7 ms·

Why Is the Amazon Rain Forest Disappearing?

110 points by rblion 7y ago

basicplus2 7y ago
Yes the Amazon rainforrest is nearly gone and it should have been protected better but also all other countries forrests should have been protected, for example where there were massive forrests across europe that were destroyed centuries ago for building things like towns, cathedrals and castles and for firewood.. these should be at least in some significant part re-grown.
- FooHentai 7y ago
  >destroyed centuries ago for building things like towns, cathedrals and castles and for firewood Agree with your point entirely but also want to mention that the motivation behind not re-growing is land-clearing for reasons not stated i.e. farmland, transport infrastructure, housing. The use of wood for building materials and even firewood is carbon neutral if appropriately managed, it's those specific motivations to keep the land cleared that have led to an overall draw-down of forest cover. You can't restore cover without addressing the motivations for clearing it, and use of wood for building/heat is a bit of a red herring in that sense.
- _iyig 7y ago
  "Two decades after its fall, the border between East and West Germany would become Europe's biggest nature reserve: an 858-mile "ecological treasure trove", no longer the Iron Curtain but the Green Belt, and home to more than 600 rare and endangered species of birds, mammals, plants and insects." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Green_Belt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Green_Belt
  - Merrill 7y ago
    The area around Chernobyl is another example. If you get rid of people, the ecosystem recovers pretty rapidly. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_Without_Us https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_Without_Us
    - jbarham 7y ago
      And the Korean DMZ: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/apr/13/wildlife-thriving-korean-demilitarised-zone https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/apr/13/wildlife...
- bamboozled 7y ago
  Also there is nothing stopping developed nations from protecting what they have already and actually regenerating forests. I guess most people in Western Democracies are more worried about what everyone else is doing while our own politician ruin everything.
  - kortilla 7y ago
    Not really. At least not in the US. Deforestation is pretty heavily controlled.
justinmk 7y ago
If the world cares about it then the world should pay for it. Not sanctions, nor sanctimony. Buy the land. It would be expensive, but that just reflects the value to the people you're buying it from. And it's an actual, concrete action that can be taken, instead of the vague global warming solutions that just tweak domestic parameters and send tax money to the black hole of the state budget.
- throwaway66920 7y ago
  What happens when you buy the land and then people burn it down anyway and steal it back?
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - WilliamEdward 7y ago
    I presume buying the rights to the land also gives you the rights to stop these people with force.
    - ufo 7y ago
      The current deforestation is already driven by illegal trespassers. Changing the ownership on paper won't change anything
- manigandham 7y ago
  Buying the land doesn't do anything unless its protected by armed forces.
  - javert 7y ago
    I'm pretty sure Brazil would be delighted to receive a regular check from the rest of the world in exchange for defending part of the rainforest. As long as they get their cut, they're going to be happy. Just make the payments conditional on the continued protection of the forest; otherwise they can be expected to renege eventually. This is exactly what it means to "buy property," by the way: nobody else can use it and the government enforces that if necessary using men with guns. So what I'm suggesting is only a slight refinement of the normal and expected arrangement when buying property.
alistproducer2 7y ago
I find it hard to take news outlets seriously on this subject when they keep the kid gloves on concerning the current president of Brazil. The reticence to call his "victory" what it really was: a coup. The intercept [0] laid out the fact that his opponent, who was slated to win in a landslide, was jailed and convicted by a judge who was working in concert with the prosecutor to ensure a conviction. If the aim was to do real journalism and speak truth to power, then outlets would call if like it is and convey zero legitimacy to the current administration. [0]: https://theintercept.com/series/secret-brazil-archive/ https://theintercept.com/series/secret-brazil-archive/
- moroisahero 7y ago
  I, as a brazilian, find it hard to take your comment seriously. First of all, judge Moro is a national hero, and recent polls still show him as the most admired public figure in the country. Leading operation Car Wash, he was responsible to (finally!) jail many of the most powerful politics and businessman in Brasil, due to disgusting corruption and shameless kickback schemes. All his convictions were backed by mountains and mountains of evidence, and upheld in at least 3 different upper courts, including our Supreme Court. There were more than 100 convictions from politics from the entire political spectrum by Judge Moro, from right to left. Operation Car Wash has already recovered more than 8 Billion in assets stolen from public companies. "His opponent" that you mentioned is President Lula, today recognized as the leader of a criminal organization that stole literally billions from Brazil. He currently serves a sentence from receiving a penthouse as bribe (there are even pictures of him inside the apartment, and the owner of the building company that built it testified about the whole scheme). Trust me, jailing him was not easy, giving the enormous support he had due to him (or his political party) being in power from 2003-2016 (btw, during this time they also managed to destroy our economy - we'll end this decade as the worst in economical terms of the last 120 years). The are other 8 criminal lawsuits against former president Lula, and he has already been convicted (by a different Judge) in another one about "the ranch in Atibaia", which he also denied being his, even tough prosecution proved it was actually received by him as bribe: the place had paddle boats with the names of his grandsons, the master bedroom had all his wife's medicines on the counter top and even dinner tables had their names engraved, there were even regular e-mails from the manager of the ranch to the president updating him with the most detailed events... there's a 20 page PDF by our FBI with pictures of all the evidence. About the alleged collusion between Judge Moro and the prosecution, you just need to read the Intercept messages by yourself to see that absolutely nothing wrong happened there. It's normal for the Judge to talk with the prosecution in a criminal case, as he needs to collect opinions before his rulings. What happened in Brazil is that a "crazy judge" and some "crazy prosecutors" decided to change the "status quo" and finally put an end to the shameless multi-billion stealing that was going on for the last decade, lead by former president Lula and his political associates. If you think these Judges and Prosecutors would achieve those results without a lot of backing from the public opinion, you must only be naive. Some of those messages show exactly that: Judge and Prosecutor talking about how shadowy manouvers to discredit the operation needed to be brought to light so the public could protest and react and prevent them. Extra credit to them for doing that and going the extra mile, all within the law. After President Bolsonaro was elected, he invited Judge Moro to talk, and he accepted to leave the Judiciary Branch to serve as Minister of Justice, and he'll probably be appointed to be a Supreme Court Justice when the next position opens (Bolsonaro will be able to appoint 2 seats during his term, during to retirements). Props to Bolsonaro for doing that. After all these messages came out between Moro and Prosecution were published (all criminally obtained by a Hacker, I must point out), Judge Moro put it best: "parturiunt montes, nascetur ridiculus mus".
Merrill 7y ago
If you look at the State of Amazonas, Brazil on Google maps satellite view, it appears to be largely untouched. Rondonia and Matto Grosso are the states most affected by deforestation. Other large parts of the Amazon rain forest in other states of Brazil and in Peru, Colombia and Venezuela are also intact. Don't take Time's word for it - go look yourself.
- mac01021 7y ago
  The claim in the article is that the deforestation is approaching 20% of the original forest and that, once that number reaches 20-25%, the water cycle will be disrupted in a way that will transform the majority of the remaining forest into savanna. This is not a claim that I can confirm or refute using google maps.
  - malandrew 7y ago
    Deforestation of 20-25% or more is not uncommon at smaller scales and I know of no such example where such an area transformed to savanna.
    - truculent 7y ago
      Smaller scale transformation won’t interact with global complex systems like the water cycle in the same way. You can’t make that comparison.
    - kingbirdy 7y ago
      Do you know of any examples where the forest that was de-forested 25% was the Amazon or another tropical rainforest? Obviously if a pine barren is deforested 25% it won't turn in to savannah.
  - goldforever 7y ago
    lol...20-25%, who actually knows...stop listening to these BS news sites!
newsat13 7y ago
Unless we as a society return to a simpler lifestyle of living, I see this as an unsolvable problem. For example, everyone in the US is trumpeting climate change and what not. And yet just walk into any starbucks and any supermarket and restaurant - none of that stuff is really recyclable. People generate tons of trash by using home delivery packages via amazon and non-recyclable food containers. Cars everywhere and completely unmaintained public transport. People really aren't willing to make a change but will go on about paris agreement and hate on trump. Their actions and life style say otherwise. What is then wrong with people in other countries wanting a similar life style?
- ropiwqefjnpoa 7y ago
  What no one wants to admit is that our modern way of life is totally unsustainable on any level. Plastic straw bans and the like help us feel like where at least trying, but it's all just band-aids on a gaping wound. Then corporations try and shift the blame to the consumer at the same time making us us dependent on their products as soon as we're born.
- fromthestart 7y ago
  >Unless we as a society return to a simpler lifestyle of living, I see this as an unsolvable problem. There's no reason to presume that it isn't possible to retain our current standard of living while also solving the problem through technological innovation - we've arguably had the solution for decades in the form of nuclear, and we're inching closer every day with developments in non-nuclear renewables and outside of the energy space with innovation in farming (outdoor and indoor/vertical, GMO) and material design. Despite the doom and gloom, talk along the lines of 12 years before irreversible runaway into catastrophe is really a worst case estimate. Chances are we will have plenty of time to develop technology to slow climate change and adapt to its effects in the coming decades, particularly given that it is a rising concern among citizens the world over. Honestly, given how much of our infrastructure is dependent on fossil fuels and environmentally unfriendly materials, it simply isn't practical to make the kind of radical transition you're advocating for - our entire food chain, for example relies on modern plastics and ICEs for delivery/storage. The waste you describe from e.g. Starbucks and packaging is probably a small percentage of the waste that our modern civilization is structured upon, even if you convinced everyone to drastically lower their standard of living overnight. Balancing risk with cost, this is a transition that cannot happen overnight anyway.
abhisuri97 7y ago
Really tangential...but major props to the time mag web dev team for making an unobtrusive reading experience that has graphics and animations that are helpful for driving home key points of the story.
toptal 7y ago
Wait a second, there was just a report put out by NASA that stated the world is become more green, specifically citing the Amazon Rain Forest as an area that’s more green than it was 20 years ago. Something seems completely wrong here. https://www.forbes.com/sites/trevornace/2019/02/28/nasa-says-earth-is-greener-today-than-20-years-ago-thanks-to-china-india/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/trevornace/2019/02/28/nasa-says...
- theferalrobot 7y ago
  Also a report from NASA that the fires in the Amazon were only slightly higher than normal - less than the levels seen in 2010. https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/145498/uptick-in-amazon-fire-activity-in-2019 https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/145498/uptick-in-am...
  - toptal 7y ago
    Right, something seems very off with this journalism here.
- 9nGQluzmnq3M 7y ago
  That article doesn't even mention the Amazon? Per the chart, Brazil's net change in leaf area since the 1990s is a fat 0%. That said, I do wonder if replacing rainforest with soybeans counts as no change in leaf area.
  - toptal 7y ago
    The article doesn’t, however the study does. You can see it’s circled in the map along with China and India. Read the study.
- throwaway5752 7y ago
  Well, you're linking to Forbes, for starters. Even though it's a generally a terrible source of information, the article literally tells you in the headline that "NASA Says Earth Is Greener Today Than 20 Years Ago Thanks To China, India" It says nothing about the Amazon, which is being cut down and burned down by people. You can see the Amazon as the big tan/light green blob in northern South America in the image in the article. There is just about no net greening. Greening is delta in LAI. You can burn down a rain forest and have a bunch of grass in it's place and there will be no net greening, but on the net it will release a ton of CO2 and destroy the environment.
jtchang 7y ago
The US did the same thing with a lot of our natural resources in the past century. it does seem somewhat hypocritical to not let other countries do what we have previously done. What we did was wrong but it also allowed the US to grow to what it is today.
- zanny 7y ago
  Two wrongs don't make a right. No, it is not owed due to the rising nations of the world to let them continue to devastate the climate in the way first world powers have. And continue to. Its easier to point fingers than take responsibility of course. Hence why very little actually gets done to combat climate change. Brazil burns the Amazon, Americans throw out of a ton of plastic a year each, and humanity cooks itself complicit in its own destruction.
wefarrell 7y ago
We need an economic framework that makes it more profitable to keep the forest intact than to burn it down and plant soybeans. It's hypocritical to point the finger at Brazil for exploiting their natural resources when developed countries got rich by doing the same. If we want to prioritize biodiversity and oxygen generation then we should pay the Amazonian countries for it.
amriksohata 7y ago
All for meat farming

110 points by rblion 7y ago

Yes the Amazon rainforrest is nearly gone and it should have been protected better but also all other countries forrests should have been protected, for example where there were massive forrests across europe that were destroyed centuries ago for building things like towns, cathedrals and castles and for firewood.. these should be at least in some significant part re-grown.

FooHentai 7y ago
>destroyed centuries ago for building things like towns, cathedrals and castles and for firewood Agree with your point entirely but also want to mention that the motivation behind not re-growing is land-clearing for reasons not stated i.e. farmland, transport infrastructure, housing. The use of wood for building materials and even firewood is carbon neutral if appropriately managed, it's those specific motivations to keep the land cleared that have led to an overall draw-down of forest cover. You can't restore cover without addressing the motivations for clearing it, and use of wood for building/heat is a bit of a red herring in that sense.
_iyig 7y ago
"Two decades after its fall, the border between East and West Germany would become Europe's biggest nature reserve: an 858-mile "ecological treasure trove", no longer the Iron Curtain but the Green Belt, and home to more than 600 rare and endangered species of birds, mammals, plants and insects." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Green_Belt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Green_Belt
- Merrill 7y ago
  The area around Chernobyl is another example. If you get rid of people, the ecosystem recovers pretty rapidly. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_Without_Us https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_Without_Us
  - jbarham 7y ago
    And the Korean DMZ: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/apr/13/wildlife-thriving-korean-demilitarised-zone https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/apr/13/wildlife...
bamboozled 7y ago
Also there is nothing stopping developed nations from protecting what they have already and actually regenerating forests. I guess most people in Western Democracies are more worried about what everyone else is doing while our own politician ruin everything.
- kortilla 7y ago
  Not really. At least not in the US. Deforestation is pretty heavily controlled.

justinmk 7y ago

If the world cares about it then the world should pay for it. Not sanctions, nor sanctimony. Buy the land. It would be expensive, but that just reflects the value to the people you're buying it from. And it's an actual, concrete action that can be taken, instead of the vague global warming solutions that just tweak domestic parameters and send tax money to the black hole of the state budget.

throwaway66920 7y ago
What happens when you buy the land and then people burn it down anyway and steal it back?
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- WilliamEdward 7y ago
  I presume buying the rights to the land also gives you the rights to stop these people with force.
  - ufo 7y ago
    The current deforestation is already driven by illegal trespassers. Changing the ownership on paper won't change anything
manigandham 7y ago
Buying the land doesn't do anything unless its protected by armed forces.
- javert 7y ago
  I'm pretty sure Brazil would be delighted to receive a regular check from the rest of the world in exchange for defending part of the rainforest. As long as they get their cut, they're going to be happy. Just make the payments conditional on the continued protection of the forest; otherwise they can be expected to renege eventually. This is exactly what it means to "buy property," by the way: nobody else can use it and the government enforces that if necessary using men with guns. So what I'm suggesting is only a slight refinement of the normal and expected arrangement when buying property.

alistproducer2 7y ago

I find it hard to take news outlets seriously on this subject when they keep the kid gloves on concerning the current president of Brazil. The reticence to call his "victory" what it really was: a coup. The intercept [0] laid out the fact that his opponent, who was slated to win in a landslide, was jailed and convicted by a judge who was working in concert with the prosecutor to ensure a conviction. If the aim was to do real journalism and speak truth to power, then outlets would call if like it is and convey zero legitimacy to the current administration. [0]: https://theintercept.com/series/secret-brazil-archive/ https://theintercept.com/series/secret-brazil-archive/

moroisahero 7y ago
I, as a brazilian, find it hard to take your comment seriously. First of all, judge Moro is a national hero, and recent polls still show him as the most admired public figure in the country. Leading operation Car Wash, he was responsible to (finally!) jail many of the most powerful politics and businessman in Brasil, due to disgusting corruption and shameless kickback schemes. All his convictions were backed by mountains and mountains of evidence, and upheld in at least 3 different upper courts, including our Supreme Court. There were more than 100 convictions from politics from the entire political spectrum by Judge Moro, from right to left. Operation Car Wash has already recovered more than 8 Billion in assets stolen from public companies. "His opponent" that you mentioned is President Lula, today recognized as the leader of a criminal organization that stole literally billions from Brazil. He currently serves a sentence from receiving a penthouse as bribe (there are even pictures of him inside the apartment, and the owner of the building company that built it testified about the whole scheme). Trust me, jailing him was not easy, giving the enormous support he had due to him (or his political party) being in power from 2003-2016 (btw, during this time they also managed to destroy our economy - we'll end this decade as the worst in economical terms of the last 120 years). The are other 8 criminal lawsuits against former president Lula, and he has already been convicted (by a different Judge) in another one about "the ranch in Atibaia", which he also denied being his, even tough prosecution proved it was actually received by him as bribe: the place had paddle boats with the names of his grandsons, the master bedroom had all his wife's medicines on the counter top and even dinner tables had their names engraved, there were even regular e-mails from the manager of the ranch to the president updating him with the most detailed events... there's a 20 page PDF by our FBI with pictures of all the evidence. About the alleged collusion between Judge Moro and the prosecution, you just need to read the Intercept messages by yourself to see that absolutely nothing wrong happened there. It's normal for the Judge to talk with the prosecution in a criminal case, as he needs to collect opinions before his rulings. What happened in Brazil is that a "crazy judge" and some "crazy prosecutors" decided to change the "status quo" and finally put an end to the shameless multi-billion stealing that was going on for the last decade, lead by former president Lula and his political associates. If you think these Judges and Prosecutors would achieve those results without a lot of backing from the public opinion, you must only be naive. Some of those messages show exactly that: Judge and Prosecutor talking about how shadowy manouvers to discredit the operation needed to be brought to light so the public could protest and react and prevent them. Extra credit to them for doing that and going the extra mile, all within the law. After President Bolsonaro was elected, he invited Judge Moro to talk, and he accepted to leave the Judiciary Branch to serve as Minister of Justice, and he'll probably be appointed to be a Supreme Court Justice when the next position opens (Bolsonaro will be able to appoint 2 seats during his term, during to retirements). Props to Bolsonaro for doing that. After all these messages came out between Moro and Prosecution were published (all criminally obtained by a Hacker, I must point out), Judge Moro put it best: "parturiunt montes, nascetur ridiculus mus".

Merrill 7y ago

If you look at the State of Amazonas, Brazil on Google maps satellite view, it appears to be largely untouched. Rondonia and Matto Grosso are the states most affected by deforestation. Other large parts of the Amazon rain forest in other states of Brazil and in Peru, Colombia and Venezuela are also intact. Don't take Time's word for it - go look yourself.

mac01021 7y ago
The claim in the article is that the deforestation is approaching 20% of the original forest and that, once that number reaches 20-25%, the water cycle will be disrupted in a way that will transform the majority of the remaining forest into savanna. This is not a claim that I can confirm or refute using google maps.
- malandrew 7y ago
  Deforestation of 20-25% or more is not uncommon at smaller scales and I know of no such example where such an area transformed to savanna.
  - truculent 7y ago
    Smaller scale transformation won’t interact with global complex systems like the water cycle in the same way. You can’t make that comparison.
  - kingbirdy 7y ago
    Do you know of any examples where the forest that was de-forested 25% was the Amazon or another tropical rainforest? Obviously if a pine barren is deforested 25% it won't turn in to savannah.
- goldforever 7y ago
  lol...20-25%, who actually knows...stop listening to these BS news sites!

newsat13 7y ago

Unless we as a society return to a simpler lifestyle of living, I see this as an unsolvable problem. For example, everyone in the US is trumpeting climate change and what not. And yet just walk into any starbucks and any supermarket and restaurant - none of that stuff is really recyclable. People generate tons of trash by using home delivery packages via amazon and non-recyclable food containers. Cars everywhere and completely unmaintained public transport. People really aren't willing to make a change but will go on about paris agreement and hate on trump. Their actions and life style say otherwise. What is then wrong with people in other countries wanting a similar life style?

ropiwqefjnpoa 7y ago
What no one wants to admit is that our modern way of life is totally unsustainable on any level. Plastic straw bans and the like help us feel like where at least trying, but it's all just band-aids on a gaping wound. Then corporations try and shift the blame to the consumer at the same time making us us dependent on their products as soon as we're born.
fromthestart 7y ago
>Unless we as a society return to a simpler lifestyle of living, I see this as an unsolvable problem. There's no reason to presume that it isn't possible to retain our current standard of living while also solving the problem through technological innovation - we've arguably had the solution for decades in the form of nuclear, and we're inching closer every day with developments in non-nuclear renewables and outside of the energy space with innovation in farming (outdoor and indoor/vertical, GMO) and material design. Despite the doom and gloom, talk along the lines of 12 years before irreversible runaway into catastrophe is really a worst case estimate. Chances are we will have plenty of time to develop technology to slow climate change and adapt to its effects in the coming decades, particularly given that it is a rising concern among citizens the world over. Honestly, given how much of our infrastructure is dependent on fossil fuels and environmentally unfriendly materials, it simply isn't practical to make the kind of radical transition you're advocating for - our entire food chain, for example relies on modern plastics and ICEs for delivery/storage. The waste you describe from e.g. Starbucks and packaging is probably a small percentage of the waste that our modern civilization is structured upon, even if you convinced everyone to drastically lower their standard of living overnight. Balancing risk with cost, this is a transition that cannot happen overnight anyway.

abhisuri97 7y ago

Really tangential...but major props to the time mag web dev team for making an unobtrusive reading experience that has graphics and animations that are helpful for driving home key points of the story.

toptal 7y ago

Wait a second, there was just a report put out by NASA that stated the world is become more green, specifically citing the Amazon Rain Forest as an area that’s more green than it was 20 years ago. Something seems completely wrong here. https://www.forbes.com/sites/trevornace/2019/02/28/nasa-says-earth-is-greener-today-than-20-years-ago-thanks-to-china-india/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/trevornace/2019/02/28/nasa-says...

theferalrobot 7y ago
Also a report from NASA that the fires in the Amazon were only slightly higher than normal - less than the levels seen in 2010. https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/145498/uptick-in-amazon-fire-activity-in-2019 https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/145498/uptick-in-am...
- toptal 7y ago
  Right, something seems very off with this journalism here.
9nGQluzmnq3M 7y ago
That article doesn't even mention the Amazon? Per the chart, Brazil's net change in leaf area since the 1990s is a fat 0%. That said, I do wonder if replacing rainforest with soybeans counts as no change in leaf area.
- toptal 7y ago
  The article doesn’t, however the study does. You can see it’s circled in the map along with China and India. Read the study.
throwaway5752 7y ago
Well, you're linking to Forbes, for starters. Even though it's a generally a terrible source of information, the article literally tells you in the headline that "NASA Says Earth Is Greener Today Than 20 Years Ago Thanks To China, India" It says nothing about the Amazon, which is being cut down and burned down by people. You can see the Amazon as the big tan/light green blob in northern South America in the image in the article. There is just about no net greening. Greening is delta in LAI. You can burn down a rain forest and have a bunch of grass in it's place and there will be no net greening, but on the net it will release a ton of CO2 and destroy the environment.

jtchang 7y ago

The US did the same thing with a lot of our natural resources in the past century. it does seem somewhat hypocritical to not let other countries do what we have previously done. What we did was wrong but it also allowed the US to grow to what it is today.

zanny 7y ago
Two wrongs don't make a right. No, it is not owed due to the rising nations of the world to let them continue to devastate the climate in the way first world powers have. And continue to. Its easier to point fingers than take responsibility of course. Hence why very little actually gets done to combat climate change. Brazil burns the Amazon, Americans throw out of a ton of plastic a year each, and humanity cooks itself complicit in its own destruction.

wefarrell 7y ago

We need an economic framework that makes it more profitable to keep the forest intact than to burn it down and plant soybeans. It's hypocritical to point the finger at Brazil for exploiting their natural resources when developed countries got rich by doing the same. If we want to prioritize biodiversity and oxygen generation then we should pay the Amazonian countries for it.

amriksohata 7y ago

All for meat farming