No matter how many times you hear them, there are some statistics that just bowl you over. The one that always stuns me is this: Imagine if you took all the cars, trucks, planes, trains and ships in the world and added up their exhaust every year. The amount of carbon dioxide, or CO2, all those cars, trucks, planes, trains and ships collectively emit into the atmosphere is actually less than the carbon emissions every year that result from the chopping down and clearing of tropical forests in places like Brazil, Indonesia and the Congo. We are now losing a tropical forest the size of New York State every year, and the carbon that releases into the atmosphere now accounts for roughly 17 percent of all global emissions contributing to climate change. [...]

"You need a new model of economic development - one that is based on raising people's standards of living by maintaining their natural capital, not just by converting that natural capital to ranching or industrial farming or logging," said José María Silva, a conservation expert. Right now people protecting the rainforest are paid a pittance - compared with those who strip it - even though we now know that the rainforest provides everything from keeping CO2 out of the atmosphere to maintaining the flow of freshwater into rivers.

The good news is that Brazil has put in place all the elements of a system to compensate its forest-dwellers for maintaining the forests. Brazil has already set aside 43 percent of the Amazon rainforest for conservation and for indigenous peoples. Another 19 percent of the Amazon, though, has already been deforested by farmers and ranchers.