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At a rate of one and a half acres per minute our lives are being decimated by the deforestation of the rainforest. It has taken 50 years to destroy half the acreage of the worlds rainforests, and now it will only be 25 years before the rest is in the history books. This means that in our lifetime our planets biggest natural resource will be gone and along with it our way of life that we are so desperate to cling onto, even though it is known we cannot sustain it indefinitely.

The rainforest impacts almost every aspect of our daily lives yet it is given less thought then the dirt on the bottom of our shoes. With all the hype today about oil we need to take a long hard look at our priorities. When the oil is gone it will not be a true hardship to switch our infrastructure to alternate power whether it be wind farms, solar, bio-diesel, nuclear. It is just a matter of finding which one best serves the masses.

Used properly the rainforest is a renewable resource which is viable and sustainable. It gives us the plants we use in our medicine, the wood to build homes, it boasts 3000 different types of fruit, it is the largest system converting our carbon dioxide into usable oxygen. It contains half the living creatures on the planet, thousands of which are lost every year due to the deforestation.

When it is finally gone so will our best medicine, the strides we have seen in cancer survival rates will be lost, our air will not be as safe to breathe, paper will be a distant memory, our food supply will be diminished.

To enjoy this natural wonder for our entire lives and in the distant future all we need to do is practice methods of sustainability, insist on buying lumber from sustainable harvesting, recycle your paper and buy recycled paper. Take your metal to a recycler or find someone that can haul it for you, millions of trees are lost every year to make charcoal in the steel making process.

Nobody is being asked to cut back on any of the things they enjoy in life, all the world asks is that you do the responsible thing by not dumping more into our landfills. By reusing what we already have the need for new materials is greatly reduced so that when we do need them they will be there for us.

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