What do you do when you’ve got millions of dollars in the bank and you really believe in being green? You buy a rainforest, naturally!
Johan Eliasch, 43, an English businessman, bought over 400,000 acres in the heart of the Amazon jungle. He bought the land from a timber company to proctect the plants and wildlife, and he’s invited scientists to come do research in his bit of the Amazon.
What I find interesting is his role as Deputy Treasurer of Britain’s Conservative party. Imagine that, a political conservative who actually wants to conserve things! This is not, on the face of things, the state of affairs in the U.S., unfortunately.
To be fair, there are some political conservatives who are also conservation minded. Governor Mark Sanford of South Carolina, for example, is a Republican with a sound environmental record. I’m certain there are others like him, but the vocal minority of political conservatives in the U.S. drown out their moderate brethren. What we hear is “guns, God, and gays” as being important to the conservative base, but this is not a fair representation of the entire political landscape. It just happens to be the loudest.