We are our own predator. Kinda sad our time here will be marked in the geological record by radioactive particles, chicken bones, and plastics. Oh well. I am a part of the cliff.
I agree that eventually the amount of beef consumed by everyone globally has got to decline for humanity tonsurvive, and we mayas well start now by taxing it more heavily. This kind of thing has a long tail though on the supply chain. It will not stop things from being slashed and burned at the behest of large Brazilian agribusiness concerns today. The key point your missing is that the current Brazilian president, a vile, petty, stupid and corrupt man, corruptly installed. is openly trying to destroy the Amazon; he campaigned on it. This isn't just poor people trying to subsist. It's deliberate destruction. Deforestation of the Amazon is not a side effect it's these idiots policy. If we had a President who was not himself monumentally vile, stupid, petty and corrupt, perhaps we could use international leadership and influence on this issue. But in 2.5 short years we have squandered seemingly everything that we sacrificed for from 1941-2017
Military action is a solution, but as usual should be a last resort and should be from a multi nations agreement. We all live in the same house but some leader and people seem to think they can isolate themselves safely in their tiny little box and isn’t dependent on anyone, anything. Those people won’t raise up and lead to a solution, so hopefully other nations and leaders will step up and fill in the void that we once occupy.
I think ultimately if highly developed countries want to stop less developed countries from using their own resources (like we developed countries do) in order to benefit everyone, that the developed countries need to pay. This is a problem we won't be having with just Brazil and South America, this is all undeveloped countries and regions of the world. Africa, India, China, Southeast Asia. I don't know if you guys understand just how pathetic it looks to have people in this thread, on our laptops/smartphones, in the united states of America, with our past, with our president, with our energy consumption, with our complete disregard for our environment, with our complete disregard for the world's environment... to sit here and say, hey we should go invade and start world war 3 over a country clearing it's own trees for economic gain. And to be clear, you can call the guy evil and say he campaigned on it, and I'd agree, but make no mistake, it's 100% is done for economic purposes and has zero to do with anything else. It 100% is the poor trying to subsist, it 100% is the rich trying to become richer, it's capitalism, it's the Brazilian economy. You noted yourself, their president is just a Trump copy cat, again what moral ground would we have invading a country (starting ww3) who is only trying to follow our very own footsteps?... If we don't want undeveloped countries to do what we did to get where we are... then we need bridge that gap for them, or just be quiet and let them **** the world like we're doing. Americans use nearly 5x more energy per capita then Brazilians. America makes 5000 (15% of world emissions) tons of carbon, Brazil makes 450 (1% of world emissions) tons of carbon. Americans produce 6.5x more carbon then Brazilians do per capita. America is 33% forest, Brazil is 56% forest. Who needs to invade who?
Good points. But could we really pay our way out of this or to any countries and people that are damaging our shared environment? It seems that once we start to do this on a large scale, it would encourage bad behaviors. Paid me or else I will pollute the already polluted ocean to a point of no return. My forest is about to get burnt down, pony up. The crux of the problem is we have not value the environment in our capitalist and global trade system. We, the world of powerful nations, need to place a real value there and suddenly the cost of production at the expense of the environment (below sustainability) is no longer profitable there or here or anywhere. In fact, given the devastating we have already done, we pay you when you produce the cleaning up of air and water.
That graphic doesn't make sense. 1/3 of the US is still covered in forest. We have 70% of what we had before in 1620
That’s a old growth native forest map. Meaning we’ve cut essentially all of our trees down before at one time or another.
Back in college 20 years ago I wrote a paper outlining what would happen in the World between then and 2050. One of my predictions was that once World powers realized the extent of the damage caused by Climate Change that they would militarily intervene in the Third World to protect remaining resources and take out polluting infrastructure. My prediction was based on the idea that if things got really bad and the causes were clear it would be easier for wealthy countries to look for shortsighted solutions including using the military to try to solve issues.
I had a Beyond burger last night and it was pretty good. If you haven't tried one of the new generation of meat substitutes I highly recommend it. Besides changing our consumption culture we need to find a way to help countries like Brazil, Indonesia and the Congo economically develop in a way that also addresses the value of their resources. This is another area where I think the protectionist tendencies sweeping both the left and the right is misguided. What we need to do is figure out ways to monetize resources like the Amazon. For example ways of licensing drug and other developments from the biodiversity of the Amazon.
Here's the graphic you were responding to... And here is a map of United States farm land: Now explain to me how deforestation in the United States is due to American farms?
There aren't farms in the south and midwest? The other issue is we are more knowledgeable now. Edit: thats current. Colonists had to eat food to
You must have trouble reading maps. The majority of farms in the United States are in the middle part of the map... where the maps showing forests had the fewest forests. You literally could overlay the two maps to see that.
Colonists had to eat to Edit: your map is current. You do understand colonists weren't importing food right? Also do you eat meat?
