Amazon At Risk- action Needed Now

Amazon At Risk- action Needed Now By: Jason Witt

When you receive the Seal you are made like a little earth. So you want to take care of the earth like you take care of yourself. The great garden of the Amazon forest is essential for the health of that earth and yet is threatened.

Global warming is having an adverse impact on the Amazon rain-forest. And the more it happens, the less able to forest is to prevent more global warming, while the Amazon forest is doing much of the heavy lifting in such prevention.

The Amazon forest is keeping the earth cool, keeping down the rising temperatures due to the effect of the pollution people create. As pollution like carbon dioxide rises, so the temperatures of the earth are also rising.

The Amazon forest absorbs a lot of carbon dioxide. But it is also a key element in the balance of the ecosystem of the earth. It also contains an estimated 20 percent of the fresh water of the world.

In addition a third of the species of flora and fauna are found in the Amazon rain-forest in Brazil. But deforestation is yet another enemy in the battle. It causes skyrocketing amounts of carbon dioxide in the air.

If the Amazon forest is not conserved, temperatures around the globe will rise more than the 3.6 degrees above pre-industrial levels that scientists say is the "tipping point." Any more than 3.6 degrees and catastrophes will be omnipresent.

Floods and droughts will happen even more frequently than they are now, along with windstorms and other natural disasters. These have already increased greatly and we can not tolerate any more increases.

When the Amazon forest is depleted scientists say it will affect everyone else around the globe, including those in the United States who will see less rainfall for their crops, which will not be abundant harvests.

And as if deforestation for cattle ranching and soybean growing were not enough, global warming itself threatens to destroy some of the forest as climate change makes conditions inhospitable for life.

There is the price to be paid by those wealthy Western people who are producing the pollution. They must eventually pay for the poor in places vulnerable to floods and droughts.
And now the Amazon rain-forest can be added to those places the wealthy Westerners must subsidize. The Amazon must be preserved, and the people of Brazil need resources like money to do it.

They want to burn large tracts of forest so they can have land to raise cattle and grow soybeans. They want to do it so they can make money, and they will need money if they are to leave the forest intact.

It is unfortunate that the future of the world rests largely on the wilderness of one country--Brazil. But without much of the rain forest we have today we will not be able to sustain our current levels of polluting the air.

When you are sealed you are called to do your part to help preserve the environment and nurse it back to health again, just like you are called to keep your own body healthy.

When you are sealed you become a little earth, a little complete ecosystem. So you understand the failing health of the greater earth too, and you take action to prevent any more sickness when you receive the Seal.

By: Jason Witt