Everybody is wrong.
When Fernando Collor de Mello assumed the presidency last year, he abolished subsidies for big cattle ranchers, began closing pig-iron smelters that depend on charcoal from virgin forest and raised taxes on previously tax-exempt agriculture profits. As a result, the loss of forested land plummeted from 90,000 square kilometers in 1987 to between 5,000 and 10,000 square kilometers in 1990, according to the latest satellite data. “You see the biggest difference in areas that had been cleared for cattle ranches,” Jose Lutzenberger, Brazil’s secretary of environment, told NEWSWEEK last month. “Small farmers still clear some jungle to survive.” Solutions to at least some of the world’s environmental woes may be as close as wise tax policy.
