The Economist discovers the economic value of biodiversity

Any more of this left-wing, environmentalist, clap-trap and I might just be forced to subscribe to this magazine! Seriously, though, having managed to get up my nose for several decades now with its doctrinaire free-market editorial, The Economist is actually starting to talk sense, analysing issues such as the plight of the world’s forests in [...]

Illegal logging in the Amazon

Image source: daylife.com A piece in The Guardian today reports on the recent escalation of deforestation in the Amazon. The dramatic increase (up 64% in the last year) suggests that with commodity prices hitting historic highs, the financial gains from illegal logging are proving too lucrative to stay on the right side of the law. [...]

The Earth’s lungs grow smaller

Image source: AP Photo/Dado Galdieri A BBC report last week revealed that the rate of deforestation of the Amazon rainforest has been underestimated by around 60%. An article published in Science magazine documents how the NASA space agency has used an ultra-high-resolution technique to examine just how much selective logging has been going on. Although [...]