Borneo! | Part 10: Teeming with Life!

Thanks for the background on the legal side of what has been happening. It's all pretty freaky, of course hearing about it all the time is one thing, but as you may have been able to tell I was *shocked* at seeing it in person. I wish everyone had a chance to experience that somehow, I can't think of a more direct way to show people the actual trouble we are headed towards. -Eric

Kyde & Eric

Yikes, sounds like it was probably a similar situation. -E

Kyde & Eric

I came across a cemetery in Melaka West Malaysia that was also full of Japanese prostitutes so I did a bit of research and discovered that sex trafficking was a very common practice in the early 1900s called "Karayuki-san". Daughters of poor families were offered jobs as maids in other Asian countries, the parents were paid and the girls were sent off. Many didn't realize they were actually being sold into prostitution.

Your concern on the clearing is spot-on and worldwide. Unfortunately, the Kyoto Protocol was not signed by some of the major polluters such as China and India (and the unmentionable). the Paris Protocol was more effective but the US has not really adhered to it although Obama tried to sort of sign it without Senate approval and of course that left it open to Trump to resile from those undertakings. The problem with the Kyoto Protocol was that it unwittingly gave great financial encouragement to the production of bio-diesel in underdeveloped countries. This resulted in huge areas of Indonesian jungle (and maybe Malaysian) being cleared. This displaced people and animals in order to plant palms for palm oil. Quite apart from the social disruption and destruction of habitat for animals and plants, it produced huge quantities of green house gas. It has been calculated that it will take 30 years of use of biodiesel just to compensate for the production of that greenhouse gas. For a while Indonesia was up there with the top greenhouse gas producers, just because of this clearing. As world population expands, so does the land needed to service its needs (even if agriculture is continually improving its efficiency). As you rightly observed, the jungle radically affects the climate. It's a big worry.

Peter Foss