The burning of the forests of the Amazon rainforest is properly raising concerns by governments and people around the world.
'Our lungs are on fire' is the headline from BBC Newsnight. The populist president of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, protests the involvement of outsiders in what he believes is Brazil’s domain. Frank Graves offers a reminder why Canadians need to wake up about populism that typically doesn’t solve the problems that it’s supposed to solve. It’s mainly bombast and rhetoric (“For the People”) but little of positive substance although from the past there have been horrifying historical conclusions. It tends to be xenophobic, nativist, and mistrustful.
At the same time, ignoring the problem or sneering at it as deplorable and wrong-headed is ineffectual. That merely strengthens the emotional engagement of those drawn to this force, and denies the empirical reality that most of those drawn to populism’s outlook are the losers in the new economic machinations of hyper-globalization, automation, and lingering neo-liberalism and the withering of the middle-class dream of shared prosperity.1
Eliane Brum, writing in the Guardian, comments that in Bolsonaro’s burning Brazilian Amazon, all our futures are being consumed. In 2019, we are witnessing the beginning of a new, disastrous chapter. The area of trees being cleared has surged this year. In July, the deforestation rate was an area the size of Manhattan every day, a Greater London every three weeks. This month, fires are incinerating the Amazon at a record rate, almost certainly part of a scorched-earth strategy to clear territory. Why is this happening now? Because of a change in power.
A predatory form of politics called Bolsonarism has assumed nearly total, and totalitarian, power in Brazil. President Jair Bolsonaro’s chief project is to create more ruins in the Amazon forest, methodically and swiftly. This is why, for the first time since Brazil became a democracy again, it effectively has a minister against the environment. For more than 30 years no environment minister has enjoyed the same autonomy as Ricardo Salles. He is a gofer for agribusiness, which is responsible for the majority of the deaths in the fields and forests, and Brazil’s greatest destructive force. The landowners lobby has always been part of Brazil’s government, formally or not. But today, this has reached a new level. They are not just in the government, they are the government.2
Manuela Andreoni, Letícia Casado and Ernesto Londoño, writing in the NY Times, report that the Brazilian government is struggling to contain growing global outrage over its environmental policies, which have paved the way for runaway deforestation of the world’s largest rainforest.
The fires, many intentionally set, are spreading as Germany and Norway appear to be on the brink of shutting down a $1.2 billion conservation initiative for the Amazon.
Concern over the environmental policies of President Jair Bolsonaro, which have prioritized the interests of industries that want greater access to protected lands, has also put in jeopardy a trade agreement the European Union and a handful of South American nations struck in June, following decades of negotiations.
“The ongoing forest fires in Brazil are deeply worrying,” the European Commission said in a statement on Thursday. “Forests are our lungs and life support systems.”3
Aristos Georgiou, in a Newsweek article, notes that experts are warning the recent spike in wildfires is likely the result of human activities.
"This is without any question one of only two times that there have been fires like this [in the Amazon,]" ecologist Thomas Lovejoy told National Geographic. "There's no question that it's a consequence of the recent uptick in deforestation."
Recently released INPE data has shown that Amazon deforestation rates have risen to the point where around three soccer fields of tree cover are being lost every minute, The Guardian reported. In fact, the figures show that in July this year, deforestation had increased by nearly 300 percent in comparison to the same month in 2018.4
Aylin Woodward writes for Business Insider that blazes in the Amazon are so big they can be seen from space. One map shows the alarming scale of the fires.
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| Source: https://amp.businessinsider.com/images/5d5ef0e39563f4384f698e2a-750-549.jpg |
The "lungs of the planet" are burning at a record rate: The Brazilian Amazon has experienced more than 74,000 fires this year, whereas last year's total was about 40,000.About 10,000 of the 2019 fires have started in the past couple of weeks.Some of these fires were started by farmers and loggers seeking to use Amazon land for industrial or agricultural purposes.But once blazes start, hot temperatures and dry conditions because of climate change enable the flames to spread farther and faster.These satellite images, along with a map of the fires, show the scale of the burning.5
Returning to the warning about populist government, the article in the Guardian about the state of the Italian democracy quotes citizens who describe populist politicians as vulgar, irresponsible, opportunistic, and immature.
Vulgar, irresponsible, opportunistic, immature. These are just some of the adjectives beachgoers in Santa Severa, a town near Rome, used to describe the motley crew of politicians at the centre of Italy’s latest political drama.
“I’m bewildered,” said Mirella Castracane-Mombelli as she read a newspaper at a beach bar on Friday morning.
“This situation shows that our political institutions are inadequate and do not represent us. They are all just opportunistic. Sergio Mattarella is the only one with a sense of duty and correctness, the only one.”
President Mattarella’s speech to the nation on Thursday night was brief but clear: either Italy’s main political parties come up with a strong new government by Tuesday, or he will call fresh elections.6
Canadian and American voters need to use their critical thinking skills to avoid giving political support to the self serving populists in our democracies.
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