Only a few houses built before 1930 are still standing in Brazilian cities as most were knocked down by real estate speculation and our insensitivity to preserving historical memory.
Older houses have their front doors right on the sidewalk. There was a time when some had small front gardens and people would place chairs on the sidewalk for a chat at sundown. The living room and even the bedrooms opened onto the road, since there was hardly any outside noise.
Little by little houses began to be set back from sidewalks. The back garden became smaller and the front garden expanded. The noise of trams, buses and trucks meant that the living room and bedrooms had to be in the back.
My home was on a corner in the middle of a garden. The low front wall was only for show. As a child I preferred jumping over the wall rather than using the gate.
http://www.hart-brasilientexte.de/2008/02/13/amazonia-an-ecocide-foreseen/
„Amazonia – an ecocide foreseen“: http://www.hart-brasilientexte.de/2008/02/13/amazonia-an-ecocide-foreseen/
On the eve of Rio+20, there is need to denounce liberal capitalism’s new offensive: the mercantilising of nature. A carbon market already exists, established by the Kyoto Protocol (1997). It determines that developed countries, the main polluters, must reduce hothouse gas emissions by 5.2%.
Reducing the volume of poison vomited by those countries into the atmosphere implies in a reduction in profits. Hence credit carbon was invented. A ton of carbon dioxide (CO2) is equal to a carbon credit. A rich country or its businesses which surpass the permitted limit of pollution may buy credit from a poor country or its businesses which have not yet attained their respective limits of CO2 emissions and, therefore, are authorised to emit hothouse gases. The value of this permission must not exceed the fine that the rich country would pay if it were to surpass its CO2 emission limit.
Frei Betto beim Website-Interview im Dominikaner-Konvent von Sao Paulo.