Speaking of roads ....
/we had to kill the trees to save them
Amazon forest felled to build road for climate summit
A new four-lane highway cutting through tens of thousands of acres of protected Amazon rainforest is being built for the COP30 climate summit in the Brazilian city of Belém.
It aims to ease traffic to the city, which will host more than 50,000 people – including world leaders – at the conference in November.
The state government touts the highway’s “sustainable” credentials, but some locals and conservationists are outraged at the environmental impact.
The Amazon plays a vital role in absorbing carbon for the world and providing biodiversity, and many say this deforestation contradicts the very purpose of a climate summit.
Along the partially built road, lush rainforest towers on either side - a reminder of what was once there. Logs are piled high in the cleared land which stretches more than 13km (8 miles) through the rainforest into Belém.
Diggers and machines carve through the forest floor, paving over wetland to surface the road which will cut through a protected area.
Claudio Verequete lives about 200m from where the road will be. He used to make an income from harvesting açaí berries from trees that once occupied the space.
"Everything was destroyed," he says, gesturing at the clearing.
"Our harvest has already been cut down. We no longer have that income to support our family."
He says he has received no compensation from the state government and is currently relying on savings.
He worries the construction of this road will lead to more deforestation in the future, now that the area is more accessible for businesses.
"Our fear is that one day someone will come here and say: 'Here's some money. We need this area to build a gas station, or to build a warehouse.' And then we'll have to leave.
"We were born and raised here in the community. Where are we going to go?"
His community won't be connected to the road, given its walls on either side.
"For us who live on the side of the highway, there will be no benefits. There will be benefits for the trucks that will pass through. If someone gets sick, and needs to go to the centre of Belém, we won't be able to use it."
…. The Brazilian president and environment minister say this will be a historic summit because it is "a COP in the Amazon, not a COP about the Amazon".
The president says the meeting will provide an opportunity to focus on the needs of the Amazon, show the forest to the world, and present what the federal government has done to protect it.
But Prof Sardinha says that while these conversations will happen "at a very high level, among business people and government officials", those living in the Amazon are "not being heard".
With any luck, we’ll have pulled out of the United Nations by the time of this November’s conference, thereby leaving it to other countries to pay for their grifters’ and the politically favored’s housing. One might ask, or would, if this weren’t a UN project, why 50,000 people have to fly into Brazil from across the globe to be personally present at a festival that could be accomplished via Zoom, but regardless, the housing for this swarm is going to come dearly, and is the perfect symbol for the grift that is the hallmark of the Global Warming hoax:
Surreal prices for COP30 in Brazil’s Amazon leave attendees scrambling for a place to stay
SAO PAULO (AP) — Nine months ahead of this year’s annual U.N. climate summit, known as COP30, lodging prices in the Brazilian host city of Belem are turning heads—and may soon turn off would-be attendees from the first such meeting in the Amazon rainforest.
With a shortage of housing and high interest, property owners and rental companies are feeling emboldened to charge five-digit rates, even for cramped rooms with shared bathrooms.
On Booking.com, one of the last available hotel rooms listed, a flat apartment, is going $15,266 for one person, up from $158 for the same category currently—a 9,562% increase. A 15-day stay during the conference in November would total $228,992, enough to buy a four-bedroom apartment in one of Belem’s top neighborhoods.
On Airbnb, a room with a shared bathroom in Ananindeua, a poor city near Belem, is listed at $9,320 per day. A comparable room today could be rented for as little as $11 per day. In more upscale neighborhoods, renting an apartment that accommodates eight people costs up to $446,595 for a two-week stay.
“This one scared me,” joked local architect and digital influencer Renato Balaguer about a dilapidated apartment listed at $10,000 for an 11-day stay.
President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who champions himself as a protector of the environment, has boasted about hosting the event in the Amazon, which helps regulate the climate by storing large quantities of carbon dioxide, a gas that causes climate change.