Jane Goodall on Deforestration
As Nobel Peace Prize winner Wangari Maathai has taught us, trees are an important part of the peace equation. Jane Goodall weighs in on deforestration in an essay about species extinction,
“The irony of cutting down forests for biofuels is that forests store a significant fraction of the world’s stocks of carbon. If these carbon-capturing trees are felled and burned - whether as firewood or to clear land - the oxidation of their carbon will release billions more tons of carbon dioxide. The tropical rainforests of Africa, Latin America and South Asia are particularly important in this regard.
Tropical deforestation contributes 2 billion tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere annually, compared to approximately 6 billion tons from burning fossil fuels. Saving these forests would not only prevent the release of carbon currently stored in them, but it also would allow them to continue absorbing carbon in the future.”
Filed under: Uncategorized, Sheroes
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