alt Hacker NewsAnother poster linked to your previous comment regarding the rainforest.
What's your thought process behind your comment:
"If I had a button that would burn that entire jungle down and replace it with a top tier national semiconductor industry, I'd press it twice."
Given the following facts:
- Climate change is real
- The Amazon stores around 15–20 years of global CO2 emissions. Burning it down would release all that.
- It maintains the rainfall system needed by farms and general Brazilian economy
- There is so much biodiversity in the Amazon and so much unexplored. By protecting it, it preserves biological resources and research relevant to food and medicine.
- Many indigenous people live there (2 million?). So it's OK to just destroy their home?
Any why do you need to burn down the Amazon to build a Brazilian semi-conductor industry?
I think it's clear, if Bolsonaro Jr would have won, he'd continue his father's approach to it, i.e. continue with deforestation and loosen environmental rules.
As I said in that thread, it was merely a rhetoric device to express the fact that I value my nation's development far more than I value the rainforest.
Every election, someone like Greta Thunberg shows up and tells everyone to vote for Lula to save the Amazon.
What about the Brazilian people? Our industry? Our economy? Our prosperity? Our autonomy? Our independence? Our sovereignty?
They couldn't care less about any of that.
The suggestion that we should slow down our own development "to safeguard the Amazon" is offensive to me.
I'll say it again: if burning that jungle down would magically turn Brazil into China or the US, with high value industries, space program, well equipped military, nuclear weapons... I'd sacrifice it all without losing even one second of sleep.
Note the "if", it's important. There's no reason to burn it all down just for kicks. There must be significant advantage for the trade to be worth it. The point is: the trade is on the table as far as I'm concerned. We can endeavour to preserve it, but if it gets in the way of national interests then it definitely must go.