Forty percent or more of the Amazon rainforest will be “decimated” by the middle of the next century even if we cut all CO2 emissions by 2050, said the UK Met Office. The finding was presented this past month in Copenhagen, which is preparing to host the UN Climate Change Conference in December.

The damage will be so severe that it will cause irreversible changes to the world’s weather patterns, which is expected to bring more storms, floods and heat waves to Britain. Up to 40 per cent of the rainforest will be lost if temperature rises are restricted to 2C, which most climatologists regard as the least that can be expected by 2050.

The television show, which premieres on September 17th, took over the neighboring, inhabited island in militant style by hiring the local police to prevent residents from accessing a public beach. As it turned out, according to local witnesses, MTV had cleared a small patch of rainforest to build a tiki-hut structure near the beach, developed an access road through the forest, and installed generators and lighting on the beach.

The largest rainforest in the world is being chopped down almost entirely for a single purpose: beef. That’s right, one of the biggest, most beautifully diverse ecosystems on the planet is being traded in—for hamburgers. According to a report from Mongabay, a full 80 percent of the land cleared by Amazon deforestation from 1996-2006 has been used to create cattle pastures.