It seems like I've heard forever how we need to save the rain forest. It absorbs greenhouse gases, releases oxygen and provides a factory of biodiversity which could naturally develop disease resistant plants.
The largest rainforest is in the Amazon basin and it has been under attack for years as local populations want to clear land to raise crops and livestock.
Its easy to understand how these people, many of them poor and hardworking, feel how their own self interests, clearing some land is irrelevant to global issues.
They only want to do what the developed world has already done, replacing the rainforest with "productive" land that provides income and security for their families.
This year with a new President who much like our own ignores the environment, they have started an unprecedented number of fires in the Brazilian rainforest. It is a potential environmental disaster as land stops absorbing greenhouse gases and is replaced by farms which might even increase them.
Save the rainforest? It might already be too late.
We certainly had plenty of warning.
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