Taking his campaign to the world's second-largest economy, Raoni Metyktire, a leader of the Kayapo Indians in Brazil, said Amazon nature was falling victim to development, mining and farming.
"I have met with presidents, provincial leaders and other officials. But they do not listen to what I say," he said through a translator.
Writerfella here --
ReplyDeleteThere are scientific reasons beyond the ecological reasons to cease destruction of the rain forests. Yes, rain forests are responsible for replacement of over 75% of the atmosphere's oxygen content, and yes, they provide enough sunlight absorption to balance most levels of 'global warming'. But what mostly has been disregarded is this: like the oceans, the rain forests hold the greatest variety and quantity of lifeforms on the face of the earth. And that includes myriad forms of microbes, germs, viruses, and monocellular parasites, which exist in an environment of fluctuating and uncertain but workable checks and balances. Look at it like this: destroy rain forest on, say, Madagascar (the Malagasy Republic), and the larger animals have no place to go. They cluster in the remaining islands of forest, become 'overpopulated' vs. the habitat remaining, and die. Whole groups of flora are bereft of the competing plant life that supported their existence by the very competition for space, and they die. Microbes and nematodes and protozoans die for lack of higher organisms on which to feed. BUT -- bacteria, viruses, and related unicellular life do not simply die out. Instead, they adapt as best they can and, as the original lifeforms on the face of the planet, they long have known how this is done. Without hosts and likely without the environmental factors that kept them in check, such as natural antibiotics and antivirals, they seek out new hosts. And the most plentiful new hosts remaining to them are -- human beings. Why else then would HIV and Dengue and Ebola and Rift Valley Fever and West Nile Fever and Hemorrhagic fever and countless other 'new' diseases be afflicting mankind at this time? Humans are the 'new enironment' and the natural controls that existed for such organisms have been eliminated. Mankind therefore is setting up the circumstances for its own elimination by unleashing the flora and fauna that the rain forests heretofre have kept under control simply by existing. The end of the world, therefore, is not the end of the entire world but rather is the end of the world as humans know it. Save the rain forests? Damn straight..
All Best
Russ Bates
'writerfella'