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Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
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 Posted: Fri Nov 27, 2009 1:06 am Post subject: Brazil's De Silva: 'Gringos' must pay |
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. . . to stop global warming.
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President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva made the comments just before an Amazon summit in which delegates signed a declaration calling for financial help from the industrial world to halt the deforestation that causes global warming.
"I don't want any gringo asking us to let an Amazon resident die of hunger under a tree," Silva said. "We want to preserve, but they will have to pay the price for this preservation because we never destroyed our forest like they mowed theirs down a century ago." |
Yeah, especially since ol' blue eyes caused the economic crisis . . . |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Fri Nov 27, 2009 1:46 am Post subject: |
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I believe this represents a preextisting position in Brazilian foreign relations, and the Brazilian govt asked for much the same at the Earth Summit in Rio 1992ish. More or less amounts to extortion.
Another problem leftists and environmentalists have tangled into anthropogenic global-warming theory: it seems to always involve demands that the allegedly perpetrating industrialized, northern, Western world transfer vast amounts of funds to allegedly victimized non-industrial southern hemispheric states such as Brazil.
So redistributing the wealth, and presumably with it, political power, will stop anthropogenic global warming and then all will be well?
Meanwhile, the Argentine and Chilean govts continue vying for position in Antarctica... |
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Fox
Joined: 04 Mar 2009
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| Posted: Fri Nov 27, 2009 3:56 am Post subject: |
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| Even independent of concepts like global warming, I feel like the Amazon Rainforest is a treasure worth preserving. I can't say I care for the Brazilian government essentially holding it hostage but things like this are an inevitable consequence of national sovereignty. |
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bacasper
Joined: 26 Mar 2007
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| Posted: Fri Nov 27, 2009 4:09 am Post subject: |
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| Fox wrote: |
| Even independent of concepts like global warming, I feel like the Amazon Rainforest is a treasure worth preserving. I can't say I care for the Brazilian government essentially holding it hostage but things like this are an inevitable consequence of national sovereignty. |
I couldn't agree with you more. The Amazon Rainforest are the lungs of the world, and we are losing it at some ridiculous rate, like a football field per second or the state of Massachusetts per year. (OK, those may be exaggerations, but you get the idea.) I'd be willing to pay some amount not too burdensome to protect it. |
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nautilus
Joined: 26 Nov 2005
Location: Je jump, Tu jump, oui jump!
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| Posted: Fri Nov 27, 2009 5:42 am Post subject: |
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"We'll burn our house down unless you give us cash!!"
wow.. humans are pathetic.  Its easy to see how homo sapiens could destroy the earth through a mixture of greed and ignorance, taking half the other species down with it. |
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mises
Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired
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| Posted: Fri Nov 27, 2009 6:49 am Post subject: Re: Brazil's De Silva: 'Gringos' must pay |
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| Kuros wrote: |
. . . to stop global warming.
| Quote: |
President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva made the comments just before an Amazon summit in which delegates signed a declaration calling for financial help from the industrial world to halt the deforestation that causes global warming.
"I don't want any gringo asking us to let an Amazon resident die of hunger under a tree," Silva said. "We want to preserve, but they will have to pay the price for this preservation because we never destroyed our forest like they mowed theirs down a century ago." |
Yeah, especially since ol' blue eyes caused the economic crisis . . . |
He's welcome to squeeze water from rocks. Yell at brick walls. etc. "Climate change". heh. A cover for everything. |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Fri Nov 27, 2009 8:49 am Post subject: |
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| bacasper wrote: |
| ...and we are losing it at some ridiculous rate, like a football field per second or the state of Massachusetts per year. (OK, those may be exaggerations, but you get the idea.) |
This is more accurate than exaggerated. I will never vote for paying the Brazilian govt, especially a leftist Brazilian govt, extortion money -- and certainly never in the billions of dollars.
Bribes like that, Bacasper, have a way of continuing and indeed growing.
Next, do not take the current Brazilian president's historical accounting at face-value. As usual for a politician, he knows next to nothing about his own country's history. Dutch and Portuguese colonials as well as the Brazilian nationals who followed them already systematically and irrevocably destroyed what once was Brazil's Atlantic forest.
With Broadax and Firebrand. Author is an environmentalist, and he plays his violins throughout the book, but it remains good history nevertheless.
Last edited by Gopher on Fri Nov 27, 2009 1:29 pm; edited 3 times in total |
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bacasper
Joined: 26 Mar 2007
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| Posted: Fri Nov 27, 2009 11:27 am Post subject: |
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| Gopher wrote: |
| bacasper wrote: |
| ...and we are losing it at some ridiculous rate, like a football field per second or the state of Massachusetts per year. (OK, those may be exaggerations, but you get the idea.) |
This is more accurate than exaggerated. I will never vote for paying the Brazilian govt, especially a leftist Brazilian govt extortion money, and especially not in the billions of dollars.
Bribes like that, Bacasper, have a way of continuing and indeed growing. |
OK, then how do you propose we save the Amazon rainforest? |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Fri Nov 27, 2009 12:15 pm Post subject: |
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Have you mistaken me for an environmentalist interventionist? And are you going pro-interventionist on me, Bacasper?
Interesting.
Did you know that many Brazilians believe that our concerns for the Amazonian environment merely cover our plans to annex the region because, they allege, we know the secret of its mineral and oil riches, etc.? Do you imagine that people like that are going to heed any American or Atlantic power's advice to stop developing the place? or listen to our objections for even five minutes, for that matter? Everything is an antiBrazilian conspiracy to people like Luiz Lula. We have seen many like him before: M. Mosaddeq, F. Castro, S. Allende, H. Chavez, and M. Ahmadinejad, who, incidentally, met with Lula in Brazil several days ago for chats...
Boa suerte negotiating with such as Lula, Bacasper. |
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Ya-ta Boy
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994
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| Posted: Fri Nov 27, 2009 5:05 pm Post subject: |
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On a more constructive front, Richard Wolff is reporting:
"Beyond the photo ops and press statements, Obama was pushing President Hu Jintao and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh for the kind of climate deals that eluded him at the G8 summit in Italy in the summer � and have eluded international negotiators for the last decade. China and India have played central roles in blocking past agreements, alongside the US, in a seemingly intractable dispute between fast-developing economies and the older, wealthier polluters.
Now Obama is at the point where he feels on the verge of a breakthrough, based on the kind of talks that don�t get covered by reporters obsessing about state dinners. �He had extensive conversations with President Hu specifically on climate and conversations with the prime minister of India,� said one senior White House aide. �So he has been building momentum for a political agreement to be brokered at Copenhagen.�'
Of course it's only 'verging', but still... |
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bacasper
Joined: 26 Mar 2007
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| Posted: Fri Nov 27, 2009 9:54 pm Post subject: |
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| Gopher wrote: |
Have you mistaken me for an environmentalist interventionist? And are you going pro-interventionist on me, Bacasper?
Interesting.
...
Boa suerte negotiating with such as Lula, Bacasper. |
I do feel that Amazon rainforest is that important, but such intervention should not be necessary.
Brazil has taken measures to protect its rainforest although enforcement leaves something to be desired. And she was responsive in reacting to the murder of activist Chico Mendes who worked very hard at maintaining a sustainable rainforest.
I take your point about the extortion aspect, but I would support some clear nominal payment along with continues international pressure. |
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nautilus
Joined: 26 Nov 2005
Location: Je jump, Tu jump, oui jump!
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| Posted: Fri Nov 27, 2009 10:59 pm Post subject: |
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| bacasper wrote: |
| I would support some clear nominal payment along with continues international pressure. |
So would I, paired with an international monitoring and enforcement body that ensures our tax dollars go to protecting this vitally important world heritage ecosystem.
If you simply hand over billions of dollars to the Brazillian govt it will go nowhere except into the pockets of a few politicians. |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Fri Nov 27, 2009 11:11 pm Post subject: |
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| nautilus wrote: |
| bacasper wrote: |
| I would support some clear nominal payment along with continu[ous] international pressure. |
So would I, paired with an international monitoring and enforcement body... |
No self-respecting sovereign govt would ever accept such an arrangement. Further, I doubt the OAS would vote it into effect and enforce it.
Ever hear of the environmentalist activist Douglas Tompkins? His activities in Chile had Chileans apoplectic several years ago. They were alleging that his "environmentalist" project was really cover for a secret American plot to divide Chile in two, to prevent northern and southern families from ever seeing each other again, or simply to violate Chilean sovereignty and create a hidden airbase that would allow the Argentine Air Force to operate against Chile from advance bases in Chilean territory.
I kid you not.
Most people in South America are not on the same page at all with northern-hemisphere environmentalist activists, gentlemen. Keep your eye on Brazilian affairs and see what I mean... |
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Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
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| Posted: Sat Nov 28, 2009 12:27 am Post subject: |
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| Gopher wrote: |
Ever hear of the environmentalist activist Douglas Tompkins? His activities in Chile had Chileans apoplectic several years ago. They were alleging that his "environmentalist" project was really cover for a secret American plot to divide Chile in two, to prevent northern and southern families from ever seeing each other again, or simply to violate Chilean sovereignty and create a hidden airbase that would allow the Argentine Air Force to operate against Chile from advance bases in Chilean territory.
I kid you not. |
Actually, this story is worth posting.
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The capital of Palena is a town called Chait�n -- a concentration of bedraggled wooden houses on a stony beach, reachable from greater Chile only by sea or by air. I met the provincial governor at his office there, on the central square. He was a plump, bearded fellow in a rumpled suit, a grandson of Chait�n's earliest settlers, and a man of unabashed resentments. He was angry about the seasonal influx of gringos who fish and kayak in one of the local rivers and leave no wealth behind, but angrier still about Tompkins, who had come and stayed and intervened.
. . .
Tompkins believes in "deep ecology," an absolutist version of environmentalism -- which contains little to surprise a North American reader. It is an "ecocentric" view that rejects the idea of inherent human superiority and instead gives equal moral weight to all elements of nature -- from the living to the inanimate. The deep ecologists are purists. The governor understood the importance that they place on trying to live according to their principles, and he even knew about the Norwegian Arne Naess, an academic philosopher, now eighty-seven, whose work launched the movement.
But emotion kept getting the better of the governor. He equated deep ecology with Nazism. And he confused population control with genocide. He implied that Tompkins might be building a dangerous cult in his forest fastness -- a suspicion just plausible, because of the stories of survival here in the south of the last Nazi fugitives, and the existence farther north of a German-led fascist group that has held off the Chilean authorities for years. |
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Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
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| Posted: Sat Nov 28, 2009 3:20 am Post subject: |
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| Gopher wrote: |
Did you know that many Brazilians believe that our concerns for the Amazonian environment merely cover our plans to annex the region because, they allege, we know the secret of its mineral and oil riches, etc.? Do you imagine that people like that are going to heed any American or Atlantic power's advice to stop developing the place? or listen to our objections for even five minutes, for that matter? Everything is an antiBrazilian conspiracy to people like Luiz Lula. We have seen many like him before: M. Mosaddeq, F. Castro, S. Allende, H. Chavez, and M. Ahmadinejad, who, incidentally, met with Lula in Brazil several days ago for chats... |
Whatever you may think of Gopher's politics, he certainly has a grasp on the New World South. The allusion to Tompkins is very on-topic, I think, and I want to bolster Gopher's point here a little.
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Thomas had a smart attorney in Santiago, an influential conservative named Pedro Pablo Guti�rrez, who disagreed with his politics but worried about Chile's. Soon after the fall of Huinay, Guti�rrez told me, "We are about to throw away a man simply because we do not share his beliefs. This we must not do." He was right, of course. He also said, "Tompkins is not a bad man, and even his enemies must know it. If anything he has shamed them with his generosity. He is honest, and honorable, and well-intentioned. But, please excuse me, he is also a typical innocent gringo." He was right about that, too.
Despite all the evidence to the contrary, Tompkins kept insisting that people everywhere are the same. Depending on his mood, this could be a bad or a good thing. On the one hand, he worried about the "monoculturing of the world." On the other hand, he was persuaded that reasonable Chileans would come around to his ways. That conviction made their apathy -- or glee -- after Endesa's acquisition of Huinay all the more perplexing. For a few days he held out hope for a student strike at the Catholic University of Valpara�so, but unfortunately for Tompkins nothing of significance occurred. The students were busy with their studies.
In the final analysis, the opposition to Parque Pumal�n seemed to be a mystery to Tompkins. |
I don't think we can possibly underestimate the antipathy the New World South holds for the North. Even if Lula were to get the North to entirely financially ensure his rainforests, its likely it wouldn't be a lasting satisfactory arrangment for Brasilia. Demagogues can always point to the North-South income disparity and claim the gringos' environmentalism is costing them jobs, whether its true or not. And my (limited) understanding is that a majority of Brazilians aren't given an education to arm them in critical thinking, or one that allows them to dispel prejudice so easily. |
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