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Stop irreversible damage to the Amazon

152 points| musha68k | 2 years ago |junglekeepers.org

53 comments

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[+] ploden|2 years ago|reply
Donated! Direct land acquisition by nonprofits is the future of conservation. I did the math once, and with the annual budget of The Nature Conservancy, you could purchase 20% of Nebraska in a perfectly reasonable amount of time.
[+] ajot|2 years ago|reply
Donating money for someone to buy land is a big no for me. Privatisation of land to some benefactor doesn't seem to be the best strategy for preservation. How do you know ownership will not be transferred in the future?

Also, why is it we never see a "reverse damage done for centuries to european and north american forests" NGO? Why do you always think of the Amazon? Leave peruvians, bolivians, brasilians, etc alone. And stop using coal to generate electricity, thank you very much.

[+] ruined|2 years ago|reply
>Also, why is it we never see a "reverse damage done for centuries to european and north american forests" NGO?

north american forest defense orgs are prosecuted as domestic terrorists. there are a couple "tree planting" startups but mostly they seem to be timber company greenwashing

[+] mijamo|2 years ago|reply
There is a lot of reforestation happening in Europe. In France for instance the low time for forest was in the 17th century and since then the forest surface has doubled and is steadily increasing.

You could also note that now Japan has more forests than Brazil in percentage of the territory while having a much higher population density, and that Brazil used to have double as much forest than Japan around 100 years ago.

[+] BurningFrog|2 years ago|reply
There is really no future proof strategy.
[+] surgical_fire|2 years ago|reply
This is cute, but I'm skeptical of it working in practice.

Most mining and logging operations in Amazon rainforest is illegal anyway. I don't think they will care that the land is owned unless you can protect it somehow (including use of force. The rule of law hardly applies in those regions).

[+] foo42|2 years ago|reply
I just heard about this charity the other day listening to a fascinating episode of the Lex Fridman podcast with Paul Rosolie who seems very involved or possibly the founder.

Fwiw he came across as very genuine (given some comments on here were skeptical of the charity)

[+] iamgoat|2 years ago|reply
Paul describing the process:

  56:2656:28 They cut the forest, burn the forest.
  56:2856:30 And then they run water through the sand.
  56:3056:33 And the sand particles have bits of gold in it, not chunks.
  56:3356:37 But just little almost microscopic flecks of gold.
  56:3756:40 And then they use the mercury to bind that.
  56:4056:41 And then they burn off the mercury.
  56:4156:43 And that vapor goes up into the clouds.
  56:4356:46 So just like everything else, it's all connected down there
  56:4656:47 and then rains down into the rivers.
  56:4756:50 And so the people in the region are having birth defects
Destruction visible from above: https://www.google.com/maps/@-12.8121497,-70.1009866,76878m/...
[+] VoodooJuJu|2 years ago|reply
>20 coffees to save the Amazon

Which 20 coffees? 20 Starbucks coffees? 20 no-name donut shop coffees? 20 instant-scoop grocery store coffees? If coffees are to become a bona fide currency, we're going to need more precise denominations here.

Or hopefully we can just stop with the coffee-pricing analogies because it's getting ridiculous and your would-be customers think you sound ridiculous. It's outdated sales-talk.

[+] aramachandran7|2 years ago|reply
I disagree. You’re getting caught in the semantics; the notion of 20 $5 coffees makes sense and is an easy and relatable way to reframe $100.
[+] yamtaddle|2 years ago|reply
$100, so, $5/coffee.

That'd be extremely expensive for a normal coffee, even at 2023 prices and assuming some rip-off place like Starbucks or quite-fancy cafes that actually put some of the high price into getting excellent beans. It's unthinkably high for home-made coffee. You can get extremely nice beans and not hit $2/coffee.

$5 is close to the cost of a hot caffeinated milkshake, though.

[+] redprince|2 years ago|reply
Considering the massive scale of deforestation going on in the Amazonas, this feels like trying to put out a forest fire by spitting into it.

"In the Legal Amazon, deforestation reached 356 km² in March 2023, according to DETER data." https://www.wwf.org.br/?85360/Deforestation-alerts-remain-hi...

365 km² are 87,970 acres. And that's just Brazil. The goal of the junglekeepers is to save 300,000 acres. They are at it for more than 10 years now.

[+] jandrese|2 years ago|reply
Seems to me like you could do a lot to frustrate loggers with 300k acres of land, especially if you are strategic in the purchases and do things like buying a giant ring of land (or more realistically a strip that has natural boundaries like rivers and mountains on the other sides) and then disallowing the construction of roads through it.
[+] xeus2001|2 years ago|reply
Just stop eating meat or reduce where possible and stop or reduce animal product consumption would help much more. Money is not the solution, but the problem IMHO.
[+] renewiltord|2 years ago|reply
Imho the real thing we need to do is raze so many European towns and cities and return them to nature. That continent continues to deforest and it is carbon costly to inhabit. It is time for Germany to depopulate.

They've simply been grandfathered in, but the climate costs of their past actions have accumulated a debt that can only be paid by dissolving the country.

[+] ajhurliman|2 years ago|reply
Starting with your house, right?
[+] mucle6|2 years ago|reply
This implies we value trees and wildlife more than humans.
[+] antibasilisk|2 years ago|reply
you're only 30 years too late, that must be some kind of record