How Your 401(K) is Helping Destroy the Amazon Rainforest

DEFORESTATION IN BRAZIL, including of the Amazon, has grown at an alarming clip since 1985, denuding an area just shy of the size of Texas and Florida combined. Only one phenomenon has seen a larger geographic takeover since Brazil’s military dictatorship came to an end: agriculture. New farms have taken over an area only slightly larger. The correlation is no coincidence.

The steady drumbeat of growing agriculture and deforestation has accelerated in recent years and is now poised to reach a more frenzied pace, driven in part by the search for investment returns...