Saving the planet and us!
As you all probably know our planet is in grave danger and I’m ashamed to say, WE are the cause. From polluting the land to destroying the last remaining natural forests and jungles and even the air we breath and the water we drink. It’s all being polluted and destroyed.
Don’t YOU worry about it? And don’t you think about what the future (if any) will have in store for us — the next generation?
It’s clear, if WE don’t do anything about it, NO ONE WILL!
The Amazon
The Amazon rain forest located in Brazil is being destroyed because it’s being used as a resource for cattle pasture, valuable hardwoods, gold and precious stones mining, oil and gas exploitation, housing space, farming space (especially for soybeans), road works (such as highways and smaller roads), medicines and human gain. Cattle alone is responsible for 80% of the forests deforestation and 14% of the world’s total annual deforestation. This will cause:
The rain forest induces rainfall and helps with water storage. In just one second the Amazon pours almost 60 gallons of fresh water into the Atlantic Ocean, but that is only a 1/3rd of where the water goes. So where do the other 2/3rds go? Well, up to half of rainfall never reaches the ground but instead is intercepted by the forest and is re-evaporated into the atmosphere. Additional evaporation occurs from the ground and the river surfaces or the evaporated water is released into the atmosphere by the plants.
Water released by plants into the atmosphere through evapotranspiration and to the ocean by the rivers, influences the world climate and the circulation of ocean currents. By 2050 they suggest that temperatures in the Amazon will increase by 2-3°C. Projected increases of temperatures and decreased rainfall during dry months will result in longer and more severe droughts along with substantial changes in seasonality. With this we should expect the degradation of freshwater systems, loss of ecologically and agriculturally valuable soils, increased erosion, spread of infectious diseases, among many others. Research has shown that with a warmer and drier environment the region could convert from 30% up to 60% of the Amazon rain forest into a type of dry savanna.
The Amazon produces more than 20% of our world’s oxygen alone and it also stores, in a normal year, 2.2 billion tons of carbon dioxide. Scientists account for the world’s carbon dioxide, their total suggest that some of the greenhouse gas disappears into land-based carbon traps. These natural carbon “sinks”, like forests, absorb and store carbon dioxide, which in turn helps lower the greenhouse gas in the atmosphere. Living trees absorb the carbon dioxide because they need it to grow, while dead trees release their stored carbon back into the atmosphere by decaying. Dead Amazonian trees emit an estimated 1.9 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every year. In a normal year, the Amazon absorbs about 2.2 billion tons of carbon dioxide.
The Amazon Rain forest is home to more than 1500 of the bird species in the world, over 40,000 different plant species, approximately 2.5 million insect species and 3000 fruits that grow in the rain forest that are edible. Many plants around the world have medicinal properties. Of the plants known to have anti-cancer properties, 70% are found in the rain forest. Amazon natives use rain forest plants regularly but 90% of the ones they use haven’t been studied in modern medicine.
Within Brazil, the indigenous population is estimated to be 310,000 and around 280,000 live in within areas designated as preserves. There are about 160 different individual societies inside the Brazilian Amazon that speak 195 different languages. The Indigenous people live a sustainable existence, meaning that they use the land without doing harm to the plants and animals who inhabit it. As one wise native man once said “The Earth is our historian, our educator, the provider of food, medicine, clothing and protection. She is the mother of our races.”. Since they have been in contact with the Europeans, who began colonizing their territories 500 years ago, the Europeans unknowingly brought diseases such as small-pox, measles and the common cold which the indigenous people were not accustomed to. As a result, over 90% of the population died from the diseases that we regard as minor. But why should we care about what happens to the native people? Well, they possess a lot of irreplaceable information and skills about living in the rain forest without destroying it like we are doing. We should be ashamed of ourselves because they can survive in the rain forest without disrupting it but we can only destroy it for greed forever.
In conclusion
The Amazon is crucial for our future because it supplies the planet with oxygen and rain which in turn we all need to survive. No water means no plants and no plants mean no oxygen and food which in turn will lead to no life on Earth. Do we really want that? No, we don’t. The Government is jeopardizing our future and we’re okay with that? The rain forest doesn’t belong to one country alone, it belongs to everyone in the world because it affects all of us not only them.
