I admit it is hard to keep your head cool when you read such news, and this despite having discovered the power of positive psychology. To a new study the world has lost ten percent of its wilderness in as little as 25 tiny years…
Amazon
Brazilian deforestation increasing
Here are some bad news I read last week : deforestation in Brazil is increasing again. For the past years, it had been decreasing steadily, reaching its lowest levels in two decades.
But over the last year, deforestation increased by 28 percent over the previous one. As the BBC noted : ” The government is working to reverse this “crime”, Environment Minister Izabella Teixeira said.”
This takes place as on a global scale, the world has lost a staggering 900,000 square miles (2.3 million square kilometers) of forests between 2000 and 2102 to deforestation or fire.
Ecuador to drill in the Amazon
Sometimes you have to cover the bad news. To Climate Progress : ” Ecuador is abandoning an innovative plan that would have protected the Amazon rainforest from oil drilling due to lack of support from other nations “ Their original idea was to avoid drilling there by receiving money from wealthy nations that would have … Read more
Carbon Emissions in Brazil Dropped 39% from 2005 to 2010
We have seen time and again that Brazil is working hard at stopping or at least decreasing deforesation of its marvelous Amazon rain forest. It seems all these efforts are paying of. To Cleantechies : ” Greenhouse gas emissions in Brazil fell by nearly 39 percent from 2005 to 2010, largely because of reductions in … Read more
Deforestation in Brazil bumps up
Even if there have been many good news on the environmental fronts in the past few months, there are still some bad ones. While deforestation of the Amazon rainforest had been drastically reduced since 2004, it seems it increased last year. As Treehugger reports : “According to the Brazilian forest monitoring agency which uses satellite … Read more
New low levels for Amazon deforestation
Among all the doom and gloom climate change news nowadays – arctic record low levels,no commitment at COP18 in Doha, permafrost melting… – I chose to write today about some good news.
We have seen that the deforestation of the Amazon rainforest has been steadily decreasing for the past few years. Well, it seems it decreased even more in 2012 as the BBC and Grist reported.
A 27 percent cut compared to already record low levels is astonishing. But still, over 4,656 square kilometers (1,798 square miles) got cleared of all their trees between 2011 and 2012.
Organized crime is also behind deforestation
If I tell you “organized crime” you will most likely think about drug and weapons trafficking, prostitution, money laundering, extortion and so on. But as the Huffington Post Green reports : ” The United Nations Environment Program recently released an alarming report indicating organized crime is responsible for 50 to 90% of illegal logging in … Read more
Brazilian forestry code changes get vetoed
As deforestation in the Brazilian part of the Amazon rainforest was hitting its lowest levels in over two decades, some special interests had introduced to the local Congress some law to change that.
Luckily, environmental organizations has been campaigning to avoid those catastrophic changes. Celebrities joined in too… Even more fortunately, the Brazilian President – Dilma Rousseff – vetoed those changes.
As Yale Environment 360 stated :” The presidential veto comes just two weeks before global leaders descend on Brazil for the UN Conference on Sustainable Development, or Rio+20.”
Bad climate news from the Amazon and the Arctic
I recently wrote about positive feedback mechanisms that would increase climate change as temperatures increase. It seems we are already seeing the very first tragic examples.
The first one comes from Peru, where climate change led to a warming Atlantic Ocean, which itself led to a drying Amazon rainforest, which in their turn led to massive wildfires.
To The Daily Climate this took place in a part of the Amazon rainforest which was previously thought as to wet to burn. But this is not the only horrifying prospect.
Chevron to pay $18 billion to Ecuador
To Reuters : ” An Ecuadorean appeals court on Tuesday upheld a ruling that Chevron Corp should pay $18 billion in damages to plaintiffs who accused the U.S. oil giant of polluting the Amazon jungle and damaging their health. “
” A judge ordered Chevron to pay $8.6 billion in environmental damages last February, but the amount was more than doubled to about $18 billion because Chevron failed to make a public apology as required by the original ruling. “
This brings further development to the story I ran in 2010 where I noted that during three decades Texaco operated hundreds of oil wells without taking any notice of environmental issues.
Amazon deforestation at its lowest. Can this last ?
I noted last year that Amazon deforestation was at its lowest. Well it decreased again. To Grist : ” a study on deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon found that the number of square kilometers disappearing each year has hit a record low. “ However, these good news might be only temporary. Originally Grist was mentioning … Read more
The Amazon rainforest starts emitting CO2
To TreeHugger : ” Last year, the Amazon rainforest experienced the worst drought on record, reducing normally flowing rivers to sun-baked stretches of dried mud and pushing the fragile ecosystem to the brink. “
” (…) As a result of 2010’s Amazon drought, experts say, some 1.8 billion tons of carbon dioxide was released into the atmosphere — more than is produced by India’s entire population in a year. “
The more we put greenhouse gases in our atmosphere, the more our Planet answers back and carbon reserves like the Russian permafrost or the Amazon Rainforest start emitting even more…