Word: brazile
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Money talks--a lot louder than any environmentalist can. This was evident in your article about paving a 435-mile road through the Amazon rain forest [ENVIRONMENT, Oct. 16]. Perhaps it is difficult for Brazil to look past the short-term economic gains of paving highway BR-163. But who are we Americans to criticize Brazil? Isn't opening up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to development a key issue in the presidential campaign? We might destroy one of the few natural habitats that we have left. We Americans can't point a finger at Brazil if we exploit...
This road may provide food and money for Brazil's landless and more funds for the government, but only for a short time. THEODORE VARNS, age 16 Wailuku, Hawaii...
...fire year, more than 15,000 sq. mi. of Brazil's rain forest went up in flames. Ecologists say the paving of BR-163 will put at risk 580,000 sq. mi.--one-third of the dense forest remaining in the Amazon region. To get an idea of the scale of the potential catastrophe, imagine all of Alaska as scorched earth...
That's why scientists are so worried about the paving of BR-163. In the Brazilian Amazon, roughly 75% of deforestation has occurred within 30 miles of a paved road. Despite laws prohibiting settlement in virgin lands, politicians, who see settlers as voters, have encouraged Brazil's 10 million landless poor to migrate into the interior, torching forest as they go. But the rain forest is not good agricultural land, and many of the farmers sell out to cattle ranchers. The only reason enormous stretches of the forest did not burn down in 1998 was that paved roads...
...irony is that in the end agribusiness will suffer along with everyone else. The destruction of the rain forest could make drought more common all over Brazil, endangering soybean production. In the face of that peril, the government will have to decide whether short-term profits are worth risking an environmental disaster for Brazil--and the whole planet...