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   Dan Savage, the brilliant and foul-mouthed sex columnist, has become one of the most important ethicists in America. Are we screwed?
 The federal government is supposed to issue new rules about debt levels for students in for-profit colleges. In the meantime, the states are working on their own regulations.
 Washingtons budget hawks want to decimate the federal workforce to shrink the deficit. It will have the opposite effect.
 There arent nearly enough counterterrorism experts to instruct all of Americas police. So we got these guys instead.
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July 8, 2009
A CLEAR CUT CRISIS.... Tropical deforestation contributes more to global warming than all the vehicles on earth. Does the world have a plan to deal with it? We tend to think of climate change as just a matter of what comes out of smokestacks and tailpipes -- an energy issue. In fact, tropical forest loss accounts for a fifth or more of all carbon emissions into the atmosphere, more than all the motor vehicles on the planet combined. The reason isn't hard to understand. Plants absorb carbon through photosynthesis. Dense tropical forests, which cover just 7 percent of the earth's dry land, store nearly half of all terrestrial carbon. And those forests are being cut down at an alarming rate. If we can't stop this from happening, the chances of successfully staving off the worst effects of climate change are slim to none. Policymakers in the United States and elsewhere are waking up to this fact, and there is growing momentum behind market-based solutions by which wealthy countries would pay developing ones to preserve tropical forests through such means as a global carbon-trading system. The landmark American Clean Energy and Security Act, which passed the House of Representatives last month and will get a hearing in the Senate later this year, incorporates tropical forest conservation into its cap-and-trade system. Deforestation is also on the agenda for the UN climate talks in Copenhagen this December, where the international community is supposed to finalize a post-Kyoto treaty for curbing greenhouse gas emissions. "A Clear Cut Crisis," a special report in the July/August issue of the Washington Monthly, looks at the risks that deforestation poses to the planet and what can be done to stop it. The package includes: * A ground-level investigation of the new market-based efforts to preserve tropical forests by environmental writer Rhett Butler * Reporting and analysis by the Guardian's David Adam on the politics surrounding the Copenhagen talks * Time's Michael Grunwald on the merits of industrial agriculture * Christian Science Monitor correspondent Mark Rice-Oxley on the promise and peril of second-generation biofuels * Former Guardian environment correspondent Paul Brown on frightening new findings about how drought affects tropical rainforests To see all the stories in the section, click here. —Steve Benen 2:00 AM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (8)
Comments
Did the Amazon drought end this year? If not the whole thing could be dead soon. Also, Lula just opened a ton of it to farming (it was already being farmed, he was trying to get some sort of legal handle on the illegality) so he is not helping one bit. Posted by: MNPundit on July 8, 2009 at 1:49 AM | PERMALINKStill, there are many people who live in these lands and they want to be able to look forward to a life where they can improve their cultivation and use of the lands - something to build for their children. Right now, the only game is deforestation. Preservation pays very little in comparison. We need to change that. Posted by: Crissa on July 8, 2009 at 1:55 AM | PERMALINKMan won't abstain from ravaging the planet. 100 years from now a vistor from some other galaxy will find a hot, dusty terrain populated by a few hundred million people waging wars over water, arable land, raw materials and sources of energy. Go ahead, have a few kids. Encourage them to do the same down the road. You'll be dead by then, WTF do you care of the world you're helping to populate? Posted by: steve duncan on July 8, 2009 at 8:05 AM | PERMALINKThe buying up of rainforest by outsiders will inevitably lead to a backlash from local stakeholders in these countries. Last year, when I was in Indonesia, I met with an Indonesian NGO that was beginning to organize around opposition to foreign purchases of rain forest for preservation purposes. Why? Local control is as important in developing countries as it is anywhere else (even Vermont!). Also, many of these countries have a legacy of colonization and exploitation and, thus, view foreign ownership of large tracks of land through that historic lens. I think there is a role for these programs, but they need to be designed in a way that local (not even national) stakeholders have a voice in what land is preserved, what it can be used for and who controls that usage. Posted by: Steve in VT on July 8, 2009 at 8:05 AM | PERMALINKTerry's got an aussie with four scientists who'll swear on the bible this amazon forest crisis is bs... no worries, mate! Posted by: neill on July 8, 2009 at 8:05 AM | PERMALINKObama invading Brazil to save the forests? Yep. I can see it. Posted by: Al Jr. on July 8, 2009 at 8:06 AM | PERMALINKMy own feeling about global warming is that I agree that it is happening, I agree that it is caused by humans, I agree that it is probably going to be catastrophic. But I actually think that focusing on global warming is a mistake. What we really should be focusing on is the health of the global ecosystem. Global warming is only one threat. The problem is that, in my opinion, there is no way to protect the environment long-term as long as the Earth's population of humans continues to grow. According to Frank Furedi, Brendan O'Neill and others on the left and the right, this makes me a misanthrope. I think that's completely unfair. I can love humans at the same time that I want there to be fewer of them, in the same way that I can love cats and not want to have 20 of them living in my house. Posted by: Daryl McCullough on July 8, 2009 at 9:10 AM | PERMALINKEveryone relax. I'm sure the WaPo is sending their man George Will down to the Amazon and other places to check out deforestation. A solution can't be far away. Posted by: BGinCHI on July 8, 2009 at 1:28 PM | PERMALINKPost a comment
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