Because the rain in most of Brazil depend on the Amazon. If the forest is gone, we will have desertification in the most populous regions of Brazil. The southeast is already facing droughts periodically, and it will get worse with more deforestation. With less rain we will produce less food, which means not only that food will become more expensive in Brazil (and a lot of people will face hunger), but we also depend on the agricultural output to avoid a trade deficit. Less rain means less food exports which means less dollars getting into Brazil, which will, among other things, turn Brazil into a hotter Argentine.

https://piaui.uol.com.br/web/six-conclusions-about-model-of-...

No seriously. There's a flying river, kilometers high in the sky, that goes from the Amazon to various Brazilian regions. It transports more water than the Amazon river itself (which is already the river with the highest discharge of the world). The water source is transpiration from Amazonian trees. Without the trees, the flying river is gone

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_river

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matheusmoreira an hour ago | parent [-]

> Less rain means less food exports which means less dollars getting into Brazil

Why not industrialize instead of exporting soy and meat until the end of time?

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nextaccountic 15 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

I'm all for industrializing Brazil, I'm not defending the current economic model. I'm just describing the Brazilian economy the way it is.

Also, it's not really possible to industrialize the country by destroying the Amazon. There is no button that turns the forest into a top tier semiconductor industry or anything like that, that's pure fantasy. And the people destroying the forest now is doing this to raise cattle to export meat, exactly the thing you are criticizing.

The only thing that destroying the forest will accomplish is to make Brazil inhospitable, desertified, unable to support its huge population. That's not climate nonsense like you say in another comment.

	▲	matheusmoreira 7 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		> Also, it's not really possible to industrialize the country by destroying the Amazon. Flávio Bolsonaro proposed the creation of railways in the Brazilian north and northeast. These efforts are always paralyzed by leftist environmental NGOs, and leftist parties like PSOL have taken these environmental battles all the way up to the supreme court. So, do you support Bolsonaro's proposal? Are you prepared to sacrifice the climate for national development? This is what this comes down to.

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californical an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Why not both?

	▲	matheusmoreira an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Sure. Industrialization comes first though. We can care about jungles if we ever reach superpower status. This climate nonsense is a tax on developing nations. We're sacrificing for the planet, meanwhile the US puts a couple centuries of distance between us.