"Reversing this pattern will hinge on capturing the values of intact forests... so that local people's livelihoods are better when the forest is left standing than when it is cleared, " said the Cambridge professor of conservation science.

BBC: 'Boom and bust' of deforestation

The study was conducted by David Kille, Amanda Forest and Joanne Wood at the University of Waterloo, in Canada, and will be published soon in Psychological Science.

ECONOMIST: Psychology: Tall, dark and stable | The

But it would have added something to have examined more systematically the differences between cases where the science is clear (ozone after 1987) and where there was a fair amount of hype (forest death through acid rain).

ECONOMIST: A question of dodgy science