If you ask an expert about the causes of destruction of the forests in the Amazon, they will say: meat. It is virtually all about meat eating. Ranchers raising cattle. Farmers growing soya for export to the meat industry.
This is borne out in an excellent report by Mighty Earth: https://stories.mightyearth.org/amazonfires/index.html
So there is one thing you can do about: cut down on eating meat (and dairy). And if you don’t mind being a hypocritical for the sake of the planet, get your family and friends to.
Below are the largest customers of the slaugherhouses and soy animal feed traders most associated with cattle and soy deforestation. So these are the companies you should not buy from until they sort out their act:
Study the logos carefully and if you see them any place, don’t go in.
You might say: well, I only eat local, grass-fed meat, so it’s ok. That works a bit but not much. If you eat that local grass-fed meat (which has limited production capacity), it means someone else has to get their meat from more damaging sources.
I was amazed to read these short interviews with eminent professors at Harvard’s Kennedy School.
They are pronouncing on what to do about the destruction of the forest in Brazil.
Not a single one of them says the obvious: Stop eating meat.
When the brainiest people on the planet don’t or daren’t talk about the real causes of things, (a) it gives cause to lose hope and (b) it is an indictment of our educational system. The system raises highly refined, brainy people, and with that, they lose the ability to talk straight.
Perhaps this is too harsh.
I wondered what they would say about drug policy and the war on drugs? Surely at least some would say that: “Ok send in military helicopters to shoot up the drug lords in Mexico if you want, BUT ALSO work on domestic policies to reduce demand for drugs. Education, health care, mental health care, make it socially unacceptable etc.”
Demand-side measures are ok for drugs. So let’s have demand side measures for forests, too.
Pingback: Raising fire – Planet Super League