Why are Brazilian rainforests being destroyed for sugar cane to be planted and used for biofuel?

Question

Is USA involved in this?

Answer 1

Of course it is!!! It is something known as "Ethanol Alliance"....

"Today Brazil is the number-one producer of ethanol in the world, alongside the United States, and the two nations are poised to consolidate an alliance that will assure Brazil's position as regional leader and global power. In some ways, Bush's visit (in March 2007) (...) represents a major recognition of Brazil's clout in the region.

The cost of the alliance can be measured in terms of its environmental and social impact. It assumes the destruction of the Amazon and the ruin of millions of small farmers.

But it is also a call to re-route North-South relations in the Americas. The second objective of Bush's tour March 8-14 relates to the need to control the spreading influence of Hugo Chávez. Chávez already has strong allies in Bolivian President Evo Morales and the Ecuadorian Rafael Correa. On what is his most important tour of the region in the past six years, Bush will also visit two small countries: Guatemala, where September elections could bring to power the indigenous leader Rigoberta Menchú, and Uruguay, a country that has shown interest in negotiating a bilateral trade agreement with the United States. In Colombia, with his friend Alvaro Uribe, Bush will seek to strengthen Plan Colombia given Correa's recent announcement that Ecuador will not renew the agreement to allow the U.S. military base in Manta—a key piece of the Pentagon's strategy in the region.

Both objectives converge on one point: to use Brazil to consolidate a strategic alliance that seeks to isolate Venezuela and the countries that follow its policies of Latin American unity as a counterbalance to U.S. hegemony. This appears to be, for the Bush administration, the best way of gaining a new foothold in the region"

Answer 2

You are completly wrong, dude.

Sugar cane are cultived so far of the Amazon forrest that this distance is longest west coast-east coast of the USA!

Almost all the answers before this mine are bullshit.

First: Brazil is not a poor country asking for money from the US citzens taxes. Brazil have a GDP above 1 trillion dollars. One of the nine first economies in the world.

Second: The United States are not helping brazilians to plant sugar cane giving money for lands. The USA are signing an agreement with Brazil to transfer brazilian technology to the USA, because brazilian ethanol is better and brazilian engineers have great experience in cars moved by ethanol since the final of the 70's.

Third: Brazilian ethanol production is sufficient for us and largest than the production in the USA. Brazil is also, self-sufficient in oil (petroleum) and our fleet of cars is more than 60 million of vehicles.

I would like to know where people find so fantastic stories. They must are too much movies about lost civilizations and dinossaurs in Amazonia.

Answer 3

Because the Consensus says that biofuel is necessary to preserve our world, and the big corporations have found it makes more economic sense TO THEM to rape the earth for biofuels that the Consensus has decreed in their infinite wisdom are "Good Carbon" than even to dig up coal and pump oil that delivers the same Carbon, but it is "Bad Carbon."

You get paid lots for putting out "Good Carbon" and penalized for "Bad Carbon", and you are not charged for destroying the jungle and leaving scorched saline earth loaded with pesticides behind when you are done with that soil area and move on.

You have to realize that somehow "Good CO2" has not the naughty bad effects of "Bad CO2," so companies should do whatever they want to get those "Good Carbon" credits in their treasuries.

And the less developed countrys' governments like the money they are given so they can become big and powerful and have a major impact on the world too. Get some of their own politicians on the Consensus.

The same United Nations that pushes for the developed nations to sacrifice the fruits of their development does not care if the jungle and rain forests are destroyed before science knows what are in them that will be beneficial to all peoples (medicines, better plants, unique genes) and how they function to keep the earth's climate proper, naturally.

Nor do these UN Consensus people care about individuals put out of work, removed from their homes and put into concentration camps; they deal with the BIG picture.

Any sacrifice of the small is justified for the BIG picture. This is the UN we as citizens support.

But one way the rape of the rain forests will hurt is by increasing the CO2 levels as the plantations capture much less CO2 than the dense forests, so actually increase the CO2 levels. And may be denying us future chemicals and drugs from plants and animals being wiped out that are not yet cataloged and analyzed for beneficial effects. It is another mass extinction but this time by an intentional man-made
program.

Yeah, we are part of it. Right up to our shifty little eyeballs and our empty little pocketbooks. Many scientists help the Consensus in developing theories and mathematical manipulations on computers to support what the Consensus wants to show and do. Our politicians are right in there slugging to suppress contradictory opinions and convert the whole public to the Consensus viewpoint. Those who disagree are ridiculed by our Press. You betcha we are involved.

We want lots of BioDiesel for our trucks to keep rolling along. At any cost to the Brazilian rainforest and the people who once lived there.

And I am not sure here are enough people left like you who think to question why this is a good thing, and are questioning, left unsuppressed and un-ridiculed to make a difference, considering the millions who do not care as long as they have air conditioning and TV and the trucks keep rolling.

Answer 4

No! it is the use of land for biofuels, not for food, that has caused these high prices (which anyone with half a brain will have recognised long ago - though evidently not the government). With such a large global population, we will never be able to grow enough food and biofuels. And personally, i think food comes first....

Answer 5

yes they are

Only transient Aliens could have approved this diabolical plan

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=AnbE2GkVUFf8KbSHBVHgWonsy6IX?qid=20070530195737AACbd5b
this will be some more dark pages off American environmental history

I am beginning to feel the the USA is more dangerous to Earth ,than Global warming and the ethanol production plantation will only help Global warming along, speed it up.

The big question is why ???,

These super global powers are only evil ,not stupid .
They must be very aware of what all this means probably more so than any ones else

Is this a giant environmental maneuver to push us into globalization ???
Or do they know something we dont know and this planet is regarded as disposable .

Answer 6

Because people can make money making sugar cane.

The US really doesn't import that much ethanol from Brazil, because Brazil can't produce enough ethanol for their own demand. The recently lowered the required ethanol in their gasoline (from 25% to 22%?) because of the increased demand for E85 in their country. I think it's funny, the people buying the 22% gasohol are gettine more energy because more people are buying E85.

But the overall demand of the world for ethanol will raise the price of it making this practice even more profitable.

Probably leading to more destruction of the rainforest which as we know doesn't grow back quickly.

Answer 7

1.- To benefit the sugar barons.
2.- Not the USA, Bush is involved in this business with the sugar barons.

Answer 8

Stupidity

yes

But we don't need nearly the quantity of sugar we eat, so better sugar cane than food crops. The question is why destroy more of the natural environment to do it.

Answer 9

publicity.

yes the us is involved

Answer 10

Let those people do with their country what they want to do. It is there's Quit placing your self in the judgment chair ,what gives u the right.