Colombia has new leaders who see the direct link between plutocracy and the plunder of our most valuable ecosystem.
The Amazon rainforest, our scientists tell us, essentially works as our world's lungs. If those Amazonian lungs ever stop breathing, so will we.
Petro and his environmental activist running mate Francia Marquez have pledged to work with their fellow progressive Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the odds-on favorite to win Brazil's presidential race this coming October, to save the Amazon rainforest. With leadership from Petro and Marquez, that effort may well succeed. Both these veteran activists deeply understand the core reality—economic inequality—that's left the Amazon rainforest so catastrophically vulnerable.
Taxes in Colombia do precious little to alter this striking maldistribution of income and wealth. The nation's personal income tax only kicks in at about four times Colombia's median income, a rate structure, the World Bank points out, that leaves most all of Colombia's rich paying no more than 10 percent of their actual total income in tax.
Last fall's World Bank analysis of Colombia's deep-seated inequalities argues that reducing those inequalities makes eminent sense on both moral economic grounds. Greater equality in Colombia, the World Bank analysts stress, would boost growth and promote social cohesion. Why does inequality in Colombia matter so much to our climate future? The increasingly concentrated ownership of Colombia's best agricultural land is driving poor farming families ever deeper into the rainforest.
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