South America’s ‘tough choice’ between more ‘oil wealth’ and preserving the Amazon

Brazil’s Amazon Rainforest

All that ‘glitters’ is not necessarily ‘gold’ insofar as the fossil fuel sector in South America is concerned. Oil producing countries in the hemisphere continue to discover that benefitting from their oil and gas recovery, at the expense of their fast diminishing environmental credentials and that as global pressures mount to push back fossil fuel recovery, they could, sooner rather than later, come to be seen as unrepentant ‘spoilers.’ As an August 22 article (South America Struggles to Balance Oil Economy and Environment) authored by freelance energy writer, Felicity Bradstock, says, South America’s oil producing countries are in the process of weighing “the immediate economic benefits of oil and gas development against long-term environmental consequences and global climate concerns.”