Bushes and Trees, Bush and Brees
January 13th, 2007During the last World Cup of Soccer, I told everyone who asked my opinion on the tournament that I thought Italy or Germany would win and that Brazil would be knocked off early because they were overrated this year. People gave me the “No wai!” response, but I stood by my cleats. I was right about Brazil then. I’m disappointed in them now, and no, my introduction isn’t foreshadowing of news that their national soccer team raped a stripper at a party: it’s a preamble to their government sanctioning the rape of the Amazon.
A Brazilian government plan set to go into effect this year will bring large-scale logging deep into the heart of the Amazon rain forest for the first time, in a calculated gamble that new monitoring efforts can offset any danger of increased devastation. The government of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, in an attempt to create Brazil’s first coherent, effective forest policy, is to begin auctioning off timber rights to large tracts of the rain forest. The winning bidders will not have title to the land or the right to exploit resources other than timber, and the government says they will be closely monitored and will pay a royalty on their activities.
The architects of the plan say it will also help reduce tensions over land ownership in the Amazon, the world’s largest tropical forest, which loses an area the size of New Jersey every year to clear-cutting and timbering. In theory, 70 percent of the jungle is public land, but miners, ranchers and especially loggers have felt free to establish themselves in unpoliced areas, strip the land of valuable resources and then move on, mostly in the so-called arc of destruction on the eastern and southern fringes of the jungle.
But the called-for monitoring of the loggers allowed into the rain forest’s largely untouched center will come from a new, untested Forest Service with only 150 employees and from state and municipal governments. That concerns environmental and civic groups because local officials are more vulnerable to the pressures of powerful economic interests and to corruption. Further, the new system assumes that the world community will also play a part and buy timber only from merchants who are properly licensed and will avoid unscrupulous dealers. The plan “can be a good idea in places where the situation is already chaotic,” said Philip Fearnside, a researcher at the National Institute for Amazon Research in Manaus who recently visited this remote area. “But it’s a different story in areas where hardly any logging or deforestation has taken place, where you are actually going to be encouraging the introduction of predatory forces that don’t exist there now.”
On paper and in principle, said Stephan Schwartzman, an Amazon specialist at Environmental Defense in Washington, “I think everyone agrees that this system is an improvement over the current situation, which is totally out of control.” But in the end, he added, “everything is going to depend on how it is done and whether the financial and human resources are there to make it work.”
I don’t like it for the reasons stated: government corruption will inevitably lead to further destruction of the Amazon’s center than what the government is deeming acceptable, and I reject the rightness of any plan that introduces loggers into areas of the forest that previously went unused. I see enough of this at home, and it saddens me to see it further in Brazil.
On the day of her appointment, the first female chief of the U.S. Forest Service came under fire from a Senate Democrat who represents her state. Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) said Montana forester Abigail Kimbell has shown she is “inclined to raise fees, close campgrounds and otherwise make it harder for people to access their lands to raise revenue.” Kimbell succeeds Dale Bosworth, who retired. Before her appointment by Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns, she supervised national forests through northern Idaho, Montana and the Dakotas, and she helped develop President Bush’s “healthy forests” program, widely criticized by environmentalists as a giveaway to logging companies. As the agency’s 16th chief, Kimbell will be responsible for overseeing 155 national forests, 30,000 employees and a budget of more than $4 billion. The job does not require Senate confirmation.
Now, I made reference to the Duke Rape Case early in this thread, and all through the mess I declined to get involved, but I thought I’d comment on today’s news that the Prosecutor was begging off the case and moving on to other matters, leaving it to someone else in the DA’s office to clean. I must say, I haven’t seen a lawyer drop the ball this bad since Harriet Miers allowed herself to be nominated for the Supreme Court.
The one thing I never understood about the whole Duke Rape Case is this: everyone makes a big deal over the alleged rape, as they should, but as it became more and more likely that no rape occurred, why didn’t anyone make a fuss over the fact that College kids, some of whom weren’t old enough to drink, were hiring strippers? The whole situation was sad and shameless, from Jesse Jackson’s politicizing of the matter to the Lacrosse players’ shady, racist behavior to the prosecutor’s attention whoring to the stripper’s actual whoring. And oddly enough, if you look at it a certain way, they’re all the same people fighting over which of them is worst.
At this point, I was going to make a joke saying that I hope Scooter Libby’s trial doesn’t become a travesty, but Patrick Fitzgerald is the man in charge there, so it definitely won’t. Haven’t you heard? Scooter goes on trial this week, and it’s going to be quite a trial. I’m excited to learn about the inner-workings of the Administration, hear Libby’s story and watch as Patrick Fitzgerald lays down the law.
Now, to close. On my television, behind me, is the Eagles-Saints football game. I was thinking, earlier, as Reggie Bush dove into the endzone and celebrated near a giant banner featuring his jersey and number — isn’t it kind of funny that George Bush is blamed for destroying New Orleans, and Reggie Bush is credited with helping revitalize it. A tale of two Bushes, eh? (Especially interesting because the state of Louisiana and Drew Brees have more to do with their respective fields than do the Bushes.)