The Standard - Rain forest myth goes up in smoke

The StandardRain forest myth goes up in smoke

Far from cleaning up the atmosphere, the Amazon is now a source for pollution. Rampant burning and deforestation release hundreds of millions of tonnes of carbon dioxide into the skies each year. Brazil now ranks as one of the world's leading producers of greenhouse gases, thanks in large part to the Amazon, the source for up to two-thirds of the country's emissions. "It's not the lungs of the world,'' said Daniel Nepstad, an American ecologist who has studied the Amazon for 20 years. "It's probably burning up more oxygen now than it's producing.''