Brazi's Rainforest Collapse Goes To Autopilot Once We Cut 20%-30% From Historic Area; Near 20% Now
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As more and more of the Amazon is cut down, the world’s greatest forest is now getting close to the “tipping point” – after which experts fear it could disappear. “A moment will arrive in which the accumulation of this deforestation will cause an effect in which the forest will stop being a forest,” Astrini said. “The scientists calculate this is between 20-30%. We are very close to the 20%.”
The Climate Observatory (Observatório do Clima) – a non-profit, climate change network – calculated that in 2017, 46% of Brazil’s greenhouse gas emissions were due to deforestation.
It also expects deforestation to worsen once Jair Bolsonaro’s new government begins. He has frequently attacked what he calls the “fines industry” of agencies such as Ibama, and wants to allow mining in protected indigenous reserves – some of the Amazon’s least-destroyed forests – and even considered making the environment ministry part of the agriculture ministry.
Bolsonaro has enjoyed support from agribusiness and his minister of agriculture will be headed up by Tereza Cristina, head of its Congress lobby. His foreign minister, Ernesto Araújo, has argued that global warming is a Marxist plot. On Friday, his vice-president elect, General Hamilton Mourão, while admitting global warming did exist, told the Folha de S.Paulo newspaper: “Environmentalism is used as an instrument of domination by big economies.”
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https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/nov/24/brazil-records-worst-annual-deforestation-for-a-decade?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other