Ancient Amazon Rainforests Mowed for Soybean Farms
The Amazon, the Earth's mightiest life-giving rainforest, is being bulldozed to grow soybeans. What sort of species destroys 60 million year old ecosystems upon which they depend for habitat - air, water, soil and weather - for short term economic benefits for the few? What will humans do when the biosphere is no longer able to maintain the narrow band of conditions conducive for human life? When will indigenous peoples that understand we are of the land stop being abused and instead be embraced?
What is to be done? Not buy soybeans? Boycott Brazil? Peaceful protest? Armed revolution? Or live life as we are while we can?
This I know. There is one Earth. Natural ecosystems are a requirement for, and the basis of, human societies and economies. Human numbers are too high, and their combined impact has fractured these ecosystems. Gaia, the global ecosystem in whole, is being slain by you and me. If one looks carefully, increasingly signs of collapsing ecosystems are evident in lands, tides, winds and waters; whose natural services can never be engineered.
There is still hope, but time is short. The human family will stop and reverse land, water, ocean and climate degradation, or civilization will die an ignoble and miserable death. It is a requirement for human survival that no more ancient rainforests are lost or diminished.
Comments
Please help us fight to keep a nature preserve from being destroyed in Armenia!
http://www.blogrel.com/category/shikahogh/ for more information.
Posted by: Katy | June 14, 2005 4:38 PM
Glen,
How about resources, such as 'sound' research, books, websites, etc. for blogs such as www.environmentalsustainability.info ?
I suggest The World According to Pimm
the recent 3-part series in The New Yorker
http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?050509fa_fact3
and the website documenting the entire process of designing / building / monitoring a 'zero carbon' house www.revelle.net and click on 'energy efficient house.'
I encourage people to visualize action at a personal level and from grass roots leaders.
Thank you for all that you are doing! I have seen 'spin' on the growing Brazilian soybean crop and wondered how this just seemed to pop up from nowhere . . .
Posted by: John Porterfield | June 16, 2005 7:15 PM
I was wondering in the "Roadless Rule" are the lands that are talked about agriculturly wealthy or are they just forests?
Posted by: Levi Thorngate | September 7, 2006 8:30 PM