How come every other country in the world can clear forests for crops or homes, but when...?

they complain mainly because rain-forests are in danger of disappearing and clear-cutting there is not an efficient farming method, as the soil isn't made the way it is in the US (the nutrients are used up very quickly and the soil is generally only good for a season or two of crops). Maintaining healthy rainforests are actually better for the long term financial health of countries like brazil, the clearcutting only serves for meager short term gains. What we've done to the US isn't that much better, but the environment actually supports long term use of the land for farming and we do have many national parks set up in an attempt to prevent complete destruction of forests. We should be doing better, but the two environments are NOT equivalent. Loss of an acre of deciduous forests are much less damaging and easier to recover than loss of an acre of rainforest.

If you cannot figure this out for yourself...nothing we say will work for you.

Haven't you seen the movie "Medicine Man"?

The developed nations of the world have become developed by using their natural resources to develop. Originally much of north western Europe was covered in beech or oak forests. This type of primordial forest only exists in one part of Poland. When Julius Cesar invaded Britain he wrote back to Rome that a squirrel could travel from one end of the country to another with out ever havening to leave the trees. The industrial revolution used that resource. If we are to argue that the Amazon is a world resource then the same argument must apply to the resource that our ancestors systematical cut and burned. I very STRONGLY believe that as much as the Amazon and other areas and habitats should be saved. It is easy and wrong for other nations to only say its wrong: they should put there hands in their pockets and help or buy the land. The Eco voice is very complicated and political, should they go for an easy target, and condemn slash and burn in Brazil, will they alienate their supporters if they try stop homes being built in the Mid West. Attacking a high profile and un popular Oil Company may be good image wise... Your western Credit idea has some merits and should be encouraged because of the profile it would create. The converse is the much higher biodiversity in the Amazon and the much lower effective ness of $ spend in the west. I would imagine that buying and planting an acre in say Belgium would buy and save much more in Brazil