The economy booms, the trees vanish

[Frederik]

"In the year to August 2004, more than 26,000 square kilometres (10,000 square miles) of forest were chopped down, an area larger than the American state of New Jersey.

The area deforested in the past year was up 6% on 2003, far worse than the Brazilian government’s predictions that it would rise by no more than about 2%. It was the second worst year for the destruction of the rainforest since satellite surveys began (see chart). It is reckoned that almost a fifth of the Brazilian part of the forest has now been wiped out; if it were to continue at this rate, it would all be flattened within the next two centuries."

"The world’s greatest stores of biodiversity—and some of its main suppliers of the oxygen we breathe—are still being chewed up at an alarming rate, despite decades of talk among world leaders and environmentalists about the need to preserve them."

http://www.economist.com/agenda/displayStory.cfm?story_id=3996152

[swag]

1. It's a catastrophe,

and no amount of the Corporate-sponsored Eco-tourism so breathlessly lauded by Tom Friedman in "The Lexus and the Olive Tree" and elsewhere is doing anything to stop the environmental devastation.

Life will really be sweet when 3 billion Chinese start driving cars.

[Deja Q]

2. Lots of new housing and corporate stores being built.

A lot of trees downed; prairie land plowed.

I miss driving on the highway where it was just hills and valleys.

Now it's all stores.

We are asphyxiating ourselves.

All in the name of money.

Would God be pleased, given all of the work God had to do to make the Earth? No. But maybe God has had it with us; allowing us to die by our own collective hand.

So, is it a pity or good riddance? That is the next question.

[tex-wyo-dem]

3. Environmental destruction will be our civilization's undoing.

It has held true throughout history, any civilization that over-exploited its environment ended up failing.

Modern civilization is no different...only this time it's on a global scale. Aside from all out nuclear war, this is the #1 threat to life as we know it.