Sting condemns Brazil's handling of Amazon fires: 'We will all suffer the consequences'
Sting shared a statement condemning the Brazilian government’s response — or lack thereof — to the devastating fires raging across the Amazon rainforest.
In a note posted on Facebook, the musician heavily criticized President Jair Bolsonaro, a far-right climate change skeptic who has expressed contempt for the indigenous people of Amazonia, opened up the Amazon to deforestation and commercial exploitation and downplayed the global reaction to the ongoing fires.
As The New York Times reported, Bolsonaro also rejected a $22 million aid package to help fight the fires that French president Emmanuel Macron announced at the G-7 meeting.
Sting is a longtime advocate of rainforest preservation, having launched the Rainforest Foundation Fund in 1987, which has worked closely with indigenous communities in Brazil and across South America to protect their homes.
"Surely it is enlightened self-interest for Mr. Bolsonaro to understand and accept this," Sting wrote, referring to the need to protect the Amazon. "We urge him to rethink his policies and change his actions and his incendiary rhetoric before it is too late."
"This is no time for fiddling; the world is burning."
At: https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/sting-brazil-forest-fires-amazon-bolsonaro-877207/
Sting and an Amazonian tribal leader during a 2009 protest against a proposed dam in the area.
He noted this week that "we are fast approaching the tipping point where the fires will continue to burn and cannot be put out."
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