[extropy-chat] Extinctions

[Rik van Riel]

On Sat, 10 Jun 2006, spike wrote:

> I noticed that USian environmentalists do not flock to Brazil in huge 
> numbers, and I fully understand why: it is useless to preach 
> environmental stewardship to hungry people.  I figure it will take 
> another thirty to fifty years before the US is as crowded and hungry as 
> Brazil is today.

You've never been to Brazil, have you?

The Amazon forest is in the far north of the country, where
almost nobody lives.  An area maybe 1 1/2 to 2 times the size
of Alaska, with maybe 10 million people in it.

The majority of the deforestation is done by rich companies,
not by poor subsistance farmers - the poor farmers live in
the north-east and mid-west of the country, nowhere near the
Amazon river.

Most people want to see the rain forest saved, and legislation
is in place.  However, the north of the country is so empty
that effective law enforcement on a reasonable budget is just
not possible.

Overcrowding definately doesn't have anything to do with
deforestation of the Amazon region...

-- 
"Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place.
Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are,
by definition, not smart enough to debug it." - Brian W. Kernighan