Rain Forests in Crisis, Cut for Farmland

So the environmentalists, vehemently against coal, oil and nuclear power for energy, push the public and politicians to use biofuel as an alternative energy source and the government mandates that food (corn) be allocated for the purpose. The net result is a worldwide increase in food prices as the demand for corn and other commodities skyrockets.

Unfortunately, and as with many leftist ideas, there are unintended consequences. Land taken out of food production increases the need for new land which comes from cutting down forests -- specifically, rain forests.

Globally, tropical rain forest destruction is considered a super crisis, says Oxford University's Professor Norman Myers, keynote speaker at the Asia-Pacific Forestry Week conference in Hanoi.

"It's one of the worst crises since we came out of our caves 10,000 years ago," Myers said at the five-day meeting of 500 foresters, researchers, state officials and activists held last week in the Vietnamese capital.

Over-logging in Southeast Asia caused 19 percent of global rainforest loss in 2005, Myers said, compared to cattle ranching -- once a leading cause, mainly in South America -- which now caused five percent of world losses.

The rapid growth of palm oil and other plantations accounted for 22 percent, and slash-and-burn farming, unsustainable as more poor people exploit fast-shrinking forests, caused 54 percent of rainforest destruction, he said.

And the blame is being placed on the need for new land to grow food.

Commercial crops "will be the most important factor contributing to deforestation in Asia-Pacific countries," said the FAO [U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization] report, citing record prices for food grains, energy and commodities.

Jeez, what are the environmentalists going to do now? It seems that promotion of biofuels and saving the rain forests are in conflict. When Asians are confronted with the dilemma of hugging trees or eating, they pick eating. Imagine that.

[Add.] According to this report, the expanding oil palm plantations on the island of Borneo are encroaching on the tropical jungle habitat of orangutans.

Hardi Baktiantoro, head of the Center for Orangutan Protection, said Indonesian orangutans could be extinct by 2011. Only 20,000 of the endangered primates remain in the wild and they're disappearing at a rate of 5,000 a year.