Fast Track Devastation

Last weekend my friends collected me and took me to a small bar on the edge of a mangrove river, it is just a few kilometres up the road from where I live but almost a light year away from the attitudes in Jauá. The modern Brazilian is sold on cheap thrills and long term payment for them. Credit is growing along with the amount of rubbish that is dumped at the side of the road, it as become some one else's problem, it was always left to the poor to collect the rubbish for recycling, now they want to have more rubbish of a better quality, so the general rubbish is still left on the road.
As we drove to the bar I commented that this road was once just coco nut trees, bamboo, shrubs and mangrove, now it is largely built up or in the process of being built on. It is always the case, the world over, that there is a road built, then petrol stations, then builders merchants and finally houses for the workers. In an article on MSN about a BBC team filming the building of the trans-Amazonian BR-319 it is apparent that this will go the same way.
After the first houses go in the road will gradual fill in along its length, then the housing will move interior away from the road. At the moment it is the raising of cattle in huge reserves that is main cause for deforestation, followed by soya farming, the cutting of wood for timber use is minimal and can easily be sustainable, I presume the government have the intention of helping the commercial exploitation of Brazil by supporting the building of grand highways.