The president of Liberia responds in principle only to Liberian citizens, and Liberia may badly need the money fron logging companies, as international aid is willing to pay much less (if anything!) for environmental services. Let's the international community know who is behind (financing) the Liberian government and indirectly the timber companies: international and national aid organizations financed with tax-payer money from the West, headed by the World Bank and gangs of the kind, much more dangerous than Samling! My direct experience (I have been working with those gangs) tells me that reality is much worse than reports one reads on the internet about environmental damage financed by international donors. However one measures such a damage, each Western contries voter is responsible for that.

I know the rainforests in Liberia - well almost - I had the privilege of visiting the neighbouring jungles of Sierra Leone as an undergrad for my biology degree - before the wars.

So I am very aggrieved to read about this - I have a feeling that someone is sticking pins in my voodoo doll.

But what can we do? We know we could secure these rainforests, under the REDD framework - but my guess is, it's too late and progress in this arena is too snail-like.

It would be fantastic if Liberia could make more out of keeping the forests standing than from chopping them down. It would be the first real post-colonial progress for Liberia - as opposed to the neo-colonial capitalism of Samling.

I have a suspicion Samling might be planning on doubling their profits by getting both the timber and the REDD payments ... I wonder if Samling have any idea what kind of carbon budget their version of 'forestry' entails.

Where are the watchdog groups when you need em? What can we do about this potentially tragic and devastating chain of events?

Rather than continue to adamantly pursue the "primrose path of endless economic growth" that will likely lead the children to confront some sort of colossal ecological wreckage, the likes of which only Ozymandias has witnessed, why not choose a new behavioral repertoire? Unsustainable lifestyles derived from dishonesty, arrogance and avarice could be replaced with sustainable behaviors.

In any event, at some point in time the idolatry of greed and ill-gotten gains perpetrated by "thieves of the highest order" will not be rewarded as if all of us believe that these thieves are paragons of virtue. Their behavior is not virtuous. Despite all we see and hear, greed is not good. Perhaps the dubious leaders who sponsor "the goodness of avarice" will be named, shamed and replaced by people with a different set of values and an intention to live sustainably in this wondrous planetary home God has blessed us to inhabit......and not to destroy as a fit place for human habitation by the children.

It is one thing to consciously act unsustainably and, by so doing, precipitate the collapse of a single, great civilization. That has happened before. We know those people did not know what they were doing. On the other hand, for one consciously reckless, voracious generation of knowledgeable greed-mongering leading elders to perpetrate the ruination of the Earth as a place in which the human species and life as we know it can merely survive, let alone thrive, that is beyond the pale.

This points up the need to slow down the REDD agreement and the climate treaty generally. Glen Barry, James Hansen and many others are saying without time to create effective treaties we are only creating an illusion of limiting carbon emissions. The Kyoto Protocol presided over a huge increase of carbon emissions. At the least the agreement should be short term say 5 years with the opportunity to tighten it up especially by including the developing world.

Everyone says forests should be protected but why do governments still chop down trees for earning mighty profits?

For me, it is impossible to believe that a species so wondrous and gifted as Homo sapiens will not find a way to continue rather than to induce its own extinction as we appear to be doing now. Somehow the miracle of life as we know it, with all its beauty and biodiversity, has to be protected. At least we have to try, whatever the odds.

What I find difficult to see this morning is how the human community can protect itself from itself. It looks like most of the leaders among us who are organizing and managing the global political economy have determined how the family of humanity will proceed. It reminds me of the strategy deployed by the stars of the movie, Thelma and Louise. The greediest among us, who have hoarded most of world's wealth and purchased political power with it, appear to have determined that they will play their game out to its bitter end. Come what may for the children, coming generations, life as we know it and the integrity of the planetary home God has blessed us to inhabit.

These leaders have decided not to concern themselves with the future. They live for themselves. They remind us that in the future, "We'll all be dead anyway." Why worry? After all, they say that, according to their endgame, we should embrace 'the courage' to do nothing.......except to conspicuously consume, hoard and party hardy until our enterprise goes over the cliff marked UNSUSTAINABLE.

Everyone is encouraged to ravenously consume and excessively hoard resources, just like they do. Climb any mountain, cross any stream so you can worship your very own "sacred cow". Perhaps a fleet of autos, a private jet, a mega-yacht, a Madoff-like beach house in the Hamptons, a ski chalet in Davos, a club membership at Augusta National or day to day living in a gated community of your choosing. This is the "greed run amuck" way of life that has been legitimized, institutionalized, legalized and regarded as virtuous. This "greed is good" way of living in which everyone is encouraged to participate is of all things, so we are told, the one and only way to live. Life is not worth living if the values of wanton greediness are not idolatrized. People who say and do otherwise are branded losers and chumps.

The bold-faced recognition that this way of living in the world we inhabit is as unsustainable as it is obscene is not something leaders in the last 8 long, dark years cared to talk about. Dishonesty, duplicity, double-dealing and denial prevailed. These leaders were famous for not fighting the battles for freedom but are all too ready to send other peoples' children into harm's way. They had bigger things to do. These leaders make statements like, "I haven't flown commercial in thirty years. Only private jets for me."

So here we are, nearing the end of the first decade of Century XXI. Wealthy people buy politicians and the same old business-as-usual activities continue, just as all of them have agreed. Corporations have their PR firms promote whatever it is they want to keep doing. We have large-scale business enterprises that are "too big to fail" and too big to succeed as viable operations because they are soon to become unsustainable.

The focus of many too many leaders remains riveted upon convenient and attractive matters associated with endless growth of human enterprise, per-capita overconsumption and overpopulation rather than upon the actual threats to human wellbeing and environmental health that are directly posed to the human family by these very same, distinctly human global overgrowth activities. By so doing, these leaders could be willfully, duplicitously and perniciously directing the children down a "primrose path" to face some sort of unimaginable, colossal, human-driven wreckage which a single, selfish generation is largely responsible for precipitating.

Perhaps it is somehow right, and timely finally, to speak openly of such things even though so many of our most greedy leaders appear so clearly unready to change their unsustainable lifestyles. I would submit that it is not the public who is not ready to address global challenges and make needed changes, but too many leaders who have chosen to disregard the welfare of others as well as the preservation of Earth's body and its environs for the sole purpose of protecting the greed-mongers' way of life.

Forests should be protected, Is That what government says...Yes it is...But they are not sticking to this...They want profit and they are going for this should be protested by all of us...

at some point in time the idolatry of greed and ill-gotten gains perpetrated by "thieves of the highest order" will not be rewarded as if all of us believe that these thieves are paragons of virtue. Their behavior is not virtuous.

Seriously!! why in the world is the government still logging.Isn't it clear enough that our o'zone layer is depleting at a very high rate??Theres enough problems with the o'zone layer be it for the large amount of polluting gases or the emense heat people around the world are experiencing?
We need the trees otherwise sooner or later the o'zone lyer will turn from bad to worse!!