This is indeed a horrid catastrophe for greenhouse gases. The Amazon produces 6% of the world’s oxygen and though that may not sound like much… I personally would like to have that 6% and you know what? I’m willing to pay for it.
That poorer countries do not have either the regulations or the appreciation to hinder climate change is one of the two arguments I hear about how climate change is the poor’s fault.
Why is Brazil letting the forest burn? For profit. So, why don’t the rest of the world pay for the protection of the Amazon and other rain, dry, and cloud forests around the world? Instead of carbon taxes, we pay oxygen taxes? We pay so we can breathe.
I would pay an oxygen tax.
Many poorer nations are just now becoming more industrialized… living in poverty with an enormous gap between the rich and the poor, citizens of those/this (Nicaragua) nations will work for less and will tolerate pollution so they can survive and maybe get ahead just a bit. Many poor nations are becoming what the U.S. was in the early 1900s… industrialized and polluted.
Nicaragua is an exception. Nicaragua has tried to cut down on fossil fuel energy. When we moved here 25 years ago, all of Nicaragua’s electricity was created through diesel-powered generators. Now 70% is wind, solar, geothermal, and hydro-generated; while getting electricity to all of the rural areas has doubled.
25 years ago, cars and buses belched fumes all the time and everyone burned all their trash. Now, there are vehicle inspections, trash pick-up and recycling in many places and the air is cleaner.
25 years ago, most of the sewage was dumped into the lakes and rivers and oceans, now there are more and more water treatment plants, and chlorination for potable water in the cities.
Nicaragua before the civil unrest of 2018, was on tap to have 90% renewable energy by next year. They keep trying even with more limited funding (since April 2018)…opening solar power plants on the east coast, etc.
Nicaragua also has large rain forests, and like Brazil much has gone to agriculture, ranching and precious woods, but if other nations of the world paid Nicaragua money for oxygen imagine how much more of the forest might survive!
Also imagine a government intent on promoting renewable, clean energy and making Nicaragua a nation healthy for its people; if that government had money, how much more they would be able to do!
Yeah. I’d pay an oxygen tax.
-Kathleen
