Are there products from the amazonian rainforest that could be harvested in a sustainable way? We could buy those. I've seen some kind of "jungle peanut" for sale that purportedly only grows in dense forest - perhaps there are more items like this?
It also doesn’t work if some countries can capitalize on their natural resources, and others can’t. We also have something to gain from rainforest protection.
It does work. Besides, you don't need to pay people not to do things. Just punish them if they do. If I were to cut down my trees, I'd have to pay fines. If it weren't easier to slash and burn, they'd find ways to grow profitable crops in, or otherwise utilize, the existing forest.
Costa Rica changed its economy from fishing to tourism fairly effectively. Just have a conversation with a fisherman turned whale boat operator for some good lessons on that next time you're down there.
Pay no attention to the vast palm tree plantations that decimated the natural forest though. That's a side point.
I'd be all for it if this actually worked. I'm just not convinced that their government would be willing to cooperate (and able) to enfore such the rules against farmers trying to clear the woodland.
If a business behaves in a way you don't agree with it's perfectly reasonable to cease purchasing from them. Of course this move punishes soy growers who aren't responsible and turns them into collateral damage, but a move like this isn't meant to punish the soy growers as much as it is the Brazilian government (who are much better able to control the situation than a foreign power) for allowing the behavior to continue.
You can't stop it absolutely, but you can in effect by taking away the economic reason that it occurs. The primary reason the deforestation is happening is to open up land to produce agricultural products for export (primarily soy and cattle). If the importing countries cease to import the product, Brazil loses the economic reason to produce more (and as much) and open up more land via deforestation.
My impression is that the current administration in Brazil really does not care at all about deforestation, and hasn't been the best at respecting contracts, so refusing to buy is more likely to work.
My understanding is that it's the current administration that's the one demanding payment from the world in return for forgoing the economic growth that might be realized by deforestation.
Considering that the Amazon is pretty essential for the global environment, this strikes me as an aggressively reasonable approach.
And my understanding is that the entire world would be a better place if we could all hold hands and sing kumbaya.
These are fanciful ideals, but where the rubber meets the road, there are real tradeoffs with real consequences. The best we can do is make sure that we apply incentives to ensure that people do the "right" thing.
Will you also pay Russia and Canada in proportion to the forest that they are not cutting? Because if you start paying for every tree not cut you will get bankrupt very soon and suddenly you will see a lot of tree that could have been cut everywhere.
Wellyou shoul be paying them for the oxygen you consume. It's an externality and if it's not moetised it won't get protected within a market capitalist framework.
I think boycotts are fair, and protests, and labor strikes. These are the only thing that have ever moved companies to change their behavior.
Even tax hikes and stricter regulations they seem to skirt.
There's some who'd say boycotts are bad, stop cancel culture...except when THEY are doing the canceling. Look at the political right in America... STOP CANCEL CULTURE...but you can cancel Liz Cheney and Mitt Romney, we don't want them anymore...
I mean elections are all about "Cancel Culture" your vote can change who's elected canceling the person who was there before.
If you think Walmart is evil and Target is less evil you can vote with your dollars and only shop at Costco which is less evil than both of those... or a worker co-op like Winco (my favorite, but closest one is 4 hours away).
Because China plays by the rules, unlike France which bullies its African de facto colonies into propping up leaders who are favorable to the shitty, one-sided trade "agreements" that France proposes.
China is the biggest importer of agricultural things. They can't produce locally all the food they eat. And Europe is exporting a lot of wheat and other corns to China.
Maybe we can start to put some pressure on them finally ;)
I don't think EU will be able to put any pressure on China with food.
China still has a lot of different levers in case they lack food. Remember that the US deal actually forced them to buy american agricultural products.
They also banned most of Australia food imports since they asked for an international investigation on SARS-CoV-2 origins. They could just lift this ban and Australian politics and farmers would jump on the occasion.
There are so many countries who are willing to sell no matter what and no matter who as long as the price is good, and China has a lot of money.
Yeah, I don’t understand why small positive changes always are met with “doesn’t matter”. It doesn’t matter in the same way that not littering, turning off the lights, reducing consumption and waste, donating to charity, or voting “doesn’t matter”. Let’s not promote this faulty way of thinking
In fairness, individual action that isn't collective doesn't scale from one person to 8 billion. But there are a lot fewer countries than people, and something like this is designed to put pressure on other countries as much as it is to make a dent on its own---it's supposed to spur collective action not be an isolated individual example.
Let's extend the headline to "As Amazon deforestation hits 12 year high, France rejects Brazilian soy in consideration of climate change."
Now, let's take the headline and put it into a magical machine that turn what the idealistic well-meaning activists and politicians wanted to happen to the immediate practical outcome of the action.
The magical machine that replaces the intention with the practical outcome of the action is simply replacing "climate change" with "the western nations must consume less because China needs cheap commodities and needs to have a competitive advantage over the west to become the dominant global power". Climate change activism in its practical aspect seems to be a never-ending "prisoners dilemma" where the west always cooperates and China always defects.
Let's try some more common headlines:
"Western nations must reduce their gasoline consumption because of climate change"
"We should stop having children because of climate change"
"We should stop eating meat because of climate change"
Meanwhile China built 3x more coal plants last year than the rest of the world combined.
If France wants to make this meaningful, it also has to stop importing Brazilian beef. Soy is mainly used to feed cattle, so just banning soy imports sounds like a political move without real will to me.
If they wanted to make it meaningful they would pull out of their parasitic trade agreements with all the African countries that are still de facto colonized by them.
For one, it's pretty bad for the environment. I hope you can agree with me that there is a consensus on this. From land use to transportation, to every other part of the supply chain (antibiotics, methane emissions, manure). Downsizing the meat industry would do quite a bit for the environment.
Secondly, meat is more expensive than plant-based products, generally.
It also spoils faster, and I wouldn't eat spoiled meat, as opposed to spoiled vegetables. Quality control is way more important as to avoid parasites, prions, etc.
Let's skip animal suffering.
I suppose you are getting to the last point, health benefits? I have little data on this myself, and health comes from such a maze of interactions that I don't find it surprising experts disagree, especially if you throw in various lobbies. Moreover, the answer likely depends on a person's ethnicity. However, there seems to be plenty of evidence that (a) excessive meat (or rich foods) intake is bad for your health, (b) eating a variety of products is better, (c) eating some meat, or substitutes, is required for a healthy diet.
The uncertainty seems to be on what exactly constitutes "too much" meat.
I don't think "all around" was meant to encompass anything else; are you thinking of something else specifically?
What percentage of its old growth forests does France retain?
If the answer is a very small number, doesn't that make historical France guilty of what these measures seek to prevent happening in Brazil?
To the extent this is a moral argument, shouldn't France atone for its misdeeds by regenerating wild forests, to be left unmolested in perpetuity?
If nobody is advocating any such thing, perhaps this isn't a moral argument, or even an environmental argument. Perhaps it's an economic initiative from the people who stand to gain from the French production of soy beans.
The french government has actively promoted the growth of forests / their management for over a century. Today, there are more acres of forests than at the turn of the twentieth century for example.
- France cuts its own forests down, lectures other people about cutting their forests down, what hypocrites.
Result of taking framing to conclusion:
- Everyone should be able to cut their forests down with impunity, then when we have no forests, we should try to figure out a solution now that we're no longer hypocrites.
My framing:
- France, having (as most of Europe did) extensively deforested for ship timber hundreds of years ago, witnesses the devastating effects of deforestation locally, and tries to mitigate future deforestation. They try to recover local forests, though they will never recover to levels from, say, 1200AD. Although the cat is out of the bag in many places, we now understand this to be a global problem, which should be solved globally
Result of taking framing to its logical conclusion:
- No one should engage in aggressive deforestation, and we should look at mechanisms of economic compensation to help countries whose growth is limited because of this from countries who benefited from it before we understood it to be wrong. OECD countries should aggressively support and fund reforestation of the Rainforest and African Green Belt.
I think it's generally easy to point the finger at others while ignoring our own short comings. I feel the same way about the USA pointing the finger at other countries human rights violations while simultaneously struggling to come to terms with our own treatment of minorities and indigenous people in the past.
Maybe it's a mix of hypocrisy and political gain. I just hope there comes a time where we can all do better.
That might be a rational argument (or the start of one), but it's certainly not what Bolsonaro has been saying.
He and his appointees have repeatedly denied climate change, even calling it a "marxist plot". He openly flouts and refuses to enforce the laws of Brazil, and illegally confiscates land (through violence) from native people.
Actually, forests in France have doubled since 1850 and cover today 31% of the total France superficy. It is now about the same size as it was at the end of the Middle-Ages. The peak of forest superficy was around the Xth century, mostly because after the fall of the roman empire, a lot of lands were just left out to themselves, because deforestation was quite active before that, with the gauls and the romans cutting forests for agriculture. Sweden is the european country with the biggest forest area compared to its size, but they are mostly coniferous trees, whereas in France they are mostly leafy trees. So, to answer the parent comment about regenerating wild forests and the percentage of forests France has: France is not in a bad league at all, far from it.
If Brazil followed the French model, and deforested for 500 years, then reforested to 31% over 150 years, would you say Brazil is not in a bad league at all, far from it?
Sometimes I am positively surprised by some policies in France. They are further than many other nations in some areas. They have laws against wasting food in the supply chain of grocery store chains as well, afaik. Maybe these are only small steps and they need to think even bigger, but at least there are small steps. Cannot say that I know of my own country implementing these steps. Here such things take ages and is met with heavy resistance from lobbying big corporations. Surely they have them too, but at least sometimes the results let France look more progressive.
Maybe they could take a REAL stand and pull out their parasitic trade agreements with all the African countries that are still de facto colonized by them.
As I understand it, Brazil has recently asked the wealthy nations of the world to each pay $1 Billion USD to preserve chunks of the Amazon. Given the wealthy world is asking a much poorer country not to fully exploit its natural resources for the sake of the world, I think they have a fair point. If we want them to protect the Amazon, the rest of the world should help pay for it.
Perhaps there’s a way for the UN to purchase the Amazon as a global protected natural preserve? What other areas would be good targets?
Given the eagerness with which current Brazilian leadership and industry ignores local laws and land rights, I'd say buying any forrest to preserve it is a bad deal.
I’ve never really thought about this before so maybe it’s totally infeasible, but implicit in this idea is that if the UN or US or... anyone, were to purchase the Amazon, they would then become responsible for enforcing its protection (as opposed to Brazil).
This seems to me the kind of thing that the UN could realistically enforce if “global parks” became part of its mandate. The big sticking point is who pays for it.
No nation state is likely to give up or sell territory. You see very small cases where two countries that share a border swap a bit of (uninhabited) land to "clean up" the border, that's about it.
There are some people with the means. Someone like Jeff Bezos could pull it off, instead of or in addition to shooting rockets into space.
He could offer Brazil jobs (moving some Amazon centers there for example), he could raise the cash to "rent" the Amazon, and he also has the tools at his disposal to control that the agreement is honored, by analyzing satellite data for example.
He might even be able to turn that into another profitable business, using the same technology for monitoring crops or similar.
If he offers a good enough package, Bolsonaro could not refuse it.
Just the notion that it might be for sale, in the sense of giving up sovereignty is beyond ridiculous. The brazilian constitution doesn't even allow that possibility.
And how much would be the offer anyway?
Just the internal GDP of the North region is circa 100 billion USD with tremendous potential to grow ( ecotourism, gold and diamond mining, high value exports like tonka beans, plus hydropower) , so anything less than 1 trillion USD wouldn't even be a good start.
The brazilian economy doesn't lack capital, it lacks proper institutional levers, which in the long term screw up even petrodollar volumes of investment.
And good luck holding it in place WITHOUT further deforestation .. Since it's a hotpot of illegal activity such as drug trafficking , mining, etc...
63 comments
[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 119 ms ] threadInstead of not buying from them, how about paying them for protecting the forest? That sounds more reasonable to me.
Costa Rica changed its economy from fishing to tourism fairly effectively. Just have a conversation with a fisherman turned whale boat operator for some good lessons on that next time you're down there.
Pay no attention to the vast palm tree plantations that decimated the natural forest though. That's a side point.
Considering that the Amazon is pretty essential for the global environment, this strikes me as an aggressively reasonable approach.
These are fanciful ideals, but where the rubber meets the road, there are real tradeoffs with real consequences. The best we can do is make sure that we apply incentives to ensure that people do the "right" thing.
Even tax hikes and stricter regulations they seem to skirt.
There's some who'd say boycotts are bad, stop cancel culture...except when THEY are doing the canceling. Look at the political right in America... STOP CANCEL CULTURE...but you can cancel Liz Cheney and Mitt Romney, we don't want them anymore...
I mean elections are all about "Cancel Culture" your vote can change who's elected canceling the person who was there before.
If you think Walmart is evil and Target is less evil you can vote with your dollars and only shop at Costco which is less evil than both of those... or a worker co-op like Winco (my favorite, but closest one is 4 hours away).
https://www.world-grain.com/articles/14738-china-sees-record...
China is the biggest importer of agricultural things. They can't produce locally all the food they eat. And Europe is exporting a lot of wheat and other corns to China.
Maybe we can start to put some pressure on them finally ;)
China still has a lot of different levers in case they lack food. Remember that the US deal actually forced them to buy american agricultural products.
They also banned most of Australia food imports since they asked for an international investigation on SARS-CoV-2 origins. They could just lift this ban and Australian politics and farmers would jump on the occasion.
There are so many countries who are willing to sell no matter what and no matter who as long as the price is good, and China has a lot of money.
We will never solve our environment issues until we get over the fear of taking steps first.
Now, let's take the headline and put it into a magical machine that turn what the idealistic well-meaning activists and politicians wanted to happen to the immediate practical outcome of the action.
The magical machine that replaces the intention with the practical outcome of the action is simply replacing "climate change" with "the western nations must consume less because China needs cheap commodities and needs to have a competitive advantage over the west to become the dominant global power". Climate change activism in its practical aspect seems to be a never-ending "prisoners dilemma" where the west always cooperates and China always defects.
Let's try some more common headlines:
"Western nations must reduce their gasoline consumption because of climate change"
"We should stop having children because of climate change"
"We should stop eating meat because of climate change"
Meanwhile China built 3x more coal plants last year than the rest of the world combined.
https://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2021/02/03/china...
These soybeans are probably used to feed cattle.
For one, it's pretty bad for the environment. I hope you can agree with me that there is a consensus on this. From land use to transportation, to every other part of the supply chain (antibiotics, methane emissions, manure). Downsizing the meat industry would do quite a bit for the environment.
Secondly, meat is more expensive than plant-based products, generally.
It also spoils faster, and I wouldn't eat spoiled meat, as opposed to spoiled vegetables. Quality control is way more important as to avoid parasites, prions, etc.
Let's skip animal suffering.
I suppose you are getting to the last point, health benefits? I have little data on this myself, and health comes from such a maze of interactions that I don't find it surprising experts disagree, especially if you throw in various lobbies. Moreover, the answer likely depends on a person's ethnicity. However, there seems to be plenty of evidence that (a) excessive meat (or rich foods) intake is bad for your health, (b) eating a variety of products is better, (c) eating some meat, or substitutes, is required for a healthy diet.
The uncertainty seems to be on what exactly constitutes "too much" meat.
I don't think "all around" was meant to encompass anything else; are you thinking of something else specifically?
If the answer is a very small number, doesn't that make historical France guilty of what these measures seek to prevent happening in Brazil?
To the extent this is a moral argument, shouldn't France atone for its misdeeds by regenerating wild forests, to be left unmolested in perpetuity?
If nobody is advocating any such thing, perhaps this isn't a moral argument, or even an environmental argument. Perhaps it's an economic initiative from the people who stand to gain from the French production of soy beans.
- France cuts its own forests down, lectures other people about cutting their forests down, what hypocrites.
Result of taking framing to conclusion:
- Everyone should be able to cut their forests down with impunity, then when we have no forests, we should try to figure out a solution now that we're no longer hypocrites.
My framing:
- France, having (as most of Europe did) extensively deforested for ship timber hundreds of years ago, witnesses the devastating effects of deforestation locally, and tries to mitigate future deforestation. They try to recover local forests, though they will never recover to levels from, say, 1200AD. Although the cat is out of the bag in many places, we now understand this to be a global problem, which should be solved globally
Result of taking framing to its logical conclusion:
- No one should engage in aggressive deforestation, and we should look at mechanisms of economic compensation to help countries whose growth is limited because of this from countries who benefited from it before we understood it to be wrong. OECD countries should aggressively support and fund reforestation of the Rainforest and African Green Belt.
I dunno what to say, man.
Maybe it's a mix of hypocrisy and political gain. I just hope there comes a time where we can all do better.
He and his appointees have repeatedly denied climate change, even calling it a "marxist plot". He openly flouts and refuses to enforce the laws of Brazil, and illegally confiscates land (through violence) from native people.
Hardly a credible partner.
Perhaps there’s a way for the UN to purchase the Amazon as a global protected natural preserve? What other areas would be good targets?
This seems to me the kind of thing that the UN could realistically enforce if “global parks” became part of its mandate. The big sticking point is who pays for it.
And how much would be the offer anyway?
Just the internal GDP of the North region is circa 100 billion USD with tremendous potential to grow ( ecotourism, gold and diamond mining, high value exports like tonka beans, plus hydropower) , so anything less than 1 trillion USD wouldn't even be a good start.
The brazilian economy doesn't lack capital, it lacks proper institutional levers, which in the long term screw up even petrodollar volumes of investment.
And good luck holding it in place WITHOUT further deforestation .. Since it's a hotpot of illegal activity such as drug trafficking , mining, etc...