Using satellite imagery and data from 100 countries, the Washington-based Center for Global Development has predicted that 289 million hectares (715 million acres) of tropical forests would be axed by 2050 – that’s an area the size of India, or four times the size of the US state of Texas.
Scientists Jonah Busch and Jens Engelmann, project that this tropical deforestation will release 169 GtCO2 into the atmosphere from 2016-2050 — one-sixth of the remaining carbon that can be emitted if the rise in the Earth’s temperature is to be held below 2 °C (the equivalent of running 44,000 coal-fired power plants for a year).
However, they also say much of the losses can be avoided if world leaders put a price on carbon emissions through taxes, payments for emissions reductions, or find a way to limit deforestation.
“We estimate that a universally applied carbon price of $20/tCO2 from 2016-2050 would avoid 41 GtCO2 of emissions from tropical deforestation while a carbon price of $50/tCO2 would avoid 77 GtCO2. These prices correspond to average costs to land users of $9/tCO2 and $21/tCO2 respectively. By comparison if all tropical countries implemented anti-deforestation policies as effective as those in the Brazilian Amazon post-2004 then 60 GtCO2 of emissions would be avoided,” the authors said.
Over the course of a decade, Brazil decreased deforestation in the Amazon rainforest by 80 percent through the use of satellite monitoring and increased law enforcement, even as cattle and soy production rose, the study said.
“Conserving tropical forests is a bargain. Reducing emissions from tropical deforestation costs about a fifth as much as reducing emissions in the European Union. The Paris climate agreement needs to provide funding and other resources to stop tropical deforestation. A climate agreement without robust action on forests will simply not be enough,” they concluded.
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Maybe once the industrial food corporations that are a massive contributor to the deforestation are taxed appropriately, change can be made. But with corruption at all levels, very little will be accomplished. It is time they stop telling us about this and start hitting where it hurts. But since when has governments ever imposed on corporations? One hand washes the other and the blind look the other way.
I wana help not talk aboutit were do I join
There is another way to help that doesn’t involve politics and can be started tomorrow. It’s going vegan.
Why? Because the Amazon rainforest is primarily razed to plant soy… to feed cattle… to later chop up… to send to rich nations for their addiction to cheap flesh.
Going vegan means that you will indirectly use 126,000 less gallons of water per year. That’s the footprint of eating animals or the things that come out of them. It’s massive, and unsustainable.
It also means that you will have more food choices as there are more varieties of plants to choose from than acceptable animals. And if you do veganism smartly, then your health will improve in every single dimension, having more energy, clearer skin, less BO, less body mass, rid yourself of Type 1/2 diabetes, eliminate arthritis, and dodge the #1 killer in North America: heart disease.
Going vegan will change your life and the planet.
There are so many positive vegan role models. The strongest man in the world eats a plant-based diet (vegan) and can lift 1,000lbs over his head. There’s a 310lb American football player who is vegan and is as powerful as an ox. There are vegan athletes, vegan scientists, vegan moms, and vegan kids from birth.
It takes a little education, but the benefits will keep you wanting to learn more and more. It’s a joy, not a deprivation.
If I can do it, you can do it 🙂
The solution is simple. Create new money responsibly so that such massive forests could be save. http://www.p2pfoundation.net/Transfinancial_Economics