The destruction of the Amazon will take us, little by little, into a vicious cycle. Destruction of the Amazon is the main source of greenhouse gases here. It contributes to global warming here in Brazil. Global warming transforms the forest into a drier environment, which is then more vulnerable to fire and destruction. So, little by little, this destruction becomes intensified and accelerates.

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Involved viewers, welcome to today’s Planet Earth: Our Loving Home. This week our focus is the fast disappearing Amazon rainforest, which is known as the “lungs of the Earth.” It is a jewel of nature that is absolutely vital to maintaining global climate stability. At 7.5-million square kilometers in size, the Amazon region encompasses the world's largest rainforest and river basin.

This vast area is located just below the equator and spans eight countries including Brazil, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Guyana, Surinam, and Bolivia as well as French Guiana, an overseas department of France. The largest part of the rainforest, 60%, lies in Brazil and covers half the country, followed by 13% in Peru.

The region’s name “Amazon” or “Amazonia” stems from the Amazon River, the world’s longest river at approximately 7,000 kilometers in length. The River’s source is in the 5,000–meter-high Peruvian Andes, and from there it winds eastward, finally emptying into the Atlantic Ocean. The moist, broadleaf Amazon rainforest plays a pivotal role in sustaining our planet’s eco-sphere, with its vegetation providing over 20% of the world’s oxygen and absorbing 1.5-billion metric tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere each year.

These are the highest sources of absorption of carbon dioxide. These [are] the regulators of the climate’s temperature, rainfall, winds and climate patterns. And if the Amazon goes, we will not have our lungs, we will not have our liver, we will not have our heart.

We have 20% of the fresh water available on the surface of the planet in the Amazon.

Since 1970 Brazil has lost approximately 600,000 square kilometers of forest, an area greater than the size of Spain and Portugal combined. And for the last 10 years, an average of 2.8-million hectares or 0.48% has vanished annually. The main causes of this massive deforestation are clearing land for livestock raising and growing animal feed. Scientists warn that if the rainforest destruction here and across globe proceeds at the current pace, all rainforests will virtually disappear by the end of the century.

Global warming, increase in fires caused by men and deforestation; those three together could lead to a great expansion of tropical savannahs or cerrado in the Amazon.

Maybe from a third to 50% of the forest area could become a type of savannah or a prairie.

Conservation of the Amazon is essential to maintaining Earth’s biodiversity. The region is home to one in 10 of all known plant and animal species on the planet. Scientists estimate the Amazon is endowed with 40,000 varieties of plants, 427 kinds of mammals, 1,294 species of birds, 378 types of reptiles, 427 species of amphibians, and 3,000 kinds of fishes.

We have lost 30% of the biodiversity on this planet in just 40 years. And in the tropics we’re talking about 60% declines in biodiversity. That just cannot continue. If it does we won’t have anything to eat and we won’t have anything to fuel our economy.

There’re probably twice as many species in the tropics as there are in temperate regions and those are much more poorly known. So, in the Amazon probably 19 out of 20 of the species have not ever been seen by a scientist and have never been given a name.

Due to prolonged dry spells and Andes glacial retreat, severe droughts are occurring more frequently and intensely in the Amazon. After the “once in a century” drought in 2005, more widespread droughts devastated over seven-million square kilometers of the region in 2010, and one important Amazon River tributary fell to its lowest level in 40 years.

Scientists from the Universities of Leeds and Sheffield in the UK and Brazil's Amazon Environmental Research Institute (IPAM) say that the 2010 drought will, in the short-term, turn the Amazon into a net emitter of carbon dioxide in contrast to its usual role as a crucial carbon sink for the planet.

The researchers estimate that in the coming years the millions of trees dying in the Amazon basin will release five billion metric tons of CO2 into the atmosphere and three billion metric tons of CO2 will not be absorbed from the air because the lessened tree growth will reduce the flora in the region. To put into context these eight billion metric tons of carbon dioxide the Amazon would normally take in, consider that in 2009 the US emitted 5.4 billion metric tons of CO2 from burning fossil fuels alone.

The majority of global warming scenarios show, obviously, higher temperatures in the Amazon, and some of the scenarios show a trend towards a drier climate, with less rain in the Amazon.

Climate changes or changes in the patterns of moisture circulation of the Amazon affect the south of Brazil. Most of the droughts that we have recorded in the southern part of Brazil in the last years are associated with a lack of moisture coming from the Amazon. That is clear, too.

Black Carbon, or soot, a powerful greenhouse agent that accelerates the melting of the world’s ice sheets and glaciers, arises from the incomplete combustion of fossil fuels and the clearing of forests with fire. Its global warming potential over a 20-year period has been calculated at up to 4,700 times the heat-trapping effect of carbon dioxide.

I would like to point out the impact of biomass burning and the transport into the south. It is in the middle of the Amazon that we have biomass burning. It’s happening, in fact, in the Brazilian savannah, and in the frontier between the savannah and the Amazon forest. And it’s really related to the expansion of cash crops and cattle farms.

How can this kind of material be transported to Antarctica? It seems a long way.

By now we know that cyclonic activity is able to transport materials in a short time, in a week or so, from the main areas of biomass burning, to the south and then mainly to the northernmost part of Antarctica, that is the Antarctic Peninsula.

West Antarctica is the fastest warming place on Earth. The melting there is happening at an alarming rate and they’re discovering much to the surprise of researchers that the Black Carbon is also there in large quantities.

A 2009 study by the University of Toronto, Canada and the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research projects a six to seven meter rise in sea levels should the West Antarctic Ice Sheet collapse. Such a devastating event would mean the submergence of many coastal cities in the Americas.

As of 2005, Brazil had approximately 207-million cattle, a population size second only to India’s. Greenpeace Brazil estimated in 2009 that the livestock industry is responsible for about 80% of Amazon deforestation.

The livestock sector is by far the single largest anthropogenic user of land. Livestock production accounts for 70% of all agricultural land and 30% of the world’s surface land area. And 70% of previously forested land in the Amazon is occupied by cattle pastures, and crops for animal feed cover a large part of the remainder.

I was following the Brazilian economy almost 15 to 20 years ago and you would recall that there was a period in the 1980s when Brazil had a huge foreign debt, something like US$120-billion dollars at that point in time. And one of the means by which they decided to liquidate that and neutralize it was by converting a large area of forest land into pasture land. That’s when the whole problem started, but it has continued.

The landmark 2006 report “Livestock’s Long Shadow” by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations states that livestock raising is the world’s number-one source of human-induced methane, being responsible for 37%.

Brazil is a very small producer of greenhouse gases. So, Brazil accounts for just one percent of world emissions if you exclude the Amazon. If we include the Amazon, Brazil drops down in the list and becomes the fourth world producer. The emissions caused by Amazon deforestation are three times larger than all the remaining Brazilian emissions. This situation is actually the largest environmental problem faced by Brazil and it must be addressed, not only because of environmental problems but also because there are 20-million Brazilians living in the Amazon and they will not be able to stay in that region if things don’t change.

Supreme Master Ching Hai has often discussed the enormous importance of the world’s rainforests and how we can effectively protect our planet’s eco-systems as in a October 2009 videoconference in Germany.

Saving the world’s tropical forests, the lungs of the Earth, is one of the very important priorities. Because when the tropical rainforests are destroyed, there are many frightening side effects. It’s not just the permanent changes to the world’s temperature, rainfall, and weather patterns which the forests regulate. It’s not just about the millions of people who might lose their livelihoods that depend on the forests.

The rainforests themselves normally are our protectors, but as the climate gets warmer, instead of absorbing CO2 to protect our planet’s climate, they will be emitting back CO2 as well. They will be not helping us, the rainforest, if the climate gets warmer. But instead, they will be worsening the global warming problem.

Stop the livestock industry -- that would be the most effective way to halt global warming and restore our planet. It will save our precious forests.

How do we shut down the livestock industry? The organic vegan diet is the clear answer. If the world embraces a lifestyle free of animal products, the industry’s destructive activities will immediately end and trees and animal lives will be saved. Such a noble change by humanity will produce a beneficial, cooling effect by significantly reducing our production of methane and other dangerous greenhouse gases, thus preserving our planet.

Benevolent viewers, thank you for joining us on today’s Planet Earth: Our Loving Home. Coming up next is Enlightening Entertainment after Noteworthy News. May we always be filled with the Divine bliss of Heaven.