On February 16, 2005 the Protocol of Kyoto, the largest worldwide plan to fight the global heating, came into force. Signed by 141 countries, the Protocol stipulates that the industrialized countries have up to 2012 to reduce its emissions in 5,2% in relation to the 1990 levels. The greater polluters are: The U.S.A. (17%), China (10,8%), Indonesia (9%), Brazil (5,39%), Russia (5%), Japan (3,9%), India (3%), Germany (2,66%), Malaysia (2,61%) and Canada (1,86%), etc...

        It is interesting to notice that the U.S.A., the greater polluter, did not sign the agreement. China, Indonesia and Brazil do not have reduction goals. Of the great polluting agents mentioned above only Japan, Germany and Canada will reduce its levels of pollution in an average of 6%. In terms of pollution through land clearing, Brazil occupies the first place, what is equivalent to say 24,000 square meters of forest clearing, annually, equals to the State of Sergipe, Brazil.

        The Protocol was the first step and perhaps the last one. It was a very shy step to try to prevent a devastating climatic change in the Land. The way the profit behaves, people have the impression that the day where the “protocol” will be useless is approaching.

        In 1974, the Nobel prize of biology, Christian de Duve, in its book “Vital Dust”, Ed. Campus, 1977, affirmed: “the biological evolution march in an accelerated rhythm towards a serious instability. In a certain aspect, our time reminds us of one of those important ruptures in the evolution, designated by mass extinctions”.

        In 1975, Chico Mendes said: “Only in my region, from 1970 to 1975, 180,000 rubber trees, 80,000 chestnut trees and more than a half million law wooden trees were destroyed by fire and equipment to cut trees, without counting some species of medicinal trees that had been devoured and transformed into pasture”.

        In 1984, the Geographic Magazine in the March edition brought in its pages: “of the tree great bushes of Brazil at the time of the discovery – Atlantic, Amazon and Araucaria – the two last ones are practically extinct.

        Upon taking a look at the Guiness book of 2005, one will discover things. In terms of pollution and land-clearing, predatory fishing and global heating, the data is frightful. I do not know where this humankind will finish, but for sure it will not find on a pleasant place. They are destroying the planet for profit. The global heating, alone, for example, can cause the extinction of ¼ of the animals and plants till 2050, equivalent to 1 million of terrestrial species.

        Some records:

        Portugal: largest loss of fertile land. Soon it will be only dust.
        U.S.A.: largest sender of carbon dioxide.(CO2) 6 billion tons of CO2 released in the atmosphere in 2001.
        Mexico: Mexico City is the metropolis with the most polluted air. One cannot breath anymore.
        Brazil: greatest index of land-clearing of the Planet. 22,2 thousand square meters of forest disappeared = Sergipe         between years 1970 – 2000, and soon it will become a desert.
        Finland: it is the best place to live, where the inhabitants cultivate the nature.

        The cause for this instability: Leonardo Boff writes (JB 21/01/05) “ – it comes of a terrible asteroid that is the human being species. If a joint and national solution is not found, the natural selection will make it irrationally against us. This is the lesson that the story of life offers to us”.

        No reasons lacked for the English real astronomer Martin Rees , in his book “Our Final Century”, forecasts that, “as things run, we can be eliminated still in this century”.
An ecological bomb clock was set in motion, says the British council Stephen Byers (BOD).

[Deforestation] [Land Clearing]

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