When I speak of social distortions I generally think of events that happen in our society that are, shall we say, somehow wrong. These events remind me of a square bearing being forced into a round hole. Of all places to see a distortion, I could not believe that the Amazon forest would be such a place.
In past years Brazil has done a lot in the effort to protect the Amazon forest from deforestation. In fact the government set aside some 150,000,000 acres to be conserved. This would be near the size of the country of France. So well have worked the efforts of the Brazilian government that the amount of a deforestation decreased by nearly 80% in the last six years alone.
Today there is a bill to overhaul the forest code, a 47-year-old piece of legislation, leading to a reversal of government policies with regard to environmental issues. Most of the governmental changes leading to anti-environmental policies are occurring as a result of the newly elected president of 2010, Dilma Rouseff. It appears that the government is becoming more relax about restrictions and licensing issues over environmental protection. New and very large infrastructure projects are being proposed. Some of the land previously set aside may now be used for projects.
The distortion is that the people of Brazil are becoming more and more sympathetic to environmental concerns and wish to protect the Amazon forest. But the government they have elected is going in the opposite direction. The distortion is that the government officials know full well this is the wrong course for them to follow. And still, they continued to follow the wrong course. This is a social distortion that will cost the people of Brazil and the world for eons to come.
