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The Evils of Burning Down our Forests

What would become of the Earth’s oxygen supply if all our forests were destroyed?

One report states that 30% of CO2 levels rising higher each year are due to deforestation, particularly due to slash-and-burn operations, perpetrated by greedy, selfish cultivators, who are ruthlessly raping our rainforests, such as in South America and Africa. However, the brutality of deforestation has been conducted in Brazil, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Indonesia, and even the United States. In fact, slash-and-burn methods are conducted by more than two-hundred million people across the planet, particularly in the nations listed above. Not only does the burning of these forests create pollution and higher CO2 levels, but the lack of these forestlands robs the planet of the necessary oxygen-producing trees that we need for life-support.

Another report states that a large portion of rainforest in South America, particularly Brazil, had been burned down and replaced by soybean farms. Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on how you look at it, the soybean crops failed. Why? Because the soil was naturally geared toward growing rainforests, not soybeans! And if those rainforests have been there for thousands of years, do you think you can easily grow soybeans overnight? Obviously you need a certain kind of soil for soybeans, and then a certain kind of soil for rainforests. Ma Nature seems to know how to do this because she’s the Master Gardener. Perhaps we can learn from her. Intelligent environmentalists maintain the view that the rainforests are the lungs of the world, as if our precious planet is a huge organism. Stop and think about that for several moments.

If most of or all of our rainforests are destroyed, particularly in South America and Africa, you have an organism that can’t breathe very easily, and there will be extreme oxygen depletion in our atmosphere. That is probably far more scarier than you can imagine. But the soybean farmers would rather have money in their pockets from selling soybeans than having good old-fashioned air to breathe. I hate to bring up this next analogy, because there are a lot of smokers out there. Alright, you could liken the burning of rainforests to the burning up lungs of a heavy smoker, because it’s much harder for a smoker to breathe then a non-smoker. Incidentally, I’m an ex-smoker, so I stopped before it was too late, so I know what it’s like.

Another fact is that our forests remove carbon dioxide and pollutants from the atmosphere, and emits large quantities of oxygen back into it, which helps stabilize life on the planet. It’s also a fact that all plants, especially trees, deliver the appropriate amount of revitalized oxygen in order to support life on our planet. And yet another fact is that the rainforests produce about 40% of all the oxygen on the Earth. But if these precious forests begin to disappear, so will our precious oxygen. There will be less air to breathe for our inhabitants, 6.6 billion of us (not counting other life-forms), but since global warming will begin killing people off, maybe things will balance out in the end. (Yeah right!)

Another report states that between 1960 and 1990 one-fifth of the planet’s rainforests were destroyed. If these kinds of deforesting procedures continue, it is estimated that all tropical forests could disappear by the year 2090. That would definitely devastate the whole planet and its inhabitants — to put it mildly

Deforestation, particularly caused by slash-and-burning, wildfires, the occasional arsonist, and other tragic methods as well, leads to higher carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere, so these heinous activities must be stopped, because our precious plant-life is extremely important, especially our major forests. If all the forests were ruthlessly destroyed, there would be nearly 40% less oxygen on the planet, which means the CO2 levels would increase much higher, so this would inevitably annihilate the inhabitants here. With CO2 levels increasing and oxygen decreasing, that equals death to life on Earth. We would literally choke to death!

Although “reforestation” is practiced in some areas, that is, the replanting of new trees, I don’t think it’s being done fast enough to replace all of our vital forests we have already lost.