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According to the doomsayers, by the year 2000, 50% of the world's species were supposed to have gone extinct, and the entire South American rainforest was supposed to have vanished. Neither of these things came true.
In reality, the number of species that have gone extinct was less than 1% of 1% of what the doomsayers had predicted. And only a small fraction of the South American rainforest has disappeared.
The South American rainforest is currently going through something that is very similar to what happened to U.S. forests during the 19th century. During the 19th century, much of the U.S. forest was cut down to make firewood and farmland. But today, because of economic growth, he have better technology, and much of the forest has been replanted. Because of a richer economy, wood is no longer our main source of fuel. And because we are richer, we have better farming technology, so we grow more food on less land, so much of the past U.S. farmland has been turned back into forest. Much of South America is now at the level that the U.S. was during the 19th century. As South America becomes richer, they will be able to recover much of their forest, just as we in the U.S. did.
The fact is that people like trees. People enjoy having trees around them, and on their property. People enjoy nature. But when a country is poor, and people are struggling just to survive, they can't afford the luxury of having lots of forest. They have to chop the trees down in order to survive. But in a rich society, people can afford to have lots of trees, and lots of forest. Since people enjoy having trees and forest, then a rich society will give them more opportunities to have trees and forest. People enjoy trees and forest. And a rich society makes it easier for people to have the things that they enjoy.
Would we in the U.S. today be better off if the people of the 19th century U.S. had avoided cutting down those trees? No, because cutting down the trees in the 19th century helped to fuel the economic growth that gives us such a high standard of living today. For the exact same reason, we shouldn't try to stop the people in South America from cutting their trees down today.
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