South American leaders have announced plans to build a massive natural gas pipeline through the Amazon rainforest. Thankfully the $20 billion dollar project is still in the early planning. But if built this may well sound the final death knell for the mighty Amazon. This grotesque ecological sacrilege will set the stage for the final destruction of the world's largest wilderness - creating roads that will draw ranchers and loggers, fragmenting a vital large and contiguous global ecosystem, and polluting water throughout the region. And the economics are dodgy as well as both Brazil and Argentina have ample domestic gas supplies.