The Xingu River — home to some 600 species of fish — is one of the largest tributaries running through the Amazon. But not if the Brazilian state power company has their way.
What would be the world’s third largest , called the Belo Monte, would flood over 200 square miles of tropical rainforest; about the size of Tucson, AZ. It would also flood the homes of 19,000 people.
The river is lined with “a thick emerald canopy of trees” except for the spots of pastures that have been carved out for cattle. Several of the river’s fish species can only be found there.
Stephan Schwartzman, the director of tropical forest policy at the Environmental Defense Fund, said that “18 percent of the Amazon, an area nearly two times the size of California, had been cleared since the mid-1960s.”
While the lush tropical forest that is the Amazon has often been under attack from logging and cattle, Brazil is still one of the world’s greenest countries in terms of renewable-energy. More than forty-six percent of Brazil’s energy is from a renewable sources compared to the global average of thirteen-percent.
Deforestation peaked in 2004 and has since declined because of falling beef and soybean prices and because the government has stepped up enforcement of protected areas. Of course, this whole flooding the Amazon thing is a bit of a FAIL. But the Brazilian government officials claim that dams like Belo Monte are necessary to expand the country’s economy as it slips in to a recession.
It seems obvious, but what happens to the Amazon rainforest has global consequences. Flooding such a huge area will hamper the planet’s ability to rid the atmosphere of greenhouse gases. Not only that, it will really suck for the 19,000 people who will lose their land and homes. Changes in the local ecology will wipe out the livelihoods of many more, killing their main food sources and destroying their raw materials.
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About Jerry James Stone
My wife is a Brazilian National and I have been there many times. Such a beautiful place!
RT
http://www.privacy.pro.tc
How does this guy even dare to think that 200 square miles of flooding and the displacement of thousands of people is “minimal impact on people and the environment.”.
What an ass. This is awful news.
After most countries destroyed their own forests they´re trying to policy what Brazil does or don´t do with his own.
The world wants Brazil to keep it´s forests for their own reasons? then Brazil should create a worldwide tax to profit from it. It´s all good to destroy everything and everyone, as long as it is you doing it for yourself.
This is wrong. Energy dams of the magnitude described are too
damaging to this sensitive rainforest, so vital to the world’s health. Please, energy planners, have a healing of your hard stone jagged hearts and find a clean, helpful, non-damaging way to provide energy.
This dam will provide a large amount of clean renewable energy, enough to displace several coal fired power plants. The Author of this article does not even mention this. For all we know the renewable energy it produces will more than make up for the displaced trees. This article is very poorly written. The author seems to believe that the worlds problems are best solved by waving around machetes and using violence. That brand of thinking does little to help the world situation.
“I don’t know about you, but my money’s on the guys with the machetes!” – this is journalism at its best, right? Such balanced view of the world.
The point here is: eventually everybody needs energy, so we must build power stations. Sure we have to protect nature, but it has to be a balance of what is needed in both fronts. You should be asking instead: is it better to stop this project (eventually it will be a true necessity) or to stop, i dont know, eating beef (so we dont encourage deforestation), overtaxing poor countries resources with bad habits like buying the ultimate gadget, etc. There are environment studies before practices like this in Brazil, and 19000 people are not too many people for that region (no, its not, im sorry), nor it is a big offset of carbon for the world. Be pragmatic. Brazil is taking huge steps to preserve nature, but it takes time (and it needs to develop economically to increase its capacity to preserve – a strange conundrum, sure).
For the next two decades a good part of the forest will go, sure (and thats bad, of course), but there are huge forces working towards preservation of the Amazon nowadays. We need pressure to keep the process, but tone down the ignorance. This is not another indonesia.
eu sou do brasil
what to do?
For Hydro Electric Power – Yes, go ahead, and make the back-waters into the biggest fishery the world has ever seen! Move the indigenous people, treat them as equals, humans, a natural resource, as we know you will! Develop wind power from the breezes on the back water, build new villages around, and teach the folks there to fish!, Give them lights, and education, so they can make even better use of the land. Do not allow the sick vulture capitalists of the U.S.A. create an “annual car model change” situation for the sake of ever-increasing profits, sending 100 years worth of natural resources to the scrap-yards in the name of amusement and high profits, this is not a good model to follow, but most of all, do not take criticism from this bunch of rabble, who for the same 100 years or more have raped the natural resources of the world and left nothing but a crumbling Detroit City behind to show for their efforts! Move forward into a better future for all, not “up and down”, for the enrichment ofa very few, as the Americans have done! Do better, arrive with something to show for your efforts every day, year after year, and remember, the critics are the creators of the biggest “Third World” environmentally torn slum ever, the U.S.A. Avoid their Capitalist follies and serve all your people equally! You will be O.K. if you stay environmentally friendly and honest. Cuba has proven value in human dignity when poverty reigns, and the value of each individual as a brother or sister. You have natural resources , exploit them in the most sustainable way, waste nothing, and cheat no-one, and the resource will return happy survival for all and a great nation to live in!
The Xingu river is one of the most species-rich in the world. It’s home to about as many unique species of fish as are found on the entire continent of Europe. Most of them will become rare or extinguished by this dam.
This dam is the first part of a gigantic plan to clear-cut 1/3rd of the amazon and turn it into soy bean plantations. A series of other, and much bigger, dams are to be built after this one. Their purpose is not to produce electricity, but to provide shipping-lanes for the lumber and soy beans. This plan it president Lula’s “legacy”, he wants to “modernize” the “backwards” amazon, and it’s already decided upon and it’s already got funding.
Western environmental organizations have completely ignored this because they are myopically focussing on global warming right now, and the Brazilian government shrewdly played to that. Several local people who’ve opposed these plans have been killed.
Huge dams are not a clean form of energy. They destroy ecosystems and displace local people. They are threatening most of the worlds great river systems from China’s plans for the Mekong and the Turks plans at Ilisu which will affect the ecosystems of the Tigris and the Iraqi marshes.
The Amazon ecosystem is already under severe strain through continuing deforestation. The author rightly points out that this latest escapade is likely to become a white elephant as the Amazon dries out and Brazil succeeds in turning itself into the Sahara Desert of South America.
As the above postings point out rainforest destruction is the burning issue of our time. Emergency action will be needed to prevent run-away climate change. You can tell the world to stop tropical deforestation by sending a Rainforest SOS. Many have already done so, but every voice counts. I encourage you to visit The Prince’s Rainforest Project http://www.frogme.org/ where you can watch videos featuring HRH The Prince of Wales, Prince William and Prince Harry as well as Harrison Ford, the Dalai Lama, Daniel Craig and Robin Williams. Each supporter appears in the film, with a very cool 3D Argentinean Horn Frog – the project’s rainforest ambassador. The website also allows you to create your own video, so you can share your Rainforest SOS message with others. Go on get frogged- please check it out now!
Yea bunch of cunts humans and easily the stupidest most useless fucking animal in the universe. We’re not even good to eat.