Thanks To Burning The Amazon, Brazil Now A Top Ten Polluter

[hatrack]

BRASILIA, Brazil (Reuters) - "Burning of the Amazon rainforest has made Brazil one of the world's top 10 polluters, raising pressure on the government to curb destruction of the jungles, scientists said on Monday.

The government should publish within months a long-delayed inventory of Brazil's greenhouse gas emissions, which is widely expected to challenge the view that the Amazon serves as the "lungs of the world" by converting carbon dioxide into oxygen.

Instead, it will show that a large majority of Brazil's greenhouse gas emissions, which contribute to global warming, come from smoke linked to deforestation of the Amazon, and not fossil fuels which are the main culprit in most countries. Paulo Moutinho, a researcher at the nongovernmental Institute for Amazon Research, said the inventory should show that Brazil produces around 300 million tons of carbon dioxide-equivalent a year, 200 million of which comes from logging and burning of the world's largest tropical forest. That puts Brazil above bigger economies like Italy and Canada and among the globe's top 10 leading polluters.

EDIT

Destruction of the Amazon jungle, which is larger than the continental United States and home to up to 30 percent of the globe's animal and plant species, reached its second-highest level last year. An area of 5.9 million acres, bigger than the U.S. state of New Jersey, was destroyed as loggers and farmers hacked and burned the forest in 2003."

EDIT

http://abcnews.go.com/wire/SciTech/reuters20040719_440.html

[Heyo]

1. This is something we will pay for.......

You cannot cut down all the plants that make oxygen and then expect to be able to breathe....

Jesus H Christ.... what is wrong with people?

Heyo