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Deforestation In Brazil Essay

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Brazil dominates the continent of South America in almost every category from land mass to Gross Domestic Product. It “is the largest and most populous country in South America. Endowed with rich natural resources, Brazil's economy outweighs that of all other South American countries with large and well-developed agricultural, mining, manufacturing and services sectors” (Country Watch). When a nation has a large population, diverse economy and vast resources, putting those resources to their best economic use is often at odds with the wisest use of those resources. Because of the growing population, there has been large scale encroachment of rain forest habitat there. The pace of this deforestation is unprecedented in recent times. According …show more content…

Scientists have concluded that “agricultural production and other economic activities, deforestation adds more atmospheric CO2 than the sum total of cars and trucks on the world's roads” (Scientific American). While Brazil is not the only country to participate in deforestation, because of the sheer size of the Amazon jungle much of the damage is created there. All of the actions in the deforestation of Brazil’s rain forests create greenhouse gasses, which in turn contribute to global warming. Trees act as “carbon sequestering” (National Geographic) machines as they hold in carbons as they produce oxygen. Cutting down or burning trees to clear, claim and/or fertilize the land causes the trees to emit these dangerous carbons into the atmosphere. Once cleared the land is only accessible through carbon emitting vehicles, fertilized manufactured with petroleum consumption, while product must be delivered long distances to reach the markets. Finally green house gasses are expected to “cause global warming and raise the average global temperature 2 to 5 degrees Celsius … melting ice caps and glaciers and raising the sea levels” (Spongel et al 15). Eventually this will endanger or eliminate the Pacific Islands, Caribbean Islands and multiple other low lying coastal areas around the

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