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by xyst 1873 days ago
Why hasn’t the international community seized control over the Amazon rain forest? Clearly Bolsonaro and the Brazilian government doesn’t give two shits.
9 comments

You’re proposing invading a sovereign country and seizing their natural resources?
Preventing them from fucking it up for pennies. A planet is worth more than whatever they can get from cutting down those trees. I believe in property rights, but fuck property rights when externalities are so huge that they can put the whole world in a dire situation. Property and sovereignty are a man-made concept, they can be undone as quickly as they were done. What matters is that the planet lives.
But wouldn't it be less destructive to simply pay Brazil a large amount of money for that?

A war would probably just damage the forest anyway.

I wonder if we’ll cross a line and realize that Brazil’s leaders were proving their deliberation that military action would result in government-ordered destruction.
Is it truly “theirs” when the entire world depends on it? They are squandering it by giving it away to global corporations like JBS (massive meat corporation that extends beyond Brazil and has bought up a shit ton of large meat processing plants/farms across the globe including the US).

Also, the native people that live in the Amazon are at threat too, but nobody is listening to them. They do not have the resources to standup to the Brazilian government that continues to ignore them and continues to give away their land to corporate interests.

If the rest of the world depends on it, then that sounds like a great reason for the rest of the world to pay a large sum of money to Brazil, in exchange for it's services.

That would certainly be cheaper than a war, which would probably just cause a large amount of damage to the forest anyway.

How about the global community paying Brazil to keep it untouched.
Yes it is theirs even if the world depends on it.
Summarized: Yes
The rest of the world burned its own forests. Let Brazil burn its in peace.

Or pay to keep it. I don't care, but this neo-colonialism infuriates L. Americans who witness a steady stream of Western countries come in and destroy their environment

Sounds like it, before it was for oil and fertile lands. Now we will see it for water and CO2.
That would be a novel idea.
Echoing whats been said, even discounting the moral implications, needless deaths, and international bad blood that would come out of it, wars are extremely expensive.

It would be far cheaper for everyone to just write a regular check to Brazil that has a big enough number on it that they can't refuse. If the cost is split between several countries, it will probably be kind of negligible in the grand scheme of things, Brazil may be better off (well, if corruption doesn't blow up all the money), and the Amazon won't be destroyed as quickly.

The only catch is ensuring destruction doesn't keep going & that Brazil keeps its end of the bargain, which would require oversight, and that's easier said than done.

Oversight of this should be relatively easy, no need to even have on-site visits... satellite imaging would be perfectly enough to monitor any deforestation happening.
Because violating a country’s sovereignty tends to be taken very poorly, and a reckless president might respond with a very ill-thought out military act.

Brazil is suffering severely and they need carrots right now, not sticks.

Are you asking why the "international community" doesn't wage war and take over the rain forest?
Tragedy of the commons. There is nothing more than wood that can be exploited from the Amazon, so nobody steps in. But if that jungle were to disappear, humanity would be in grave danger. But there would be no profit to made, so nobody acts.

Invading a foreign country to prevent them from fucking up the planet is definitely a new thing in the international diplomacy book, but it will happen more and more.

Nothing more than wood?

There are likely billions, if not trillions, of dollars worth of undiscovered pharmaceuticals in the Amazon still today.

Not that economic utility is needed to justify conservation, but nothing more than wood could not be further from the truth.

We would probably need to eliminate nations altogether to make this happen, i.e. a global nation/government.
Yep so we're basically doomed because that will never happen, too many countries have nukes that keep other countries from being that "well I'm going to have to take over now" country
There is non insignificant number of people who live there so any attempts to grab it would lead to war.
While the world is at it, should they add China and the US to the list of countries to invade for good of the environment?
The international community?

Let me guess: the US with a Democratic president + some meaningless European countries. All waving the flag of self-righteousness while they sign exploitative contracts to “rebuild” the country they bombed.