Dear Jair, do you just carry on?

Soon it will be presidential elections in Brazil. The timing with geography education could not be better. Global deforestation and the disrupted carbon cycle thus become relevant again.

So dear Jair, will you cut down more trees than before or will you still opt for a more sustainable way of making money? This old white man understands the dollar signs in your eyes and yes quick profit usually overrides common sense. Slaughtering the goose with the golden eggs is the economic delusion that overtakes a more ecological approach.

My job, as a teacher, is to expose your understanding and motivations. I teach them to appreciate their urgency. Rainforests are self-sustaining and make their own rain. When the forest is gone, there is less evaporation and therefore less rain falls again.
The forest is regenerative and can quickly reseed small open plains. Despite the most ungrateful type of soil they stand on.
You are right that the forest is not the lungs of the earth, this is where Greta is also wrong.

However, it distracts attention from the gigantic impact that the disappearance of the largest water sponge! Because that is the most underestimated function of the jungle. Rivers dry out irrevocably from their source. Just look at the Parana. The bright red laterite soil does not easily regenerate into a fertile topsoil. By the way, isn’t this the cause of sea level rise?

Back to the point. A soybean field of 1 km² will hold much less water than a piece of “jungle” of the same size. So will the evaporation of “new” rainwater for the “next” day. The concept of zenithal rainfall may be retrieved from under the dust again, because this block of elementary knowledge has totally disappeared among schoolchildren.

So dear Jair, if you had all the necessary knowledge at your disposal and put all these cubes of knowledge next to each other…. you could only conclude that you have a more than important role in the energy and water management of our planet. The feedback loops are even more complex and sophisticated than what I can presently explain in this little text.

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