Trees are powerful symbols - heap big magic. Sages from Buddha to Newton have found enlightenment nestled at the base of trees. You could jazz on this tune forever and not exhaust it. Unfortunately, some who come under the spell lose the ability to appreciate other biomes, and so become less human. Enlightenment isn't the only gift of trees.

This Beeb article by Sue Branford - a perennial environmental scold devoid of useful knowledge or insight - is an example of a debilitating case of tree fever.

Each year we learn more about the importance of the Amazon rain forest.

We know that, by destroying it, we are accelerating global warming and disrupting the world's climate.

Yet we, in the developed world, go on eating more and more meat.

And this in turn encourages Brazil, which is burdened with a heavy foreign debt, to export more beef and more soybeans.

It certainly is a problem that the forests of S. America are disappearing, but it is childish nonsense to select beef, soya (which Branford excoriates as mere animal feed) and meat eating as the problem. Though soya is a comparatively new crop cattle ranching is old, old and particularly well suited to the grasslands of S. America. It's an environmentally benign type of pastoral agriculture that preserves biodiversity and fertility while providing high quality food.

But those grasslands are increasingly being converted to crop land, plowed up and destroyed to grow not only soya for export but even worse uses such as biofuels. Brazil is literally burning its soil, mining the fertility of the land to use as fuel for transportation. As this destruction proceeds it spreads, driving the cattle ranchers off the grasslands into the forests, and then taking that land too, driving them further and further. Eliminating the cattle wouldn't save the forest. They aren't the problem.

Branford exemplifies the ecological and economic ignorance of paleo-environmentalists. Like better known and better educated activists such as Paul Ehrlich (see Habitat Management), Branford has no useful understanding of the subjects she writes about. This is a key reason why environmentalism is in such bad odor these days: environmentalists really ought to have some useful knowledge of environments rather than simply using environmental problems as wedge issues to advance semi-religious beliefs.

To reduce pressure on forests, especially in the semi-developed countries of S. America, agriculture needs to become more sensible. Productivity needs to rise and wasteful uses need to cease. Refusing to use modern agricultural methods and cultivars increases pressure on forests. Growing crops for biofuel is insane. Growing low value crops such as sugar cane is just as bad.

The key to a more useful and balanced advocacy is coming to value grasslands as much as forests. Plowing them up for field and row crops is just as dire an environmental insult as clearing the forest, and leads directly to forest destruction. But what good are grasslands? People can't eat grass! No, but cows do even better eating grass than soya. They don't get as fat but they are healthy.

One way that some enlightened environmentalists have come to understand natural systems is to think of cattlemen as grass farmers. Their crop is healthy and diverse grasslands that support huge communities of species. Cattle (and sheep, goats etc.) are their harvesting machines. They are self propelled and so require no fuel. Their wastes are fertilizer for the grasslands. They are self-replicating, just like the grasslands. They are able to heal land damaged by field and row cropping.

We can't stop growing crops, though it is an environmental insult, and maintain high civilization. But we know how to mitigate the damage. We've known this for eons. In addition to changing the crops grown, rotating from one to another to break pest cycles and use nutrients better, the land must be allowed to return to grassland periodically and be managed by cloven hooved healers.

If Europeans and Asians want meat, then sell them organic, grass fed beef rather than animal fodder. Think of it as selling smart, value added products rather than cheap commodities. It's like selling finsihed wood products such as furniture rather than logs, clothing rather than bales of cotton, candy rather than raw or refined sugar. S. Americans could make more money while using fewer resources. They would move up the value curve which is not only more profitable, it provides better paying jobs for citizens. It's not just good business, it's good environmentalism. It will help save the trees while driving development.