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Trucks, Trains and Trees
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
No matter how many times you hear them, there are some
statistics that just bowl you over. The one that always stuns
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me is this: Imagine if you took all the cars, trucks, planes,
trains and ships in the world and added up their exhaust
every year. The amount of carbon dioxide, or CO2, all those
cars, trucks, planes, trains and ships collectively emit into
the atmosphere is actually less than the carbon emissions
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every year that result from the chopping down and clearing
of tropical forests in places like Brazil, Indonesia and the
Congo. We are now losing a tropical forest the size of New
York State every year, and the carbon that releases into
the atmosphere now accounts for roughly 17 percent of all
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global emissions contributing to climate change. […]
“You need a new model of economic development — one
that is based on raising people’s standards of living by
maintaining their natural capital, not just by converting that
natural capital to ranching or industrial farming or logging,”
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said José María Silva, a conservation expert. Right now
people protecting the rainforest are paid a pittance —
compared with those who strip it — even though we now
know that the rainforest provides everything from keeping
CO2 out of the atmosphere to maintaining the fl ow of
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freshwater into rivers.
The good news is that Brazil has put in place all the
elements of a system to compensate its forest-dwellers
for maintaining the forests. Brazil has already set aside 43
percent of the Amazon rainforest for conservation and for
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indigenous peoples. Another 19 percent of the Amazon,
though, has already been deforested by farmers and
ranchers.
Source: The New York Times November 11, 2009 [slightly adapted]