Customer Reviews

In the Rainforest: Report from a Strange, Beautiful, Imperiled World

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I read this book over two years ago while exploring the Amazon rainforest in Ecuador as part of a college class. It was revealing and disturbing. I was left feeling overwhelmed by what humans have done and are doing to the rainforests of the world, for the sake of money and power. There is so much that could apparently be done, and yet it seems that world is spiraling downward towards an earth where there are few, if any, rainforests left. The fight against rainforest destruction appears unwinnable because the people fighting to prevent destruction tend to be money and power-less, while those who want to destruct are moving forward without any barriers to their work. Those who would wish to continue destroying rainforests need to remember that ultimately, they are fighing against their own existence. Yet this fact seems to slip by everyone because we have always figured that we have one more generation before WE feel the effects. When are we going to realize that those who are affected by destruction NOW are just as important as those of us who benefit financially from rainforest destruction without feeling its harmful effects?

It will certainly be interesting to see what happens in the next decades.

On the whole, an engrossing book about rainforests all over the world. In fact, more about Indonesia perhaps than South America. Full of an amazing assortment of facts and figures and statistics on all sorts of things. Rather mind-boggling research must have gone into the writing of this book. Lots of good history of the exploration and exploitation of rainforests. Always, always economics and money are the cause of actions. Rarely just plain common good. Natives always at short end of stick. But she makes a compelling case for preserving what we have just because we don't know exactly all, or even what, there is. We are destroying something we really don't understand. That is dangerous, always. For instance, there is a tree whose sap can fuel a diesel truck!