Kayapo Damned: Brazil government OKs hydro plant, condemns 40,000 lives
Brazilian president Dilma Roussef has given approval to build a hydroelectric plant – the third largest in the world - at Belo Monte on the Xingu River in Brazil‘s northern Amazonian region.
The region is currently home to huge local communities, totalling 40,000 people, the majority of whom will be flooded out when water levels eventually eradicate 400,000 hectares of ancient forest and towns.
Despite this, and despite significant protest from the tribal communities in Western courts – no mean feat, mind you – approval was passed without the slightest resounding outcry from the world.
It pisses me off that globally we care more about stopping Internet Copyright laws like SOPA and Protect-IP than the lives of 40,000 human beings‘ homes in the name of business profits.
The Amazon region should belong to the world, as the Internet does, and the world should get pissed off at things threatening it just as if your local government signed papers that meant they could build a highway through your house whenever they felt like.
What’s about to happen to the Kayapo community will be more devastating than the 2011 Queensland Floods.
Yet this time, it’s deliberate, and it’s OK.
4 comments:
The world has become a very ugly place. Nothing matters but the almighty dollar, pound, Lira, Rand,etc., I feel like a enuch in a harem.
"Money is the root of all evil"..No spoken word has ever been more true.
I have a plaque(sp?) on my dresser that says....
"Only when the last tree has died & the last river has been poisoned & the last fish has been caught will we realise that we cannot eat money"
~ 19th century Cree Indian ~
@Teresa
Wow, that is an awesome quote!
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