Amazon fires: Record number burning in Brazil rainforest
bbc.com
bbc.com
My problem with all this are some things:
* One problem I have is that during the last years Amazon savagery was going uncontrollable, no one cared, especially BBC, now that a president was elected that is not aligned with their point of view was elected, this became a front news issue.
* Assuming this is all true (and bear in mind, it isn't always) that fire was in Brazil's frontier, not just Brazil, the article forgot that part.
* One more point is: the supposed German and Norway money to "help maintain the forest", if you need to learn anything from investigative journalism, is to follow the money. Norway had a mining operation in the middle of Amazon[0] - the thing they are supposed to prevent! Funny enough, that mining rig polluted all the area [1] and they settled down not paying the locals, that are still protesting. I really wonder if that Amazon fund was really to support and protect our forest or to pay off NGOs to ignore what they were doing over there. Bonus: this all happened in the previous "good" government administration.
I really worry about the forest and was in Sao Paulo when that happened two days ago, but I really suspect the politics around it.
[0] - http://theconversation.com/the-world-protests-as-amazon-fore...
[1] - https://www.tnp.no/norway/panorama/toxic-waste-from-norwegia...
The fires are happening, any satellite can confirm that. Easily. The the head of the public institution doing very scientific work to track that got fired because he wasn't a true "Brazilian" since he was obviously trying to hurt his country by reporting the truth.
It seems we have imported the dualism in politics from the US/Argentina and everything now now is "us" vs "them". It's impossible to have a reasonable discussion about public policies without people resorting to hidden motives and conspiracy theories.
I've followed the international news about the Amazon fires and there's very little wrong facts in them. But unfortunately they don't help our current extreme right administration so.
I hope reasonable minds prevail in the next election and we're able to elect an administration that is rational. Unfortunately, due to the increasing duopoly in politics, we'll probably have a extreme left president. It's all very sad.
The fires are happening, I agree, but I really disagree that there are little wrong facts, mostly people hide important stuff, like the Norway mining I rig, and I really bet you didn't know about that one, it barely made the news. Only the convenient news come up.
It's impossible to say about only reasonable minds when the arguments are so skewed towards politics and extreme actions.
Anyone seriously suggesting anything like this be done to America would be met with total annihilation "warnings" from any administration.
So please don't think that we only started caring about Amazonia because a person with disagreeable politics was elected recently. Deforestation affects everyone, it's a global issue.
However, said person has made a number of statements that are directly threatening towards the future preservation of South American rainforests, and thus the awareness and conservation efforts have increased their visibility, in order to counteract the damage your governments politics will do to the rainforest.
That is not my point, let me go further, some mining companies from those countries used this political position to lobby themselves and continue to operate in the forest, and they are "untouchable" despite polluting the area (check my sources in the beginning of the thread.
Said that, I think the current president is an idiot for saying lots of those things too. One thing does not justify the other.
Environmental orgs and groups have been working against these companies for decades, no matter which government has been in power. It goes beyond partisan politics, we consider it a global issue way beyond petty political squabbles.
Or maybe they are just push articles their audience want to read. There is def more env awareness now than before for whatever reason.
"Around the time of the floods, there were local reports that the floods had affected the residue deposits and rumors circulated that they had overflowed into the surrounding area and contaminated local communities. The Brazilian authorities were likewise concerned and initiated multiple inspections of Alunorte."
[0] - https://www.hydro.com/en-US/media/on-the-agenda/the-alunorte...
There are no actionable calls to action or advice laid out in articles like these.
Awareness is good though. Perhaps it inspires people to work directly on solving nature's greatest problems. A friend of mine made a GitHub curated list about tech companies working in this space.
I remember asking this question some time ago and it got ignored by people here (of course): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12864591
If it doesn't include the words: dividend, stock, option, etc. it doesn't work here.
I personally use Project Wren (https://projectwren.com/) to offset my own footprint and a bit more!
More worrying is the rise of populism in the world supported by fake news, ignorance and social media that led to this.
How did someone as ignorant as Bolsonaro ever managed to get elected as president of a democratic country, and get away with some of the things he says?
Just like Trump, probably.
That said, other than that the situations seem quite different. Brazil was in a political quagmire that is hard to fathom in the US, at least for someone seeing both from afar.
Also, Trump's trade war with China led China to heavily invest in Brazil's soy. Another accelerator of Amazon burning.
So, after all it isn't just Bolsonaro, it is also our (the western world) fault. The officials we elected allow for this in the first place.
Take the beam out of your eye and maybe I'll listen.
If we as a species are going to do anything it has to be all together. We all have to make cuts. Only a tiny number of individuals will voluntarily give up what they have. Why would they? It's just not fair. Many simply can't give it up without losing their jobs etc. We cannot point at Brasil while we are also living far beyond our means.
It's not one or the other, both are needed. Most of what is going on in Brasil is due to the West demand for cheap meat, that is what is driving the deforestation.
According to the latest science, we only have 12 years for preventing the planet temperature from rising to 12 degrees
Also 12 years is just another arbitrary alarmist number, similarly to recently heard 18 months [1]. But in reality there is no upcoming end of the world [2].
[1]: https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-48964736
[2]: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/no-climate...
The Amazonian forest is mostly being tore down due to soy production for cattle feed.
You can’t dump 7 times as much carbon as a Brazilian into the atmosphere and then ask them to cut emissions. Especially when you have the money and resources to be carbon negative and choose not to.
If Brazil was interested in developing itself (and I know firsthand how that place works, fucks sake, I lived my first 27 years of life there) it'd be pushing its development through research on this new green field (pun intended) that is still immature and open for the newcomers to be bold and create the industry the world will rely on. It's a prime place to research and develop renewable technology with abundant hydro and solar energy, with vast swaths of land covered by the most diverse bioma on Earth. Brazil could be doing novel technologies to sell the future world on this, instead it's pushed down by exporting mostly iron ore, soybeans and beef, it's stuck in the past and society is kept uneducated and living on primary commodities exports. Hell, even with a lot of oil Brazil has no technology to refine and produce its own fuel, it sells the oil out just to buy it back in the form of refined oil products.
Brazil doesn't have any internal incentive, politically, to become better, technologically, educationally or culturally, it's a place stuck in time, nothing works, no infrastructure is properly developed. I know that, I haven't visited it for 3 years after moving to Sweden and going back to visit friends and family just made me see how... Nothing really ever changes, projects are always late, bogged down by corruption and bureaucracy, overspending and ultimately most of them are never finished. Lack of reliable and proper transportation in major cities keep poor people poor, being stuck in a bus 4 hours of your day to earn R$ 1.500,00 per month doesn't leave you much time and energy to be able to study, that money barely cover your basic expenses, it's horrible.
So instead of complaining that other countries want it to do better do some thinking and see that it's because there are many other ways to be better, there is no need to follow the missteps of other countries, pave a fucking new way instead of always looking up to what others have done and mimic it. It's the country of poor imitation, the only benefit is that we are inventive and given constraints our people are really creative.
Brazil, as we say, will always be the country of the future. The problem is that the future never arrives to become the present over there.
There’s a lot that can be done but really it’s the usual thing for me - if you’re going to criticise someone clean up your own house first.
>if you’re going to criticise someone clean up your own house first.
Is a terrible attitude to have and will never lead to any solutions.
It's possible to criticise something even if you live in a glasshouse, even more when what's being done down there is senseless for the future of the whole country, like I mentioned on another comment: this is utterly myopic and stupid, extract and destroy now to have something for 5 years or do the proper thing and invest in educating society taking 1-2 generations (so about 20-30 years) and reap the benefits for the next centuries.
The Amazonia rainforest is unique and cannot be replaced, I don't get how the rate that it's getting tore down to plant soy crops for cattle feed to allow for the production of cheap meat is not alarming to anyone.
We can't champion private ownership while denying private ownership to others. Especially when you have no control over said land.
It's cliche to blame capitalism, but it is capitalism that has given us a distorted view of the world and of the concept of ownership.
Of course we can. It's called colonialist and it's what made Europe and USA the economic powerhouses of the world.
Such a question is answered by blatant hypocrisy every time.
Some of the staunchest supporters of Bolsonaro are from agrobusiness, they support him because of the removal of environmental protections so they are more free to take over land, illegally at first and I see that more and more this government will create frameworks to make that legal.
They support him because of his anti-environmental stance, because of his defunding of IBAMA (Brazil's environmental protection agency, responsible for investigation and enforcement of those laws), defunding and removing security to the officers that go to remote areas on the north of Brazil. These people risk their lives, that area of Brazil is a wild west with hitmen and killings happening if those farmers get a wiff that their illegal land grab is being scrutinised. Usually those officers would have support from the police and the army or national guard, now they have nothing and they refuse to do their inspections without it.
Apart from that, just this year his government has approved 290 new pesticides to be used in Brazilian fields, there are another 500+ to be "analysed" but will probably get a straight stamping out of it, news this week just reported that half a BILLION bees have died in Brazil this year, there is a very strong signal to connect those.
I was born and raised in Brazil, I've been educated and hearing about these massive land grabs and deforestation in the Amazon since I was a kid in 4th grade, it's never got much better and that is because of the agroindustry in Brazil, if the world keeps consuming beef from there it's only going to get worse. And fast.
So yes, I advocate now for sanctioning these industries that are the base supporters and financiers of Bolsonaro, he has the evangelical votes but those people are a danger to Brazil's society, not to the world as a whole, cattle farmers burning and destroying the Amazon, mining and oil companies applying for permits to install themselves in the jungle, THOSE are the industries that are gonna kill the Amazon and a big part of Earth with it.
Along with the US, Saudi Arabia, Russia and Australia. And probably a bunch of others.
Yeah, first world countries made bad decisions in the past, but by 2019 everyone should know better. And he knows it, he just don't give a damn about it.
This has to be sarcasm right ?
You ask that question when Duterte, Erdogan, Trump, Brexit, LePen and the like have occurred in the last 5 years preceding him.
Bolsonaro was democratically elected. We may not like it (I absolutely despise him), but that is the will of the people. Naive, easily misled and disheartened people. But, democrated elected nevertheless.
Same applies with say the DRC and other rainforest areas.
If that seems like too much effort to give up our own resources to protect the environment then leading world powers should re-evaluate whether its in humanities best interest to have few stable places of living that don't come at the cost of the environment to deal with poverty and suffering.
If you or your country is not stable, the last thing you will be concerned about is the environmental impact on the world.
The politicians make decisions against the environment because it's how they gain political points, being seen as the fiscally conservative leader is always a winner in uncertain times.
- Deepwater Horizon platform; Gulf of Mexico, 2010.
And more than that, those supposed good funds from Germany and Norway that were basically a form of bribe for the previous administration look to the other side on the mining atrocities these countries did in the forest.
All major developed nations did so on the back of dirty energy, exploiting resources and with huge climate change implications.
Now that the smaller developing nations are finally capable of doing so themselves, they are being discouraged by the same developed powers. The developed powers did the same, but got away with it because there was no oversight. I don't see why these underdeveloped nations are now being expected to take the moral high ground.
We wouldn't need the Amazon as much, if we weren't pumping as many pollutants into our air and water supplies.
Plenty of species went extinct when the now developed powers expanded with reckless abandon. Now that Brazil is doing the same, the outrage seems hypocritical.
Some may say that the Amazon is special and not a resource that Brazil can singularly exploit, when it has global implications. But, the same has been true of fossil rich nations that have pumped cheap gas into the market indiscriminately, while they all individually became billionaires.
This whole argument extended to new developing economies like India and Central Africa at large.
Just to be clear I am not advocating for the deforestation of the Amazon. It can be seen as a right wing talking point, but I myself am completely at my wits end and do not have a retort to the argument.
I don't know to improve the situation but I feel like we also need to have empathy and understanding.
Ah yes, the "think of the poor" argument. Deforestation at this scale isn't done by individual poor, it's done by wealthy organizations.
It is not the fault of the current government. Burning happens every year in the Amazon, and everywhere across the world.
The leftist party is using international media to alarm against the current government.
There are also investigations being carried out on these burnings, as there are indications that several are criminals and were executed by NGOs in this region. Those are the same who have lost benefits (money) in recent weeks.
Yes, it is the responsibility of the current government to intervene, hold responsible and take steps to prevent this from occurring or diminishing its impact in the future. It is worth remembering that this government is only 8 months old.
People behave as if previous governments were constantly extinguishing fire and that in the last 16 days, "by the current government", the water has run out and started to set fire to everything.
The problem of Amazonian care comes from decades of neglect, and this government is only 8 months old. There should be no external intervention. Other countries (first world or not, there are no excuses) should reforest as much as they can for the global good and not just point the finger at this region (important, of course).
NGOs in Brazil are almost totally corrupt, they are cancer here in Brazil. As well as much of politics.
Many forget or do not know that former President Lula [1] assumed in interviews that his government lied about important statistical data, such as hunger and misery in Brazil to impact abroad and then present the true numbers as the savior of this country. Pure manipulation.
The current government is revisiting all research departments through a thorough process to check all numbers that were presented as true and many are questionable.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5bOtqmvJHE (in Portuguese only, sorry)
You can see in EVERY NASA report/study about Amazon's deforestation, this has been going on for decades[1] and the alarm from the international media has always been mediocre.
And no, I'm not a Bolsonaro voter.
[1] https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/landsat/news/40th-top10-a...