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This is the problem in Colombia, in Paraguay and wherever food production is being converted to agrofuel production--by the likes of Monsanto. This is what the U.S.-Bush "war on drugs" is mostly about in Colombia--driving the small peasant farmers (the best food producers--who may also grow a few coca leaf plants for local use, as they have done for thousands of year), off the land--and into urban squalor--for quick profits for the rich by major drug dealers, and then conversion to corporate agrofuel production. Small peasant farmers often don't have title to the land they've farmed for generations. This is one of the problems in Paraguay, where, as in so many other Latin American countries, the real food producers--the peasant farmers, and other small farmers--are being pushed off the land, for big agrofuel production (in Paraguay it's soy). This is a NUTSO policy driven by greed--the greed of local rich landowners, who stole their land from indigenous farmers to begin with, and are often fascist in their views, and by global corporate predators (monster fascists, unaccountable to anyone). In Lulu's case, it's very short term thinking. He is a former steelworker, with social justice views, and a good friend and ally of Hugo Chavez. His intentions are not bad. And he has a huge country with a huge, very poor population to worry about. He's thinking short-term riches for Brazil, and jobs-jobs-jobs. It's the timber industry syndrome--cut down the forests for jobs! Democrats in this country have fallen for it time and again. One of the most liberal governors of California, for instance--Edmund G. Brown, Sr.--back in the 1960s, presided over the worst environmental destruction of the old growth redwood forest that we have ever seen. Jobs, jobs, jobs! Keep the economy boiling. Share the wealth, yeah--but the future be damned.
Well, now we're really up against it. Deforestation is one of the leading contributors to global warming. We've seen loss of, or serious damage to, 80% of the world's forests over the last century. The World Wildlife Fund gives us 50 years, at present levels of consumption and pollution--50 years to the DEATH of the planet!
It's very, very difficult to expect a third world country--with a vast poor population like Brazil--to bear a significant burden for solving global warming. It is extremely unfair. The U.S. is contributing 25% (!) of global warming pollutants, and is doing absolutely nothing about it--neither curbing carbon emissions, nor planting trees, nor stopping the logging of forests and use of wood for building. Our behavior is DISGRACEFUL. The EU may have a little more credibility in criticizing Brazil--since they are signatories to Kyoto00although their rich class and global financiers continue to plunder and exploit in South America. But we have NO credibility. The burden should be on US, not Brazil!
That said, the reality of the situation is that Brazil has one of the last in-tact virgin forests on earth. To convert any more of the Amazon forest to ag uses is a great environmental crime--and to do it for agrofuels is unconscionable. I can see how a politician could consider the Amazon a resource for bootstrapping the poor, but, even in that regard, it is a great mistake, because, long term, it will destroy the food chain itself (with pesticides and corporate monoculture) as well as destroying the food PRODUCERS--driving them from the land, causing a loss of skills, forcing them into cities where they can't easily grow food.
Lulu was warned--by the huge campesino movement (peasant farmers) and by numerous environmental and human rights groups. It is bad use of the land--bad, bad, BAD. He's doing it for money (corporate investment) and for jobs (in a circular firing squad--destroying food production jobs, on the one hand, and creating short-term corporate ag jobs, on the other--the latter with serious health hazards). There is a third way, but it is politically difficult--especially with cities filled with millions of very poor people. It involves visionary "green" thinking about cities, and about poverty. "Greening" poor neighborhoods, public transportation, organic fuel production--perhaps in small plots all over urban areas (marijuana would be ideal)--and multiple creative problem solving--"out of the box" thinking--aimed at transforming both society and the economy to true sustainability. True sustainability does not include poverty. It means distributing resources and wealth EQUITABLY. It means that no one can acquire excessive wealth, and everyone has the basics and a good life. It means TAXING corporations for the TRUE costs of their activity. It means a lot of commonly owned resources and enterprises.
The industrial model followed, historically, by the U.S., England and Europe--and that China is madly pursuing--is SUICIDE for the human race. But I guess we will not get off that suicidal path except by pressure from "below." Our politicians have proven incapable of leadership on this all-important matter. And even a leftist like Lulu is lured by the quickest path to wealth--true throughout history, all over the planet--cut down the trees.
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