Fighting deforestation of the rainforest
© 2001 Cable News Network
October 19, 2001
AmazonQuest is an interactive expedition developed by Classroom Connect. For five weeks, a team of scientists and explorers are examining one of the most distinctive and most threatened environments on Earth: the Amazon River basin.
The beauty of the Amazon, the Quest team suggests, can offer "the perfect remedy in a world that may otherwise be uncertain -- nature provides a tonic we all need to counteract suffering."
Last night I had a scary thought: What if all the world's forests were turned into newspapers?
Remar Sutton, a Washington Post reporter and friend of the Quest team, arrived at our boat yesterday from the United States. We surrounded him like he was Santa Claus, knowing his red sack contained treats we'd been missing from home: M&Ms, People magazine and a recent copy of the Sunday New York Times.
I'd read that it takes approximately 7,500 trees to print a Sunday edition of the New York Times. After writing up my report for the night, I headed back to my room with the newspaper, thinking hard about this disturbing statistic.
What I read in the pages of the Times disturbed me even more. Anthrax attacks in New York. Bombings in Afghanistan. Racist threats against Muslims in the U.S. After weeks of floating through a jungle paradise, the grim reality of a country gripped by fear flooded my mind. I barely slept as I replayed the images I'd seen.
When I got up today, I was surprised to find the most extraordinary beauty just outside my door. The morning sun grazed endless treetops with its golden warmth, and a pink dolphin came up for air just 20 feet away, shattering the murky calm and sending ripples downstream.
I have to admit that before this morning, I'd been taking the rainforest for granted. Down here in the Amazon, you can't turn around without bumping into a tree. It's hard, here in the thick of it, to believe the rainforest is in trouble, but statistics drive the point home:
- Sixty-four acres of rainforest are cut down every minute .
- Unless action is taken, all tropical rainforests could be gone in the next 50 years.
So the rainforest is in trouble -- we've confirmed that. Now, why should we care?
I could cite the usual sound bites: world's highest biodiversity, "lungs of the world," possible cures for cancer.
But, deep down, I've come to agree with John Terborgh, a biologist who's worked his whole life in Peru's rainforests. In a controversial new book called "Requiem for Nature" he argues that, like it or not, rainforests are worth more money dead than alive. That's the harsh truth. If we're going to save rainforests, we have to be motivated by something more powerful than money, but more rare: Love. We should save rainforests, Terborgh says, because the world would be far less colorful, less beautiful and less meaningful without them. It's that simple.
So that leads us to the focus of today's "Make A Difference": What can people do at home if they want to fight deforestation and save the rainforests? A few telling statistics might help us to answer that question:
- The average American citizen consumes seven times as much commercial wood and paper as citizens in other countries.
Environmentalists say deforestation is a serious problem in the Amazon rainforest. The Quest team suggests you consider changing the way you use wood and paper products at home so that destruction of trees becomes less profitable.
- Americans throw away the equivalent of 30 million trees in newsprint per year.
- Recycling a two-and-a-half foot stack of newspapers saves one 20-foot pine tree.
For this Week's "Make A Difference," Sarah Kast, our crack researcher in Minneapolis, has helped us to put together a proclamation you may want to consider signing onto. It means committing yourself to making a difference for rainforests by changing your own behavior.
After last night, I've decided to spend my last week in the Amazon watching trees and not reading newspapers.
Chasing hope,
John