Over past 36 years Amazon rainforest decreased by 10%

Over the past 36 years, the Amazon rainforest region has lost 10 percent of its native vegetation, mostly tropical rainforest, an area nearly the size of Texas. Most of it is in Brazil but also other surrounding countries.

Amazon loses 10% of its vegetation in nearly four decades | AP News

"The losses have been enormous, virtually irreversible and with no expectation of a turnaround," from a statement made by several society organizations from Latin American countries in the region. "The data signals a yellow light and gives a sense of urgency to the need for a coordinated, decisive and compelling international action."

The destruction is so vast that the eastern Amazon has ceased to be a carbon sink, or absorber, for the Earth and has become a carbon source.
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Seems like Progressives are totally impotent at doing anything outside their own countries.

 

This is a consequence of economic development. Same thing happened in the US when vast eastern forests were cleared for farming.

 

Carbon isn't Carbon Dioxide.

Old forests are a low carbon dioxide sink because of their slow growth......

20,000 years ago, the Tropical rain forest in South America was far smaller in area than now, yet life went on......

Hyperbole is a bad idea to pursue......

 

There has got to be a way to pursue economic development that does not involve permanent removal and destruction of forest.
That forest is not coming back.

What is happening here is not really a sustainable resource. Once you cut down that forest, it is not going to grow back. And the dirt beneath that rainforest is not going to sustain agriculture for many years, for reasons that are a little too complicated to get into. So eventually the farmer have to move on and clear some other rainforest area somewhere else.

36 years is a really short time on the scale of human history.

(Keep in mind from the time King Henry VIII took the throne to the time Queen Victoria took the throne was 346 years. The Amazon would be completely gone by that time. That time period stretches from the Protestant Reformation - why the U.S. did not end up Catholic - to the peak of the worldwide British Empire - why most all of the wealthy countries around the world speak English)

 

Forest is eliminated to clear the land for farming to feed a growing population.

 

Those cleared rain forest areas grows back after farmers leaves.

The forests did come back because part of the Northern America area used to be under a thick ice cap just 18,000 years ago and that includes large area of Canada too yet covered with a LOT of trees today.

During the warm times in the early interglacial forests was far north of its present timberline of today even into the tundra area of today.

Large areas of Central America were cleared for many temples, buildings and other stone structures just 1,000-500 years ago that has since covered it all up when the people left.

Rain forests does recover every time clearing stops.