What’s left of the rainforest in the Mato Grosso state of Brazil

This is what’s left of part of the rainforest in the Mato Grosso state of Brazil. A tiny sliver of rainforest, surrounded by fields upon fields of soybean crop. All in the name of clean energy.

“The Amazon was the chic eco-cause of the 1990s” recounts Time Magazine’s latest sensational article, The Clean Energy Scam. Now it’s overshadowed by “going green” and the quest for cheap energy, as we see rainforests turned into cattle pasteurs and soybean fields.

Investment in biofuels, or as some call is “deforestation diesel,” rose from $5 billion in 1995 to $38 billion in 2005 and is expected to top $100 billion by 2010, says Time. My further research shows that with that investment comes a net forest loss of 20,000 hectares per day, per the UN Food & Agriculture Organization’s 2007 State of the World’s Forest Report. That’s roughly an area twice the size of Paris.

Though we must consider that deforestation is not all in the name of biofuels, this graph displays the influence of soy prices on deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon (including Mato Grosso shown above) and shows a rather strong correlation.