, make money... They want us to follow their crappy and shitty agenda when they can't even get decent politicians, they get shitty ones as we do, they go on middle-east and make fucking wars everytime, killing millions. But no, we can't do whatever the fuck we want with our forests. The sad part is that much of Brazil has succumbed to environmentalists from abroad. If those who complain about it would go to Brazil and try to live a middle-class life there with a job in shitty conditions going through a crisis every decade, always feeling things aren't stable enough to make a living. Perhaps living in a big city, taking 2-3 hours to go to work, then 2-3 hours to go back, I've bet that they wouldn't care too much about Amazon or whatever countries from abroad says... but they don't, they come from privileged backgrounds, sometimes they say that they know poverty, sure, everybody can look at a magazine, but did they ever feel it like they do in a country like Brazil? my 2 cents, thumbs down as much as you feel like. ps: I completely get the point of environmentalists, but this will never work out while people are still hungry. Perhaps you should ask for your country to help Brazil to reach its enlightenment and then have enough cash and businesses to be willing to protect its own forest. But no, you just make the situation worse.
- kikoreis 9y ago
  Not downvoting, but as a Brazilian living in Brazil I don't agree with the false dichotomy you imply here, that you can't develop in an environmentally sane way. What the current government is implementing is criminally irresponsible and walks us back to 20th century exploitation. My dad worked for Shell and Rio Tinto for years, and travelling with him around the country you could see how practices changed as environmental regulations came into play. It was definitely less lucrative for the companies, but they were not major employers or generators of local business anyway. We can do better than suggesting we should replicate environmental damage the first world committed.
  - thiagooffm 9y ago
    I'm not suggesting we replicate, but that we at least do whatever we want and need, instead of having needing to bend to the needs of what other agendas tells us to. My point isn't only with forests, but also with everything else. And I'm not being populist, or nationalist, left-wing or right-wing... just being real. Once I've moved abroad and stopped living in Brazil, I started to understand how other countries and cultures, from the first world, are pretty much immune to this kind of debate, or are the ones setting up standards on how everybody else should behave and do things. And how this feeds poverty and confusion... and in the very end, as counter-intuitive as it seems, damages the environment. We need no fucking agendas to follow, if they aren't of our interest, it's not like we've got 50k+ dollars an year per capita in a very egalitarian society to start caring about this, at least to the degree that those who doesn't have any fucking forests anymore, cares. In the Capitalist world we live in today, managing a country it's about picking up the right battles, there isn't an infinite overflow of money coming in so we can both educate 200mi of brazilians, feed them, give them the good life and in the end, still be 100% green.
  - marcosdumay 9y ago
    There is environment friendly development, and there is pushing a country into forbidding every kind of energy generation available. What do you want to replace hydroelectricity with?
badosu 9y ago
It's sensible to understand (for us, brazilians) that much of our land is a bastion of pristine environment and that we should preserve it. On the other hand I think it's very hypocritical of many countries to point a finger at us when they have enriched themselves through pillage, exploitation of their own environment, slavery and shady practices from their government and corporations, most of which had consequences on the troublesome political and economical development of the (South American) region. That being sa(i)d, does not justify bad behaviour from both parts and a mutual understanding can only arise when both sides have a dialogue to work together on these issues. If you want people not to burn forests to grow cattle then you need to understand why there's economical sense on that and mitigate the issue on it's root instead of trying to enforce a law that's very difficult to apply. Same thing for energy requirements of a country vs exploitation of it's environment where it's so much easier to point a finger than to propose and help on a solution. Case in point: http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2013/09/02/216878935/ecuador-to-world-pay-up-to-save-the-rainforest-world-to-ecuador-meh http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2013/09/02/216878935/ecuad... > President Correa said scrapping the program was one of the hardest decisions of his presidency. "The real dilemma is this," he said in a televised address last week. "Do we protect 100 percent of the Yasuní and have no resources to meet the urgent needs of our people, or do we save 99 percent of it and have $18 billion to fight poverty?" I also looked for a translation of a great speech form Cristovam Buarque for when there was pressure to internationalize the Amazon, it's worth the read: http://www.diaplous.org/amazo.htm http://www.diaplous.org/amazo.htm > If the Amazon Region, from a humanist΄s point of view, has to be internationalized, then we should internationalize the oil reserves of the entire the world as well. Oil is just as important to the well being of humanity as the Amazon Region for our future. Nevertheless, the owners of oil reserves feel it is in their right to increase or decrease oil production and to raise or lower the price. The rich of the world, feel they have the right to burn this valuable possession of humanity. Similarly, the financial capital of the wealthy nations should be internationalized. If the Amazon Region is a natural reserve for every human being, then it could not be burned down by the decision of a landowner or a country. To burn down the Amazon Region is so tragic, as the unemployment provoked by the arbitrary decisions of world wide speculators. We cannot permit that the world΄s financial reserves serve to burn down entire nations according to the whims of speculacion.

55 points by Red_Tarsius 9y ago

aurizon 9y ago

And when those dams all silt up, what next - whining?

mhkool 9y ago
The silt is the key to fertile soil. Can you image what happens when soil becomes infertile?
- sriacha 9y ago
  Yeah, that's also true. But the dams will still silt up. This is a huge problem worldwide.
  - aurizon 9y ago
    Yes, the foreigners put up the foreign aid to build it. The corrupt people running it simply thieve the $$ they sell the power for and do not manage the silt
- aurizon 9y ago
  Yes, silt spread over the alluvial fan = good, silt trapped as deep layers behind dams = damn...

thiagooffm 9y ago

I think it's a fair move. A lot of people around the world and organizations try to do anything on their hands to protect Brazil from using its own lands. Meanwhile all countries have devastated their own forests to build ships and make wars, people from Brazil are hungry and the country must grow to make the lives of all the human beings there good. But no, instead we've got first world countries which give us always very shitty trade deals speaking about what we do with our own land, when they complete wrecked theirs. And if you check their energy solutions, it's always coal, or they all got cars, or anything. They've got their own problems, which are potentially even worse for the environment but they keep looking at a poor country, just as they did in the past, to perhaps steal gold, slave people, make money... They want us to follow their crappy and shitty agenda when they can't even get decent politicians, they get shitty ones as we do, they go on middle-east and make fucking wars everytime, killing millions. But no, we can't do whatever the fuck we want with our forests. The sad part is that much of Brazil has succumbed to environmentalists from abroad. If those who complain about it would go to Brazil and try to live a middle-class life there with a job in shitty conditions going through a crisis every decade, always feeling things aren't stable enough to make a living. Perhaps living in a big city, taking 2-3 hours to go to work, then 2-3 hours to go back, I've bet that they wouldn't care too much about Amazon or whatever countries from abroad says... but they don't, they come from privileged backgrounds, sometimes they say that they know poverty, sure, everybody can look at a magazine, but did they ever feel it like they do in a country like Brazil? my 2 cents, thumbs down as much as you feel like. ps: I completely get the point of environmentalists, but this will never work out while people are still hungry. Perhaps you should ask for your country to help Brazil to reach its enlightenment and then have enough cash and businesses to be willing to protect its own forest. But no, you just make the situation worse.

kikoreis 9y ago
Not downvoting, but as a Brazilian living in Brazil I don't agree with the false dichotomy you imply here, that you can't develop in an environmentally sane way. What the current government is implementing is criminally irresponsible and walks us back to 20th century exploitation. My dad worked for Shell and Rio Tinto for years, and travelling with him around the country you could see how practices changed as environmental regulations came into play. It was definitely less lucrative for the companies, but they were not major employers or generators of local business anyway. We can do better than suggesting we should replicate environmental damage the first world committed.
- thiagooffm 9y ago
  I'm not suggesting we replicate, but that we at least do whatever we want and need, instead of having needing to bend to the needs of what other agendas tells us to. My point isn't only with forests, but also with everything else. And I'm not being populist, or nationalist, left-wing or right-wing... just being real. Once I've moved abroad and stopped living in Brazil, I started to understand how other countries and cultures, from the first world, are pretty much immune to this kind of debate, or are the ones setting up standards on how everybody else should behave and do things. And how this feeds poverty and confusion... and in the very end, as counter-intuitive as it seems, damages the environment. We need no fucking agendas to follow, if they aren't of our interest, it's not like we've got 50k+ dollars an year per capita in a very egalitarian society to start caring about this, at least to the degree that those who doesn't have any fucking forests anymore, cares. In the Capitalist world we live in today, managing a country it's about picking up the right battles, there isn't an infinite overflow of money coming in so we can both educate 200mi of brazilians, feed them, give them the good life and in the end, still be 100% green.
- marcosdumay 9y ago
  There is environment friendly development, and there is pushing a country into forbidding every kind of energy generation available. What do you want to replace hydroelectricity with?

badosu 9y ago

It's sensible to understand (for us, brazilians) that much of our land is a bastion of pristine environment and that we should preserve it. On the other hand I think it's very hypocritical of many countries to point a finger at us when they have enriched themselves through pillage, exploitation of their own environment, slavery and shady practices from their government and corporations, most of which had consequences on the troublesome political and economical development of the (South American) region. That being sa(i)d, does not justify bad behaviour from both parts and a mutual understanding can only arise when both sides have a dialogue to work together on these issues. If you want people not to burn forests to grow cattle then you need to understand why there's economical sense on that and mitigate the issue on it's root instead of trying to enforce a law that's very difficult to apply. Same thing for energy requirements of a country vs exploitation of it's environment where it's so much easier to point a finger than to propose and help on a solution. Case in point: http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2013/09/02/216878935/ecuador-to-world-pay-up-to-save-the-rainforest-world-to-ecuador-meh http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2013/09/02/216878935/ecuad... > President Correa said scrapping the program was one of the hardest decisions of his presidency. "The real dilemma is this," he said in a televised address last week. "Do we protect 100 percent of the Yasuní and have no resources to meet the urgent needs of our people, or do we save 99 percent of it and have $18 billion to fight poverty?" I also looked for a translation of a great speech form Cristovam Buarque for when there was pressure to internationalize the Amazon, it's worth the read: http://www.diaplous.org/amazo.htm http://www.diaplous.org/amazo.htm > If the Amazon Region, from a humanist΄s point of view, has to be internationalized, then we should internationalize the oil reserves of the entire the world as well. Oil is just as important to the well being of humanity as the Amazon Region for our future. Nevertheless, the owners of oil reserves feel it is in their right to increase or decrease oil production and to raise or lower the price. The rich of the world, feel they have the right to burn this valuable possession of humanity. Similarly, the financial capital of the wealthy nations should be internationalized. If the Amazon Region is a natural reserve for every human being, then it could not be burned down by the decision of a landowner or a country. To burn down the Amazon Region is so tragic, as the unemployment provoked by the arbitrary decisions of world wide speculators. We cannot permit that the world΄s financial reserves serve to burn down entire nations according to the whims of speculacion.