In fact, up to one quarter of all the carbon added to the atmosphere by human activities now comes from cutting and burning forests. The Indonesian forest fires in 1997 pumped more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere in a few months than all of Europe's industrial activity did in a year. Governments worldwide actively encourage forest exploitation and conversion. Taxpayers don't even know they're footing the bill for these revenue-losers. In British Columbia, liquidation of all old growth forest is explicit government policy.
Corruption is another major contributor to forest destruction.
A recent audit by the International Monetary Fund found no money in the fund to fight the devastating fires because the money had been diverted to prop up the president's son's failing car company. In Cambodia, the prime ministers and military illegally control the forests and timber trade. Profits bypass the treasury and fund their factions in the civil war. Brazil, now the world's fourth largest timber producer, estimates that 80 percent of logging in the Amazon is illegal. In Russia, it is estimated that as many as 12 million hectares are illegally logged each year, compared to only 2 million hectares of legal logging by official estimates.