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Rainforest Destruction

By: David Craythorne

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As our fragile planet travels on through space we are starting to appreciate that everything that is alive is in interconnected harmony, and that damage to one part of our biosphere, for example rainforest destruction, can have damaging ripple effects in other parts of our fragile ecosystem, including further deforestation and global warming.

Accelerating deforestation is especially shocking. This is because the destruction of the last few remaining great forests is the end result of our own deliberate effort, as opposed to climate change or some other handy alibi. Setting aside the more obvious consequences of ozone reduction and global warming, rainforest destruction is particularly disturbing because it irrevocably extinguishes unique sub-biospheres that are not likely to be rebuilt within the time frame left, according to some more sober global warming predictions.

Every deliberate act of rainforest destruction is a bizarre rehearsal for the global warming that will result if the custodians of the earth cannot mend their ways. Deforestation destroys not just a piece of forest canopy, but also a portion of our fragile world. This is because the smaller trees and plants that the canopy formerly sheltered cannot survive the direct rays of the sun, and so shrivel and die. By an ironic quirk of nature, young forest giants, too, do not survive without the initial protection of that lesser canopy. As a result an entire ecosystem disappears forever, as do the human families, the mammals, the birds and the insects that once lived in harmony within it, leaving our planet a shamefully poorer place.

While it has become prevalent to accuse subsistence farmers for rainforest destruction, this is not the whole truth. Practically all the gigantic logs that were once forest giants, and much of the produce that is grown on the new farmlands, end up in the homes and on the tables of the word's developed nations, who therefore drive the process and must share the bulk of the blame.

While forests still cover about 30% of the earth's surface, deforestation is happening at an alarming pace and it is anticipated that the lungs that make the oxygen we breathe will die out forever in a hundred years, unless something is done to reverse the rate of rainforest destruction. Each year a jungle the size of Panama disappears. Every month as many trees as grow in Britain are taken down. Every day is a bad day for global warming, as an area of forest as large as one of our cities is destroyed.
When stripped naked of the rhetoric of human greed, liability for rainforest destruction lies with the developed nations who - after obliterating their own natural resources - now look elsewhere for stopgap solutions to their own egocentric needs. Every act of deforestation accelerates global warming. Every year that passes is one year less before the last great forests begin to wither under a collapsing ozone layer.

Responsibility for change lies with individuals, for only they have the influence to alter the mood of great corporates, and the governments they feed.

Article Source: http://depositarticles.com/

For further information on rainforest destruction and the impact on climate change, please visit the Rainforest Foundation website

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