Clearing forest for pastures makes money, but it also causes global warming pollution. The effects of tropical deforestation, including the decomposition of peat in deforested tropical swamps, are responsible for about 15 percent of the world’s heat-trapping emissions, not to mention the loss of biodiversity and other kinds of environmental and social damage (Boucher et al. 2011). Tropical forests are enormous storehouses of car- bon, and when they are cut down and burned, large quantities of carbon dioxide—the main cause of global warming—are emitted into the atmosphere