Just like the Europeans and American's calling on other countries to stop "slavery" and having second class citizens.
It was like my Doctor who smokes and suggested that I should quit smoking or I might get lung cancer.
How dare they! Those hypocrites!
I get what you're saying, and generally agree. But using the "but they did it first!" is a pretty terrible excuse for continuing something that is generally seen as negative. Especially considering that none of us were alive 100 or 200 or 300 years ago.
That being said, these people are clearing the rainforests because it's how they are able to make money and food. Kind of hard for us to sit back in our computer chairs eating cheetos and tell these 3rd world people to stop making money. Sure we should try to stop clearing rainforests, but there needs to be viable alternatives for the people doing it.
It's not like slavery and second class citizens, it'd be like slavery if we kept the slaves we have, and the children they breed, as slaves but just stop importing new ones and then demanded that no one ever imported slaves in other countries, fact of the matter is that our ancestors got rid of our forests, now we're being massive dicks to some people who want to get rid of
some of theirs, the "cause" of saving the rainforest can only be anything but bullshit when Eurasians/North Americans start planting trees in the large farm spaces or cities we have.
"Hey, stop tearing down your trees, trees are important."
"But you tore down all your trees, if you cared about trees you could plant some yourself and deal with the various shitty living conditions they bring to you."
"No, stop tearing down your trees, we tore down our trees back before we started caring about them, and for some reason we deserve shitloads of land cleared of trees while you must be 100% rainforest."
Also there are no viable alternatives to clearing some land, people need space, it is however still possible to reforest
some of Eurasia and North America so that there won't be insanely serious consequences when 50-90% of the rainforest has been replaced with farms and cities.