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Headlines : EnvironmentAmazonian rainforest could shrink by 40% before 2050
“Considered to be the planet’s richest biological reserve, it is home to millions of insects, countless amphibians, reptiles, snakes like the powerful anaconda, thousands of bird species, with many forms of life in Amazonia yet to be catalogued.“
Our rainforest is under attack. While we see a beautiful tropical paradise, teeming with life, the capitalist sees a fortune waiting to be made. As they cut down our forests in country after country, continent after continent, they destroy a little bit of history. The Earth bleeds wherever they go, and little is done to stop them.
Take our rainforests away and soon all we will have left is barren arid land, much like that of the Middle East. After all the smoke settles, and every last dime has been accounted for, then will we see what we have allowed to happen.
[Posted By Dilated_Rebel]Republished from Granma Internacional
CUBAN experts who participated in the “The Amazon to the Caribbean by Canoe” expedition, in recounting that experience, believe that one of the problems they identified 20 years ago – deforestation – is more present than ever on the continent, and has become a serious threat to the survival of humanity.
In a recent report published in the British magazine Nature, Brazilian scientist Britaldo Silveira Soares-Filho warns that if human beings do not change the way they are using the rainforest and strengthen its conservation, its size will shrink from 5.3 million to 3.2 million square kilometers before the year 2050; this means that the equivalent of 40% of the Amazons could disappear.
The rainforests of the Amazon or Amazonia, as it also is known, surround the Amazon River and its basin. With seven million square kilometers spread through eight nations (Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru, Surinam and Venezuela), it is the largest tropical rainforest in the world.
Posted by Dilated_Rebel
Born and raised very humbly in a “small town” in southern California, I was a product of different worlds. Literally, part of my family descends from Mexico the rest from Portugal and Uruguay. This mixture had kept me from supporting any racist psyche found...
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Trouble is, a lot of the Amazon has already disappeared. From Kotke’s Final Empire written in 1993: It is estimated that more than one third of the earth was forested prior to the culture of empire [civilization]. This is roughly 30 billion hectares (nearly 94 billion acres).1 The most recent estimates show that only about a tenth of the forests remain, some 4 billion hectares (about 9.9 billion acres).2 It is important to note here that these figures refer to any assemblage of trees, not just the climax ecosystems. The amount of uninjured old growth forest remaining has never been calculated; indeed, this minuscule, high-value remainder is so much in demand by the timber industries of the world that any calculation would be immediately outdated because the trees are disappearing so fast.
It’s a shame. I watch our northeastern(PA&WV) rainforest disappear everyday. A lot of it is made into shipping pilates that are used once and burned, or just left to rot.
I worked at a resort built on the wealth of 84 Lumber. The degree of waste and incompetence was sickening. A small example of the countries problems as a whole.