James Cameron’s Amazon tribe about to have their Hometree bulldozed

You may remember late last year

Brazil’s environment agency gave its definitive approval on Wednesday for construction of the Belo Monte hydroelectric dam, a controversial $17 billion project in the Amazon.
Government has said the 11,200-megawatt project, due to start producing electricity in 2015, is crucial to provide power to Brazil’s fast-growing economy. It will be the world’s third biggest hydroelectric dam after China’s Three Gorges and Itaipu on the border of Brazil and Paraguay.
Critics from singer Sting to Hollywood director James Cameron and environmental group Greenpeace have said the dam will damage the environment and harm thousands of people living in the region.
The 6-km-long (3.75-mile) dam will displace 30,000 river dwellers, partially dry up a 100-km (62-mile) stretch of the Xingu river, and flood large areas of forest and grass land. [Reuters]

More:

The death sentence of the peoples of Great Bend of the Xingu river is enacted. Belo Monte will inundate at least 400,000 hectares of forest, an area bigger than the Panama Canal, thus expelling 40,000 indigenous and local populations and destroying habitat valuable for many species – all to produce electricity at a high social, economic and environmental cost, which could easily be generated with greater investments in energy efficiency. [Etcetera]

As far as I can tell, James Cameron has yet to issue an official response. There’s another last-minute petition going around, but anything short of James Cameron arriving on a gilded palanquin held aloft by a team of high-priced Ukranian prostitutes to personally buy up all the dam land is going to be a huge disappointment. You’re telling me James Cameron has less money than Brazil?  It could just be my enormous level of racism, but I refuse to believe that.

[hat tip: TDW]

 

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