| Subject: I've just read in my latest Economist that deforestation has dropped by 30% each of the last two years... |
Author:
bubba
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Date Posted: 07:15:02 11/09/06 Thu
In reply to:
DE
's message, "Still winning..." on 05:02:58 11/09/06 Thu
...of course you don't garner contributions from lefty foundations or individual donors by highlighting the good news, do you?
>Environmental Group Says Record Rain Forest
>Destruction under Brazil's Silva
>
>November 09, 2006 — By Vivian Sequera, Associated
>Press
>BRASILIA, Brazil — More of the Amazon rain forest has
>been destroyed during the administration of President
>Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva than during any other
>four-year period since 1988, an environmental group
>said Wednesday.
>
>According to Instituto Socioambiental, the Amazon lost
>some 33,000 square miles (84,000 square kilometers) of
>forest cover -- an area larger than the U.S. state of
>South Carolina -- during Silva's first term beginning
>in 2003. Silva was re-elected on Oct. 29.
>
>By comparison, the Amazon lost some 30,000 square
>miles (77,700 square kilometers) under the second term
>of previous President Fernando Henrique Cardoso, said
>Ines Zanchetta, a spokeswoman for the group. The
>government began keeping records on Amazon
>deforestation rates in 1988.
>
>Last month, the Brazilian government announced that
>rain forest destruction had fallen for the second year
>in a row to its lowest rate since 1991.
>
>"While we applaud the fact that the deforestation rate
>has gone down over the past two years ... the total
>amount of forest that has been destroyed during
>Silva's first four years in office is greater than the
>amount that was destroyed in either of Cardoso's two
>four-year terms," Zanchetta said.
>
>The group said the rain forest is currently
>disappearing at the rate of about five football fields
>per minute.
>
>Joao Paulo Capobianco, the Environment Ministry's
>secretary of biodiversity and forests, dismissed the
>group's conclusions as "nonsense."
>
>"The data is correct, but the analysis is wrong," he
>said.
>
>Capobianco said the group failed to take into account
>that deforestation began to rise steadily after 2000,
>early in Cardoso's second term, and Silva's
>administration had reversed that trend.
>
>According to figures released by the environmental
>ministry, about 5,100 square miles (13,100 square
>kilometers) of rain forest were destroyed this year --
>the lowest level since 4,300 square miles (11,000
>square kilometers) were lost in 1991.
>
>A record 11,200 square miles (29,000 square kilometer)
>were lost in 1995.
>
>Environmentalists praised government efforts to step
>up enforcement of environmental regulations, but said
>deforestation has slowed largely because of a drop in
>the price of soybeans and the strengthening of
>Brazil's currency, making it less profitable to clear
>the rain forest to grow the crop.
>
>Destroying trees through burning contributes to global
>warming, releasing about 370 million tons of
>greenhouse gases into the atmosphere every year --
>about 5 percent of the world total -- scientists say.
>
>The rain forest covers 60 percent of Brazil. Experts
>say as much as 20 percent of its 1.6 million square
>miles (4.1 million square kilometers) has already been
>destroyed by development, logging and farming.
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