The environment is in crisis. Recent reports of the United Nations (one on climate change by the IPCC and two on biodiversity loss by the IPBES and the FAO) make this abundantly clear. They all stress that massive changes in our behavior are urgently needed to turn the tide. We must not only stop the damage we are doing but also start repairing the damage we have done, to give ourselves and our descendants any hope for the future.

The very last thing we need is more destruction, and yet that is what is being done to the Amazon rainforest. It is so stupid that it defies belief and suggests very foul play on the part of those responsible for it.

The benefits of the Amazon rainforest are enormous.

It acts as a major carbon sink.

Advanced life depends on oxygen (O). It is produced by plants, which take carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere and convert it into oxygen and carbon (C). Both elements are used by the plants to grow. The carbon remains inside the plants, some oxygen is released back into the atmosphere. When a tree dies, this process stops, the tree decomposes and the elements are gradually returned to the atmosphere again in the form of CO2. However, when a tree is burned down, this conversion into CO2 happens all at once.

CO2 is one of the greenhouse gases causing global warming. This poses one of the greatest threats to life as we know it. We desperately need to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases to slow down and possibly reverse global warming. The destruction of the Amazon rainforest would do the very opposite in several ways.

1. It would release enormous amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere, accelerating global warming
2. It would no longer exist as a carbon sink, permanently lowering the ability of the planet to absorb CO2.
3. The land cleared by its destruction is mainly used for the livestock industry, which is a major contributor to global warming because it produces enormous amounts of (other) greenhouse gases.

This triple climate threat alone should be reason enough to keep the Amazon rainforest intact at all costs. But there is much more.

The Amazon rainforest contains an enormous wealth of biodiversity

Biodiversity may not seem as spectacular as climate change but many scientists consider it just as important and even more important for the wellbeing of our planet. It is the very foundation of life.

The Amazon rainforest contains an abundance of lifeforms. Although it covers less than 4% of the world's land area, 10% of all known species live there: 2.5 million insect species, tens of thousands of plants, about 2,000 birds and mammals. Together they form the richest ecosystem on the planet.

In 2019 the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (a scientific organization closely connected with the United Nations) published a ground-breaking report on the state of the natural world. Its findings are terrifying. We are destroying nature at unprecedented levels. If this continues, a million species may soon go extinct, with dire consequences for humanity. Its message is unequivocal:

"The best available evidence, gathered by the world’s leading experts, points us now to a single conclusion: we must act to halt and reverse the unsustainable use of nature – or risk not only the future we want, but even the lives we currently lead."

To make matters even worse, the loss of so much biodiversity will not only seriously impoverish the global biosphere, it will also deprive us of an unknown abundance of potentially medicinal and nutritious plants, because large numbers have not even been identified yet. To destroy them without even bothering to find out what they are, is beyond insane.

The Amazon rainforest regulates weather patterns by recycling water

Destruction of the rainforest would not only seriously affect the global climate, it would also have serious consequences for regional weather, reaching as far as the United States.

Astoundingly, it has only become clear in the last few years that forests play an important part in distributing rainfall. Trees absorb large amounts of water when it rains, and later release it again into the atmosphere, where it forms clouds that bring rain to other places.

Forests also release a range of volatile organic compounds that have an overall cooling effect on the climate. It has been found that deforested areas get perceptibly warmer than forested ones.

Forests also moderate local climate by keeping their environments cool, partly by shading the land but also by releasing moisture from their leaves. This is transpiration, extracting energy from the surrounding air and cooling it.

Recent studies have found that croplands and pastures are significantly warmer than forest areas.

Rainfall on coasts is the result of water evaporating from the oceans. Inland, however, most rainfall is caused by recycling, by evaporation from lakes, rivers or wet soil and by plants, especially trees. This process repeats itself across vast areas, if they are forested. The Amazon rainforest releases as much water into the atmosphere as the Amazon river discharges into the ocean. This water creates rainfall downwind. So, in a sense rainforests create their own rain, and keep repeating this. It is thought that the Amazon provides moisture as far as the Midwest of the USA, which gets 50 per cent of its rainfall from water evaporating from the land.

This means that deforestation steadily reduces the amount of rainfall and increases the risks of droughts. In recent years this effect has already been noticed in several deforested places across the world.

Deforestation leads to degradation and loss of soil

The soil of forests, and especially rainforests, is not exceptionally nutritious. Most nutrients are found above ground, in their foliage and lying on the surface. When forests are removed and the soil is put to other use, it is often quickly exhausted. The loss of tree roots means that the soil is also much more vulnerable to erosion, especially on slopes, where it may be washed away completely. This is a major problem. It is estimated that about half of the planet's topsoil has been lost in last 150 years.

A little bit of vandalism goes a long way

One of the scariest aspects of the current devastation of the Amazon is that a rainforest can be destroyed long before the last tree has been felled. Scientists have found that there is a tipping point at which the forest will no longer be able to sustain itself. Once this point is reached, the forest will deteriorate into grasslands, even without further human intervention.

Wanton destruction of life is a grievous wrong

Even if a healthy rainforest offered no benefits to mankind at all, it would still be an act of monstrous barbarity to destroy such a magnificent place, unless there was no other choice. And there are plenty of those. Numerous recent UN reports bear witness to that.

Plants and animals have lives independent of humans. They have existed for billions of years. Nothing, bar the need to survive, gives us the right to destroy them at our convenience. It is immoral and is made many times worse by the loathsome cruelty of burning millions of animals alive. Nothing justifies that.

In the greater scheme of things the tiniest insect has the same birthright as any human, arguably even more so, given its innocence and humanity's misconduct.

The often heard claim that nature must be sacrificed to prevent human hunger and poverty is a monstrous lie. Deforestation in the Amazon is largely committed for the livestock industry, which is a totally inefficient way to produce food for humans, as we already pointed out on our page on industrial farming (link). More efficient use of existing farmland would produce many times more food than destruction of the rainforest.

Poverty and hunger are socioeconomic problems, largely caused by inequality, which in turn is caused by the corporate (and increasingly criminal) organizations that are almost always behind the destructive exploitation of nature.

It is quite ironic and perhaps a form of poetic justice that our selfish failure to respect others is precisely what is dooming us now. If we had shown proper regard for our fellow creatures, we would not have destroyed their world so ruthlessly that it will no longer be able to sustain us either.