Amazonas may have reached the tipping point already - if not, urgent action is necessary

If 20-25 % of a rainforest area is lost (deforested, burned), the forest turns to savannah. This is because the water cycle maintaining the forest is interrupted. The tree area of the forest needs to be adequate in order to guarantee that the evaporative water loss from the trees turns to rain that keeps the forest alive. With decreasing evaporation, the moisture generated is not enough to turn to rain, and the moisture-requiring forests disappear and are replaced by savannah. This generates an extensive loss of the carbon-dioxide absorbing capacity of the area. Since Amazonas has for good reason been called Earth’s lungs, the deforestation and burning can be called Earth’s lung cancer.

It is estimated that the area of Amazonas that has already been changed to agricultural land is a little less than 20 %. In addition, another 6 % is under quite heavy human influence, but could be returned to proper rain forest. Thus, we are clearly at the tipping point; if forest loss is allowed to continue, we lose the major carbon dioxide sink, if we take the countermeasures, restoring the heavily impacted area, Earth’s lungs may survive.

When the international agreements on combatting climate change were done, one point that was agreed upon was that the industrialized North would give lots of funds for third world countries to enable them to establish, e.g., protected forest areas. Hitherto only less than ten % of the promised funds have been allocated. It would, however, be easy to fulfil the monetary promises, e.g., by placing a small climate tax on the superrich. Then their riches would be more beneficial to mankind than the short space explorations.