After posting some small ideas on a variety of news and blog articles about the burning Amazon rainforest, I decided it was not enough. I had to take to my blogger and write my thoughts .....I've discovered that there is never enough time or space to really get this type of environmental heartbreak out of my system ..... I am hoping that the words I put down here will suffice in some small way .....
After reading scores of articles about the monster Bolsonaro and what he is doing to the Amazon and how it is affecting the global environment, I have decided not to blame him alone. Yes, he is an environmental danger the world has not seen in years. But he is not the only one. Indonesia cleared hundreds of millions of acres of pristine rainforest for their alliance with the palm oil industries within the past 20 years, and all countries are guilty of putting commerce and industry before environmental concerns. So, even though Bolsonaro is creating irreparable damage to the Amazon rainforest, global ecological damage has gone on throughout the world at unprecedented rates for the past 30 or more years.
What really amazes me in all this is the lack of a concerted global organization and bank that addresses these environmental issues in the first place. We are now, and have been for more than two decades, in the digital age, connecting nations and national leaders instantaneously via any number of distance/virtual platforms. We all might as well be living in the same apartment housing complex for the availability we now have to each other. And because of this global availability we have to each other now, I can't understand why there has been no global effort to create an international globally owned piece of Earth that can serve to perpetuate this planet. In other words, why hasn't the global leadership come together to actually purchase an area, or areas, of this planet that is hand off to any commercial interests, will serve as ecological and environmental purposes only, and is jointly owned by all countries, leaving crucial natural resources in the sole ownership of no one leader, one country, or one continent. In my mind, something like this is long overdue.
There has to be a way, on this beautiful blue planet of ours, for a global undertaking to purchase land that will be designated completely and totally for the ecological and environmental benefit of Earth. Rainforests can actually be created and expanded, and it is speculated that the civilizations that lived among the Amazon throughout the centuries have added to it's growth (https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/03/its-now-clear-that-ancient-humans-helped-enrich-the-amazon/518439/). What amazes me as well is that, in addition to the lack of an undertaking such as this, there is little information on the real estate available for purchase for this type of a project. Surely, even our own United States has thousands of acres in the midwest that remain untouched and void of any human activity. And many countries have similar swaths of land that have been abandoned or ignored. The question is would these countries permit a globally owned, operated, and maintained ecological and environmental project to exist within their borders? Sounds too good to be true.
However, an offer such as this might not be so bizarre. Clearly, on every continent and within many countries there are numerous ecological and environmental resources and treasures that, if expanded, could serve as a global ecological and environmental resource. I haven't done much research, if any, into this, but I'm just tossing these thoughts around to come up with a plan that would alleviate dependence on individual countries to preserve their natural resources for the global good. In many ways, although many of these countries are willing to preserve these resources for the global good, all it takes is one leader to sell out and what is crucial for the planet becomes their own personal playground. We can no longer tolerate our essential global resources such vulnerability. The leaders of Indonesia in selling out to the global palm oil industries are no better than this Brazilian President Bolsonaro setting the Amazon ablaze - these precious global treasures are subject to the whims of the countries they dwell in, and that is something the global community can no longer permit.
I don't know who will be reading this, or if it will affect anyone who does, but somewhere the conversation has to begin about global responsibility for our own global environmental and ecological health, and not in terms of global warming or any other politically charged topic. Simply what is good for our global health. We can no longer permit individual countries the responsibility of protecting valuable global resources, especially when it is possible to actually create these types of environments on an internationally coordinated scale. Land must be purchased and owned by the global community, trees planted, protection from corporate interests and private industries granted forever, and there you have it ..... a new Amazon or Indonesian rainforest somewhere other than in Brazil or Indonesia, owned, managed, and sustained by the greater global village. And it will take a global village to save this planet. But we're all here already, seconds away from each other on Zoom or Skype or any other digital platform connecting all of us.
And if this seems too far fetched or we want to do something now ..... why not buy the Amazon from Brazil? ..... I am sure that a few dozen countries can chip in and actually make Bolsonaro an offer he can't refuse ..... the international community is more powerful than we know ..... and we have an awfully awesome and capable global village ....💖
