ere of harmful gases, liquids, or solids. Smog has been a problem in coal-burning areas for several centuries
Deforestation
At the present rate of tropical deforestation, the world's remaining tropical rainforests will vanish in just 30 years [4] .
Deforestation in the tropical areas of the world is following a course similar to the earlier clearing of the forests in Europe and North America, only advancing more rapidly.
Since just 1950, the world's population has more than doubled to more than 6 billion people, with the fastest population growth being in the tropics. Today, more than 3 billion people live in the tropics alone, more than lived in the entire world in 1950. To provide food, wood, fuel and resources for the world's rapidly growing population, and to make room for the exploding tropical population, the world's tropical rainforests are literally disappearing.
Even with tropical deforestation at an all-time high, tropical hardwood prices continue to climb as world demand for tropical hardwoods continues to grow. A single teak log for example can now bring as much as $ 20,000. Annual world consumption of tropical hardwoods is now more than 250 million cubic meters, or over 100 billion board feet, per year.
Southeast Asia until recently has been the largest source of supply for tropical hardwoods, but that area will largely be depleted within the next five years. All of the primary forests in India, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh are gone. Ivory Coast's forests are essentially non-existent. Nigeria's forests have been decimated as well. As Asia's and Africa's tropical forests are depleted, consuming countries are turning increasing attention to Latin America and the Amazon, whose own rapidly growing population is also a source of pressure on the rainforests. Also, trillions of dollars worth of oil, gas, uranium, gold, iron, bauxite and other minerals, and millions of acres of potential farm land, lie under the Amazon, the largest area of ​​rainforest remaining on Earth.
Amazon rainforests are being cleared on a vast scale for settlements, logging, gold mining, petroleum, cattle ranching, sugar cane (for gasohol), large hydro dams, and charcoal for smelting ore. Peasant farmers also clear the rainforest to have land for planting, by cutting the forest, and then in the dry season burning what they have cut.
During one month in 1995 for example, NASA satellite surveys of Brazil recorded 39,889 individual fires, up 370 percent from the same month of the prior year. In neighboring Bolivia the smoke is sometimes so thick that schools have to close and flights have to be delayed or canceled.
Scientists estimate that until as recently as 10,000 years ago, the world had 6 billion acres of tropical rainforests. By 1950, we had a little less than 2.8 billion...
