The president of Brazil wants to use his land to enrich his own people.
The Pope is backing the rich first world ecology types trying to "protect" the indigenous tribes who are seen as Rousseau's "noble savage" (just ignore the infanticide and kidnapping of women from other tribes) and development is bad according to the eco types (just let those poor black Brazilians stay poor too).
Usually we only hear the European side of the argument: But Eponymousflowerblog gives the Brazilian side of the story
the Pope is backing the eco types, and a lot of folks claim he is using the Amazon as an excuse to introduce ecopagan religion ideas to replace traditional Catholicism.
Note: Brazil's new president is backed by the growing Evangelical sects, who unlike the Catholics, still convert people to Jesus and encourage the protestant work ethic and fidelity to your family instead of liberation theology that converts people to communism or ecoreligion that sees the garden of Eden when they see people living poverty and looking happy about it (but notice the European leaders of these groups don't live this lifestyle, and so don't have to put up with dirt, disease, backbreaking hard work, and seeing your children die of diarrhea and measles).
and often overlooked: That the Amazon basin once was full of millions of Indians who had developed the land, and those who live there now are the survivors of the infectious disease genocide (accidental) after the Europeans came to the Americas.
The problem is not development per se, but corruption.
Developing mining while keeping the environment from being destroyed is possible, but expensive. it is cheaper to bribe the authorities to overlook the ecology laws than to follow the law.
ditto for cutting down trees.
Get rid of corruption and it can be done.
It is assumed that not "allowing" mining etc. will protect the environment... in reality, what happens is not ecological paradise but a worse problem: illegal mining and illegal cutting of trees by "mom/pop" type operations result: poor people will do it themselves to support themselves, and the result is lives lost from dangerous mining practises or mudslides from careless wood cutting...
NYTimes article from last week about illegal mining in Africa.
Tens of thousands of informal miners operate in and around large industrial mines in Congo. Often equipped with little more than shovels, buckets and straw sacks, they burrow deep underground in search of ore. Accidents are common.
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EWTN news here includes a discussion of the Germans behind the
so called "Amazon" synod. LINK
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update 2:
3 million Brazilians pray and sing hymns, along with their new president and several mayors.
A Russian site...
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