Word: amazon
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...skies over western Brazil will soon be dark both day and night. Dark from - the smoke of thousands of fires, as farmers and cattle ranchers engage in their annual rite of destruction: clearing land for crops and livestock by burning the rain forests of the Amazon. Unusually heavy rains have slowed down the burning this year, but the dry season could come at any time, and then the fires will reach a peak. Last year the smoke grew so thick that Porto Velho, the capital of the state of Rondonia, was forced to close its airport for days...
After years of inattention, the whole world has awakened at last to how much is at stake in the Amazon. It has become the front line in the battle to rescue earth's endangered environment from humanity's destructive ways. "Save the rain forest," long a rallying cry for conservationists, is now being heard from politicians, pundits and rock stars. The movement has sparked a confrontation between rich industrial nations, which are fresh converts to the environmental cause, and the poorer nations of the Third World, which view outside interference as an assault on their sovereignty...
Some of the harshest criticism is aimed at Brazil. The largest South American country embraces about half the Amazon basin and, in the eyes of critics, has shown a reckless penchant for squandering resources that matter to all mankind. Government leaders around the world are calling on Brazil to stop the burning. Two delegations from the U.S. Congress, which included Senators Al Gore of Tennessee and John Chafee of Rhode Island, traveled to the Amazon earlier this year to see the plight of the rain forest firsthand. Says Gore: "The devastation is just unbelievable. It's one of the great...
...environment. One method would be to make unrestricted loans to foreign banks. The banks could then lend money to controversial projects, but Japan would not be blamed. One fear is that Japan will use such "two-step" loans to fund a major road that would open up the western Amazon to logging. Says Alex Hittle, international coordinator of | Friends of the Earth, U.S.: "It's in general loans that disturbing things might be lurking...
...several commendable steps. Among them: proposing new regulations on medical-waste disposal, requesting stiffer penalties for ocean dumpers, calling for a moratorium on offshore oil drilling in Florida and California, and helping persuade Japan not to finance construction of a Brazilian road that would encourage continued deforestation of the Amazon region...