According to the article, the indiscriminate slashing and burning of rainforests is producing far more carbon emissions than the collective global outputs of transport and factories. The league table of carbon emitters is still led by energy producers but deforestation comes second, ahead of transport and factories. Taken on its own, aviation makes up only 3% of carbon emissions. This means that "deforestation in the next four years will pump more CO2 into the atmosphere than every flight in aviation history up to 2025"
The significance of this is that the efforts of rich nations to come up with technological 'fixes' for their own emissions are futile if poorer nations are not given incentives to stop the burning of standing forest.
Current annual rates of felling amount to the equivalent of the area of Scotland, England and Wales. However, the remaining standing forests contain 1,000 billion tons of carbon - double what is already in the atmosphere. The article makes a strong case for leaving it trapped in the timber! Click on the image above to read the article in full.
P.S. Hope Maths goes well tomorrow!
