Why Its Pointless To Argue With Global Warming Believers 2103

Brazil has plenty of arable land, it's just held in very few hands. Something like 40% of it is owned by 1% of the population, and much of that is used to grow cash crops for export.

Anyway, subsistence farming is not the only cause of rain forest destruction. Commercial logging is also a significant cause, and would be much easier to get a handle on. And actually, logging is in large part responsible for the volume of subsistence farming occurring in rain forests; logging roads give subsistence farmers access to far more land than they could easily reach otherwise. So, if you shut down commercial logging, you'd do a lot to curb subsistence farming as well.

China can do it because they're an authoritarian state with very little respect for human rights. Even then, enforcement is spotty, and some of the consequences of the policy have not been good.

The Wikipedia article about covers it:

Anyway, China is pretty well off as far as resources and functional government go, by the standards of developing nations. It's likely other countries, even if they were willing to adopt China's draconian policies, would enforce them even less effectively.

snip

You're going to impose draconian monetary penalties on people who make two dollars a day? I'm sure that'll turn out well.

-- "Those who enter the country illegally violate the law." -- George W. Bush in Tucson, Ariz., Nov. 28, 2005