For people in Central America, it's a huge number-enough that subsistence farmers, ranchers, and multinational corporations have already burned or harvested half of their rainforests, usually to raise cows for two to five years and move on. All that's left is rocks. Half of the world's rainforest endowment has been destroyed since Thomas Malthus was born, just over 200 years ago. All for beef, timber, and export crops, like rubber and cocaine. The only way to stop it is at the cash register.
People get upset when a few people die from eating contaminated hamburger meat.
They don't think about the death of the ecosystems and economies of Central America, not to mention 50 percent of all adult Americans die of clogged arteries in the brain or the heart. Let me put it this way. I would have to leave my kitchen tap running all the way open and my car idling 24 hours a day, seven days a week, just to keep our environmental balance sheet even. And that's just the beef. This page created and maintained by Al MacDonald.