Kevin Bales , author of Blood and Earth : Modern Slavery , Ecocide and the Secret to Saving the World , has stated that enforcing and funding existing anti - slavery laws will lead naturally to destruction of the environment . Bales points out that slave labour is often used to cut down the world 's forests . Such rapid , illegal deforestation accelerates the levels of carbon dioxide because forests store such gases and absorb them from the atmosphere . Enforcing laws against slave labour would reduce carbon dioxide emissions , the key culprit behind global warming . Bales also suggested that freed slaves could be able to plant trees with funds generated by a cap - and - trade system . Under cap and trade , typically , entities those that do not reduce their carbon emissions to buy carbon dioxide from those that do .
Kevin Bales, author of Blood and Earth: Modern Slavery, Ecocide and the Secret to Saving the World, has stated that enforcing and funding existing anti-slavery laws will lead naturally to protection of the environment. Bales points out that slave labour is often used to cut down the world's forests. Such rapid, illegal deforestation accelerates the levels of carbon dioxide because forests store such gases and absorb them from the atmosphere. Enforcing laws against slave labour would reduce carbon dioxide emissions, the key culprit behind global warming. Bales also suggested that freed slaves could be paid to plant trees with funds generated by a cap-and-trade system. Under cap and trade, typically, entities those that do not cut their carbon emissions to buy carbon credits from those that do.