The Amazon on Fire

Amazon river dolphin, credit: Getty Images

Update: Leaders at the G-7 summit in Biarritz agreed to $20 million aid package to fight the intentional fires ravaging the Amazon basin. Brazil recently admitted it does not have the resources to fight the fires. Significantly, the Tangerine Nightmare was not in the room when the agreement was reached to provide the aid. The United States was represented by a senior functionary. President Macron of France also announced that he had reached agreement in principle with Chile and other basin nations in attendance to replant cleared rain forest land and begin a program of long term conservation. Both President Macron and Chancellor Angela Merkle called the fire storm a global crisis and insisted it be on the agenda of the G-7 meeting.  After being blamed for encouraging clearances President Bolisonaro* said in a statement on national radio and television today that, “We will act strongly to control the fires in the Amazon,” For his part Il Douche announced he wants to hold the next summit at one of his golf resorts and invite his bosom buddy, Valdimir Putin.  Nothing like funneling official business cash into your private business empire.  Emoluments? Who needs stinking emoluments?


{22.08.19} If the climate news could not get any worse, it has.  The lungs of the planet, the Amazon rain forest, is ablaze. (20% of the Earth's oxygen supply is produce in the Amazon Basin) The sky of São Paulo turned black from smoke on August 19th. There has been an 85% increase in the number of fires over a year ago caused by rampant deforestation according to an Amazon research NGO.Brazil is now led by a nationalist president who is pro-development.  Norway, who has been contributing to Amazon forest preservation, suspended a $33.2 million payment. President Bolsonaro, displaying the same symptoms as the malignant narcissist who sacrilegiously calls himself "the chosen one", reacted by suggesting NGOs were behind the fires as retaliation. “There could be… a criminal action by these members of NGOs to call attention against me, against the government of Brazil,” he said according to a São Paulo newspaper. The rate of deforestation has surged during his seven month administration to more than three football pitches a minute. Trees are critically important to maintaining climate stability claim scientists.

Currently, there are almost 75,000 fires consuming acres of rain forest.
[map courtesy Global Forest Watch] These are not wildfires, but fires set by humans in the process of land clearance for ranching and agriculture.  Trees are cut and left to dry out, then fires are set to reduce the wood to ashes which enrich the soil allowing pasture to take the place of trees.  The ten municipalities  with the highest deforestation rates have the most fires data shows.  Usually slash and burn takes place before the rainy season which starts in late September. The fires are early this year, which indicates there could be more to come.

Brazil has gone backwards fast in terms of forest conservation. Successive governments have rolled back a conservation rate that reached an 80% reduction rate during the period 2006 to 2012. Last year the deforestation rate rose to a decade high 13%.  Bolsonaro has weakened conservation laws and effectively put environmental protection under his ministry of agriculture, headed by a farm lobbyist. His foreign minister has dismissed climate change as a "global Marxist plot".; He has criticized the forest protection agency, Ibama, and encouraged exploiters who want to cut down the forest for commercial purposes and land speculation. Brazil under Bolsonaro is fast becoming the new 'wild west'.

*Bolsonaro, a right-wing extremist, has a long track record of making abusive comments about women, black people and minorities. One of his most infamous remarks came during a heated debate in parliament with left-wing congresswoman Maria do Rosario in September 2014."I wouldn't rape you because you don't deserve it," Mr Bolsonaro told Ms Rosario.  Seems he has been taking lessons from Don Veto Trumpillini.  Bolsonaro wants international assistance to control the fires, but criticized foreign leaders for having "a misplaced colonial mindset in the 21st century".  Bolsonaro mindset is positively barbaric by comparison.  His willingness to sacrifice the Earth's greatest tropical rainforest to the detriment of the globe cannot be more apparent.  He ordered his environment minister, Ricardo Salles, to sack 21 of 27 senior officials at Ibama, the country’s environmental protection agency.  France and Ireland now opposed a trade deal with Brazil's trading bloc that was decades in the making because of the Brazilian president's complete lack of rational stewardship.