Greenpeace pressures Indonesia to protect forests

Indonesia has the world’s worst deforestation problem. The country loses an area of forest the size of Switzerland, every year and by 2010 all the lowland forests in Kalimantan will be gone. Who is behind this mindless destruction? Greedy little men in positions of power, for whom padding their own wallets means more than anything else in the world. The driving force behind this assault on nature is China, and its own ravenous economy, rolls on, pumping out crap for western consumers, who shop, buy, use and discard, only to repeat the cycle some time later.

That’s consumerism for you. One chain of garbage from start to finish, with the same result, destroy nature to make the stuff and destroy nature to dump the stuff. Indonesian police, military and local government officials are the main beneficiaries of the logging, and in one sense you can’t blame them, its easy money for the taking.

British PM Tony Blair is visiting Jakarta right now and environmental group Greenpeace are urging him to push for action to be taken over the rapid deforestation in Indonesia. Here in Bali a friend of mine wants to create a hiking trail around the last remaining section of true forest, up in the lakes region, around Mt. Batukaru. Let’s hope sensible people will make wise decisions, because we have too many greedy little men in charge already.