In several threads and numerous posts I have pointed out that the wealthy's love of Mahogany furniture is what is destroying the Amazon forests, not the production of sugar cane for alcohol production (There are no significant cane fields within 500 miles of the Amazon as alcohol cannot flow thru normal pipelines* and it is too costly to ship more than 200 miles, at the most.) Almost all is produced within 150 miles of either Sao Paulo or Rio and uses less than 2% of Brazil's land now in agricultural production. Approximatley half of Brazil's framland is in pasture. Thus a 4% reduction in beef production could double the current level of alcohol production (and Brazil is now the world's leading exporter and the No2 alcohol producer, with such a glut on the local market that many smaller producers are going under as it now cost only about 45% of what gasoline does at the pump.)
Brazil has the world's largest herd and is world's largest exporter of beef, 100% pasture feed. (By tons, not by sales. Australian beef cost more so by that measure, in some years Brazil is No.2 exporter.) After the criminal loggers selective cut a few mahogany trees (typically worth US$1000 each at the saw mill or greater than 1/3 a year's minimum wage.) they set fire to the forest to hid their crime. I will not repeat now the intermediate stages, but eventually some absentee land owner who can afford to properly clear and fertilize the land will probably turn it into pasture for cattle. So indirectly one can argue that growing sugar cane is partially responsible for the destruction of the Amazon rain forest in that some pasture close to Sao Paulo is being converted to growing sugar cane, forcing a tiny fraction of the beef production into land that the rich of the developed world (US, EU & Japan) have caused to be burned.
The solution is simple, and I have suggested it in prior post also: EAT LESS BEEF. That would be not only good for your health, "doubly good" for reducing CO2 in the atmosphere.
Surprisingly, Brazil may be the 3d or 4th country producing the greatest amount of atmospheric CO2 - Mainly by:
(1) Burning Forest trees which were removing CO2 and releasing the tons of carbon stored in each of the larger ones.
RICH STOP demanding MAHOGANY
(2) Cattle farts (and production of their food)
RICH STOP demanding BEEF.
On (2) here is part of the text released today by UN (The Nobel prize winner science group, last year in this field):
"Pachauri, who was re-elected the panel's chairman for a second six-year term last week, said diet change was important because of the huge greenhouse gas emissions and other environmental problems - including habitat destruction - associated with rearing cattle and other animals. It was relatively easy to change eating habits compared to changing means of transport, he said.
The UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation has estimated that
meat production accounts for nearly a fifth of global greenhouse gas emissions. These are generated during the production of animal feeds, for example, while ruminants, particularly cows, emit
methane, which is 23 times more effective as a global warming agent than carbon dioxide. The agency has also warned that meat consumption is set to double by the middle of the century.
{Billy T's sick hummor insert: "well for a year or two we could eat dead polar bears. - What is the problem?"}
'
In terms of immediacy of action and the feasibility of bringing about reductions in a short period of time, it clearly is the most attractive opportunity,' said Pachauri. 'Give up meat for one day [a week] initially, and decrease it from there,' said the Indian economist, who is a vegetarian. ..."
Read more at:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/sep/07/food.foodanddrink?gusrc=rss&feed=environment
SUMMARY (as I have said for years):
FAR more effective than buying an expensive hybrid or pure electric car (both of which make little or even negative reduction in CO2 production, until non-fossil fuels are making most of the grid's electricity) is
(1)
Stop buying mahogany furniture and
(2)
Eliminate beef from your diet at least two days each week. Becoming a vegetarian is obviously much better action against global warming.
PS I am not a vegetarian, but I am very concerned about good health, so only eat red meat about twice each MONTH. Fish are my main source of animal protein - at least four times per week, but small ones** as toxic heavy metals (brain damage producing) especially mercury becomes quite concentrated as the big ones eat the smaller one. I never eat tuna or shark - have not for > 50 years. I honestly think being clear headed in old age may require this but do not have any scientific proof - it just seems logical as these metals do concentrate up the food chain and meat eating humans are at the top of that chain, some for 100 years now.
----------------------
*Recently I learned that my prior idea that the water absorption by alcohol was rusting steel pipelines, may be true but is not the only problem. Even in stainless steel pipe there is a cracking problem. For reasons not yet well understood the alcohol its self cause some sort of embrittlement that then with thermal expansions, and/or earth shifts causes pipeline to crack. I have lost the link that told of this and about a ~200 mile experimental pipeline now being installed to test if their design/ materials can survive OK.
**We have a cook/maid, like all upper class Brazilians. I buy about 30 every week of what is called locally "Norwegian sardines" but I think may be some form of "Herring." - They are bluish and about a foot long. She cleans them and cooks them all at one time in three pans that will fit in the oven. I eat 20 of them, often cold, and all the bones, and wife eats the other 10 each week. (I eat the skin of hers also as it has too strong a flavor for her taste.)
