By: IONIESKYE

IONIESKYE — Tue, 26 May 2009 10:18:49 +0000

Deforestation: The hidden cause of global warming. In the next 24 hours, deforestation will release as much CO2 into the atmosphere as 8 million people flying from London to New York. Stopping the loggers is the fastest and cheapest solution to climate change. Carbon emissions from deforestation far outstrip damage caused by planes and automobiles and factories. Rampant slashing and burning of tropical forests is second only to the energy sector as a source of greenhouses gases… Deforestation accounts for up to 25 per cent of global emissions of heat-trapping gases, while transport and industry account for 14 per cent each; and aviation makes up only 3 per cent of the total. Deforestation is equivalent to the carbon footprint of eight million people flying to New York. Reducing those catastrophic emissions can be achieved most quickly and most cheaply by halting the destruction in Brazil, Indonesia, the Congo and elsewhere. Most people think of forests only in terms of the CO2 they absorb. The rainforests of the Amazon, the Congo basin and Indonesia are thought of as the lungs of the planet. But the destruction of those forests will in the next four years alone pump more CO2 into the atmosphere than every flight in the history of aviation to at least 2025. From 2003, two billion tons of CO2 enters the atmosphere every year from deforestation. That destruction amounts to 50 million acres – or an area the size of England, Wales and Scotland, the remaining standing forest is calculated to contain 1,000 billion tons of carbon, or double what is already in the atmosphere. If we lose forests, we lose the fight against climate change. Forests offer the “single largest opportunity for cost-effective and immediate reductions of carbon emissions”. International demand has driven intensive agriculture, logging and ranching that has proved an inexorable force for deforestation; conservation has been no match for commerce. Place deforestation on top of the agenda! Richer nations already recognise the value of uncultivated land… per hectare subsidies or “environmental services” to its farmers to leave their land unused. And yet there is no agreement on placing a value on the vastly more valuable land in developing countries. More than 50 per cent of the life on Earth is in tropical forests, which cover less than 7 per cent of the planet’s surface. They generate the bulk of rainfall worldwide and act as a thermostat for the Earth. Forests are also home to 1.6 billion of the world’s poorest people who rely on them for subsistence.
http://www.greenpeace.org

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By: IONIESKYE