Economist: WHEN Michael Williams, a British geographer, sat down in 1994 to write a chronicle of deforestation, “Deforesting the Earth”, he had a useful aide-memoire. Flashing near his study, outside the Los Angeles branch of the Hard Rock Café, was an ever-diminishing neon number, representing the remaining area of rainforest. It counted down at about 20 hectares a minute, at which rate no rainforest would be left by the end of this century. Despite a faddish Western concern for tropical …