Key to combating global warming can be found in the Amazon

Scientists have over decades linked the health of rainforests to the rest of the world.

The Amazon. Picture: CONTRIBUTED

WE MAY not realise the vital links between the Amazon rainforest and global warming.

It has long been recognised as a repository of ecological services for local tribes but also the rest of the world. Yet as deforestation of the Amazon continues, global warming worsens.

The fragile ecological process that has taken millions of years to refine is slowly being destroyed by man.

Scientists have over decades linked the health of rainforests to the rest of the world.

Filtering and processing carbon dioxide and producing valuable oxygen, the rainforest trees have the hidden ability to reduce pollutant levels.

Over the past couple of hundred years we humans have pumped massive amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels, coal, oil and natural gases.

These are major drivers of global climate changes.

So remove tropical rainforests and the greenhouse effect will likely get worse and so will climate change.

The choice is ours.

Why are we not banging on the UN doors and demanding a stop to logging of the Amazon forest instead of trying to stop climate change in our country which produces minute amounts of CO2 gases?

KEITH WHITESIDE

Sippy Downs

Originally published as Key to combating global warming can be found in the Amazon