Anyone want to take the contra position? See below. (And if really
interested: http://www.walrus.com/~jklotz/sea_art.htm
------------------
Amazon Burning at Record Levels
By MICHAEL ASTOR Associated Press Writer
MANAUS, Brazil (AP) -- This year's burning season in the Amazon
rain forest is so bad even a lake is on fire.
Two factors -- the worst drought in 25 years and government policy
that encourages farmers to burn their land -- are speeding destruction of
the world's largest wilderness, not to mention choking inhabitants of the
Amazon's largest city with thick smoke.
At the Balbina dam reservoir, a record-low water level has exposed
trees that were long submerged. For months they dried, then caught fire.
``Even the trees in the lake are burning. I've never seen anything like it,''
says Abner Brandao de Souza of Ibama, the government's
environmental protection agency.
A dense haze spews from the thousands of fires that have spread with
ease over the parched Amazon, an area nearly two-thirds the size of the
continental United States. The haze is choking the 1.1 million residents
of the northern city of Manaus.
``You leave the house in the morning and you step into a thick haze,''
secretary Selena Oliveira says.
Fires at this time of year are common in heavily deforested Amazon
states such as Mato Grosso and Para, where land is regularly burned for
pasture. But the fires now are the worst in memory -- and the intensity is
new here in Amazonas state, Brazil's largest, where nearly 98 percent of
the original forest canopy remains intact.
Worse, the fires have spread into virgin forest, where deep roots usually
keep trees so moist they rarely burn. By most estimates, at least 10
percent of the 2 million square-mile Amazon has been destroyed.
There are no widescale efforts to stamp out the blazes because they
mostly are cases of landowners burning on their own property. And
there is nothing to stop the smoke.
Doctors say the number of people seeking treatment for respiratory
ailments has jumped 30 percent since the smoke began smothering the
city in mid-September.
Before scant showers fell in mid-October, the region had gone 70 days
without rain.
The water level at Balbina dam, 100 miles north of Manaus, has plunged
to the point that the city is forced to ration energy. Some neighborhoods
have electricity for only six hours a day. Two babies died at a maternity
ward that lacked a private generator to power their incubators.
El Nino is blamed for the drought: The cyclical phenomenon of warm
Pacific Ocean currents is sending tropical storms north to desert regions
such as Baja California and Arizona, and leaving normally moist areas
thirsty.
Even more fires are burning in Southeast Asia, where El Nino also has
caused drought, spreading dangerous, choking haze over Indonesia,
Malaysia and other nations.
No one knows when El Nino will end -- and environmentalists fear next
year may be worse.
``El Nino is just beginning. It should last long enough to make next
year's dry season longer and hotter,'' said Roberto Kishinani, director of
Greenpeace in Brazil.
But another problem is strictly man-made -- Brazil's policy of indirectly
encouraging farmers to burn their land.
Chainsaw in hand, Idalino Cordeiro de Sousa, 34, clears the trees on
the plot he received from a federal land-distribution institute called Incra.
He says it's the only way to obtain credit to buy an irrigation system.
``What else are we going to do?'' he says. ``Incra only gives loans for
planting, and we can only plant if we cut.''
Incra says it may change that policy. Still, Brazilian law allows settlers to
cut and burn up to eight acres without authorization from Ibama, the
environmental protection agency. The government says small farmers
account for 40 percent of Amazon deforestation.
Sousa will sell the valuable tropical wood and burn off what's left. Thick
scrub quickly replaces the forest, but the weak soil must periodically be
fertilized with ashes, so burning becomes perennial.
It also makes burning easier. Because trees pump water vapor into the
air through their leaves, fewer trees means drier air.
``One of the big fears in the future is that fires could take off into the
primary forest, the way they've done in Indonesia,'' says Philip
Fearnside, an American scientist at the National Institute for Amazon
Research in Manaus.
Fearnside warns that the current ecological crisis in Indonesia is the face
of things to come in the Amazon, where commercial loggers from Asia
are moving in.
Ibama has just 60 poorly paid inspectors to cover the 600,000 square
miles of Amazonas state, nearly as large as Alaska. They rely on help
from the air force to locate the fires.
Amilton Casara, who heads Ibama in Amazonas, points out that the
agency levied a record $276,000 in fines over 18 days in October. But
such fines are rarely paid, and Casara had no figures for how much has
been collected this year.
Fearnside remains skeptical about government promises to do more to
discourage burning.
``The same sort of promises were made before the U.N. Earth Summit
in 1992, and few of those promises were kept,'' he said.
AP-NY-10-29-97 0417EST
JOHN KLOTZ
http://www.walrus.com/~jklotz/
885 Third Avenue, Suite 2900
New York, NY 10022
(212) 230-2162
(718) 601-2044