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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsThe Amazon Cannot Be Recovered Once It's Gone
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/08/amazon-fires-are-political/596776/The fires blazing in Brazil are part of a larger deforestation crisis, accelerated by President Jair Bolsonaro.
ROBINSON MEYER
7:00 AM ET
The Amazon is burning. There have been more than 74,000 fires across Brazil this year, and nearly 40,000 fires across the Amazon, according to Brazils National Institute for Space Research. Thats the fastest rate of burning since record-keeping began, in 2013. Toxic smoke from the fires is so intense that darkness now falls hours before the sun sets in São Paulo, Brazils financial capital and the largest city in the Western Hemisphere.
The fires have captured the planets attention as little else does. The Amazon is the worlds largest and most diverse tract of rainforest, with millions of species and billions of trees. It stores vast amounts of planet-warming carbon dioxide and produces 6 percent of the planets oxygen. So the Amazonian fireswhich have been blazing for weeks and notoriously received less coverage than Notre Dames burning roof seem like a potent symbol of humanitys indifference to environmental disorder, including climate change.
But climate change is not the primary cause of the wildfires. Unlike, say, most California blazeswhich are sparked by accident and then intensified by climate changethe Amazonian fires are not wildfires at all. These fires did not start by lightning strike or power line: They were ignited. And while they largely affect land already cleared for ranching and farming, they can and do spread into old-growth forest.
So the two scariest numbers for understanding the fires are this: There are 80 percent more fires this year than there were last summer, according to the Brazilian government. This surge in burning has accompanied a spike in deforestation in general. More than 1,330 square miles of the Amazon rainforest have been lost since January, a 39 percent increase over the same period last year, according to The New York Times.
Why are these figures so important? Because Brazils political leadership has changed in the past year. On January 1, Jair Bolsonaro, a far-right populist who has openly pined for his countrys authoritarian past, was sworn in as president. During his campaign, he promised to weaken the Amazons environmental protectionswhich have been effective at reducing deforestation for the past two decadesand open up the rainforest to economic development.
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The Amazon Cannot Be Recovered Once It's Gone (Original Post)
smirkymonkey
Aug 2019
OP
Eliot Rosewater
(31,109 posts)1. What is the big deal, so we wont be able to breathe...
Dont you silly liberals know what is really important is a 5'2" Latina woman changing sheets at Days Inn is stealing jobs?
She took that job from some Murican.
We dont deserve to survive if we are still debating whether or not rump and putin should be allowed to be in power.
Mike 03
(16,616 posts)2. People like Bolsonaro are so cynical...
From the article:
And according to allegations by the global news site OpenDemocracy, leaked documents show that Bolsonaros government intends to strategically prevent conservation projects in the Amazon.
We can't trust that he'll make a good effort to extinguish these fires. Even if he does, he's already gotten what he wanted, which is a huge land mass cleared for a couples years' worth of cattle and soybeans. Then we'll see a repeat every year until he's out of office. Hope I'm wrong.
UniteFightBack
(8,231 posts)3. I hope this leads to a massive backlash. MASSIVE. nt
saidsimplesimon
(7,888 posts)4. Suicidal behavior without any
significant intervention from governments or citizens while an extinction event is in progress.
Greed and willful ignorance reigns around the world.