Green.view | A ransom worth paying | Economist.com

The moral hazard of saving trees


“THE soybean frontier is approaching,” warns Virgilio Viana, the secretary of the environment of the Brazilian state of Amazonas. He is predicting an imminent surge in deforestation in the vast and relatively pristine heart of the Amazonian rainforest. First come roads, then illegal loggers, then pioneering homesteaders, and, finally, full-scale land clearance for soybean farms and cattle ranches. The states closer to Brazil’s Atlantic coast have already suffered this fate, which now threatens the remoter jungles of the interior.


These disappearing trees serve as a huge repository of carbon. When they are cut down, the carbon finds its way into the atmosphere in the form of carbon dioxide, the most common of the greenhouse gases that cause global warming. Deforestation accounts for roughly one-fifth of the greenhouse gases produced each year. If the world does not find a way to make living trees more valuable, Mr Viana fears, the rainforests of Amazonas will vanish within a generation—and the climate of the western hemisphere will become much less pleasant. Read full story:

Green.view | A ransom worth paying | Economist.com