14 ms·

Amazon fires: Record number burning in Brazil rainforest

216 points by andreiursan 7y ago

enibundo 7y ago
> 1 hour ago > 0 comments on HN I wonder what would happen if this was a paul graham shitpost. :) Also so sad to see this happening, we are all responsible, it's not Brazil's responsibility, it's World's responsibility to take care of nature.
- isostatic 7y ago
  What do you propose? UN action to invade Brazil? Germany and Norway have already frozen aid they pay to Brazil
  - enibundo 7y ago
    You know how US gathers forces to go fight in iraq etc? Imagine if they did the same thing to help nature. I am not even talking about sending their people, just the mobilisation of politics to act on important subjects. Til we forget the "my lawn, your shit" way of thinking shit will be going south
    - lucasfcosta 7y ago
      This is not how it works. This situation is entirely different. You are missing a lot of the nuance here. Brazil is a huge country which supplies many countries with countless commodities and other products. External military intervention would only make the situation worse. This is not how international politics work. I'm definitely not in favour of what has happened in Iraq, but brute-forcing every problem with external intervention makes absolutely no sense. In this case, it's reasonably clear that this situation is awful, but if we start turning everything into B/W and ignoring the value of dialogue soon we'll run into other more nuanced disagreements being solved through violence.
      - enibundo 7y ago
        I think your logics is flawed here : > external intervention We are all internal to the same world/nature.
        gtirloni 7y ago
        Ignoring the very concept of countries and sovereignty will not help fix the current situation. I understand people are disillusioned with politicians everywhere in the world but we should not abandon politics because of that.
        newsgremlin 7y ago
        Your mixing logic between the issue of a "one world" and a solution that lays in the conceptual boundaries of nationhood. A world green police sounds great (better than a world oil reserve police atleast) but that requires a world government to come up with the authority and solution that does not result in suffering. It's not going to work if the country you live in is secluded from the world and is exploiting the resources of the world for the commodities and relative fortune.
    - krick 7y ago
      Seeing people like you, perceiving USA invading whoever they want as a completely normal thing to do since "USA is good, obviously" makes me ready to support even fucking China in the military race against USA...
    - isostatic 7y ago
      > You know how US gathers forces to go fight in iraq etc? So you want to invade Brazil to stop them burning their forest?
  - tluyben2 7y ago
    Something has to be done; this president will be remembered for doing a lot of damage. He'll be dead (and at least he made the history books with something...) so he won't care, but the generations after will suffer.
  - adrianN 7y ago
    Trade sanctions would be a good start. Just don't import any agricultural products from Brazil. Make important tariffs inversely proportional to rain forest area.
    - isostatic 7y ago
      And the public will support that?
      - adrianN 7y ago
        I'd support it, I don't know about the public.
        isostatic 7y ago
        Say that you're planning to increase the cost of food and see how well it goes down
        adrianN 7y ago
        Say that you're protecting domestic farmers from international competition that drives prices down by literally burning down one of the most precious ecosystems on Earth and see how well that goes down.
- onevu 7y ago
  >we are all responsible, it's not Brazil's responsibility, it's World's responsibility to take care of nature. Eh, no. The part of the Amazon that is in Brazil belongs to Brazil.
  - enibundo 7y ago
    This is how it has been functioning til now. Of course. But one should have 1% critical/analytical brain to understand that this is not how it should be going. If you don't consider yourself subject subject to change you are doomed to disappear.
    - lucasfcosta 7y ago
      I think that the problem here is not agreeing on whether this is awful. It's already pretty clear that it is. However, other countries cannot intervene. Brazilian borders are Brazilian, any other country that wants to help needs to be authorised by Brazilian authorities. The real problem here is that Brazil's leaders are awful and there's nothing that can be done in regards to that. It's only possible to protest and fight against them in a legal manner. Romanticizing revolution is ineffective. It's not only extremely hard but also infeasible to destroy all power structures already in place.
      - hjrnunes 7y ago
        Funny how no one proposed to remove California from US sovereignty when the fires were raging awhile back. Or the Gulf of Mexico coast with the Deep Horizon incident. --- Não vai encontrar razoabilidade aqui, amigo. Esta gente julga que manda no mundo inteiro.
        icebraining 7y ago
        There's only one person in the thread even suggesting anything close to "removing sovereignty", yet you're already seeing a horde of enemies.
- lucasfcosta 7y ago
  Even as a Brazilian I have to agree with the comments stating that it's our responsibility to take care of our part of the Amazon. Unfortunately, people chose to elect an awful president and there's nothing we can do about it other than protest. Bolsonaro is the worst leader this country has ever had since the military dictatorship.
  - burning-madness 7y ago
    > Bolsonaro is the worst leader this country has ever had since the military dictatorship. The military dictatorship's human rights record was horrible and perverse, but at least they had better technical management and were nationalists. It's crazy we're down to the level of saying "well, but at least" when talking about the military dictatorship, but it is what it is. Embrapa, Embraer, Petrobras, Eletrobras, the Rio - Niterói bridge, the nuclear power plants in Angra dos Reis, the nuclear power plant in Itaipu, the satellite launch station in Alcântara, among many others, were investments of the military dictatorship. The current guy on the other is an entreguista and wants foreign military forces to have authority in Alcântara. A que ponto chegamos?! I think Bolsonaro is the worst leader this country has had since, well, since pretty much recorded history.
- kebman 7y ago
  I think nobody is commenting because it makes them feel helpless... It's sad, but what can one man do about it? I mean, I wish I could, but...
AlexDragusin 7y ago
It took me a few good seconds to realize that the title is not about Amazon burning cash or something, shows how entrenched in our lives Amazon (the company) is.
- bromuro 7y ago
  In *your life. I would indeed make myself few questions :)
nikivi 7y ago
The sad part of reading news like this is the feeling of paralysis and helplessness of watching it all unfold. 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. https://github.com/nglgzz/awesome-clean-tech https://github.com/nglgzz/awesome-clean-tech
- enibundo 7y ago
  Thanks for your github Nikivi. I remember asking this question some time ago and it got ignored by people here (of course): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12864591 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12864591 If it doesn't include the words: dividend, stock, option, etc. it doesn't work here.
- emblaegh 7y ago
  If the government is not comitted to the preservation of the Amazon, then there's really nothing that can be done. One could consider imposing international sanctions, but the chance of that backfiring would be quite high IMHO.
- pjc50 7y ago
  Individual action is very limited. Collective action is the only way forwards, which means you're going to have to get political, and convince other people that it's real, important, and deserving of action.
  - chrdlu 7y ago
    Money talks, if companies can make billions of dollars from individual $10-20 subscriptions, I don't see why we can't do it for climate change/deforestation! I personally use Project Wren (https://projectwren.com/ https://projectwren.com/) to offset my own footprint and a bit more!
- antocv 7y ago
  You are a victim of learned helplessness. Throughout history men have taken up guns to do what they think is right. There is nothing stopping you and friends to begin a war against environmental destruction. They will call you eco-terrorists, like they called french revolutionaries murderers, like they called G Washington and his friends, gang rebels and bandits. To get political is not enough, armed uprising war is just a political tool, but a highly effective one.
MaximumYComb 7y ago
Is anyone surprised? It's easy to be upset over this but most readers here live relatively privileged lives. The poor farmer lighting a fire is doing his best to improve his life by clearing more land. I don't know to improve the situation but I feel like we also need to have empathy and understanding.
- KozmoNau7 7y ago
  AFAICT this is not a matter of small farmers clearing a bit of land in order to survive. It's a matter of huge cattle producers and industrial soy farms burning clear vast swathes of the Amazon jungle, for profit.
  - paganel 7y ago
    And producing soy in Brazil has become even more profitable now that the US vs China trade war is in full swing and the Chinese have stopped purchasing US soy. There’s no easy solution for this in an world as inter-connected as ours, apart from breaking all said connections (for example the Chinese reverting to only eating things that they actually grow in their land, which will most probably create a mass famine or two) or somehow for us to consume a lot less things, which hasn’t been the case for at least 200 years (since the Industrial Revolution started).
- emblaegh 7y ago
  I can be proven wrong, but I don't think it's poor farmers who are responsible for the deforestation of the Amazon. It's mostly big latifund owners with lots of lobbying power.
  - jeanlucas 7y ago
    Gonna scream that one here: mining, look at norwegian and international companies mining in the middle of the forest. Plus previous administrations actions, like a giant power plant that will divert one of the biggest rivers over there.
    - 7y ago
vfc1 7y ago
Brasil needs to be heavily sanctioned by the international community, I'm talking Cuba-level stuff if we want to even have a chance at stopping the rise above 2 degrees, we only have 12 years which means that it's already probably too late. 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?
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- darkwater 7y ago
  > 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.
  - icebraining 7y ago
    Anecdotally, having met a few Brazilians who voted for him, the phrase "taking him seriously, not literally" does seem to apply as well. 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.
- dna_polymerase 7y ago
  Would be all for the sanctions, but the EU just signed a free trade agreement with Brazil (Mercosur). That agreement put Brazil's farmers at an advantage, they can now sell to the EU, and produce cheaper than European farmers. If anything that accelerated the trend we see now in the Amazon. 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.
  - icebraining 7y ago
justanegg 7y ago
the upside is we could uncover a lost civilization. downside is ours might be the last.
honestoHeminway 7y ago
How much would one need to pay per square kilometer rainforrest for keeping it to be competitive against steak/soy-farming?
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
hjrnunes 7y ago
If environmental disasters are enough pretext for questioning sovereignty, shall we compile a list, together with the territory to be subtracted? I suggest with start with North America. I'll go first: - Deepwater Horizon platform; Gulf of Mexico, 2010.
- jeanlucas 7y ago
  This is downvoted, but it is a fair point, that is being used as politics weapon. The Amazon forest was savaged before, but the previous administration was seen as "good". 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.
jeanlucas 7y ago
Gonna give my 2 cents, bear in mind I'm in Brazil and am involved in projects related to the Amazon forest. 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-forests-are-opened-to-mining-83034 http://theconversation.com/the-world-protests-as-amazon-fore... [1] - https://www.tnp.no/norway/panorama/toxic-waste-from-norwegian-hydro-amazon-water-brazil https://www.tnp.no/norway/panorama/toxic-waste-from-norwegia...
- gtirloni 7y ago
  That's the problem right now in Brazil. Any criticism to the current administration is because "ideology", like that's a valid argument to invalidate anything that's said. The current president thinks there are communists in every corner. 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.
turrini 7y ago
Please stop. 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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5bOtqmvJHE (in Portuguese only, sorry)
- anodari 7y ago
  What you wrote is the government narrative, it lacks sources. The reality is that the current government has been loosening its controls a lot by dismantling the Ministry of Environment's supervisory bodies, using the narrative that climate change is alarmism. This veiled incentive to deforestation promoted by the government is being reflected in satellite data and increased burns.
- doliveira 7y ago
  Just so you know guys, this sounds like a typical Bolsonaro voter. Even implying that the multi-hundred-percent increase in deforestation just this year was fabricated by the communist scientists and that Lula somehow has anything to do with it. Or that it's good that Bolsonaro is "reorganizing" the research departments to get rid of the commies that dare to present evidence against his corrupt children or about his family's relationships with Rio militias. Or just plain firing scientists and managers from organs like INPE (National Institute of Space Research) and IBAMA (Brazilian Institute of the Environment and Renewable Natural Resources) that dared to speak out against his anti-environment speech, policies or even environmental infractions.
isostatic 7y ago
How about the rest of the world buy the rainforest and put it in a trust? It could then be dealt with like Antarctica - an area that isn't a country. Same applies with say the DRC and other rainforest areas.
stevespang 7y ago
Send in the enviro-mercenaries, a new Rambo movie, where the good guys slaughter all the evil forest destroyers in great style with mini guns and awesome weapons . . . .
higherkinded 7y ago
For some reason I've thought about the other Amazon. Even São Paulo didn't help the title to ring a bell.
newsgremlin 7y ago
If we truly care about nature then Brazil should be made one of the most politically and economically stable countries in the world by the powers of the world. 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.
- PauloManrique 7y ago
  Your point implies that we need to deflorestate in order to be economically stable. No, our economy is not bad because of the environment, it's bad because of bad decisions of politicians of the past.
  - newsgremlin 7y ago
    Think you misunderstood my point, I'm saying that deforestation is a result of a economic woes. If the economy was in better shape we would be seeing less deforestation. 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.
    - PauloManrique 7y ago
      Not in our case. Our current president is a climate change denial, in favor of reducing protected areas, he's cutting funding to inspections and so on.
screye 7y ago
This hits at one ideological conundrum that I have been grappling with for a while. 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.

216 points by andreiursan 7y ago

> 1 hour ago > 0 comments on HN I wonder what would happen if this was a paul graham shitpost. :) Also so sad to see this happening, we are all responsible, it's not Brazil's responsibility, it's World's responsibility to take care of nature.

isostatic 7y ago
What do you propose? UN action to invade Brazil? Germany and Norway have already frozen aid they pay to Brazil
- enibundo 7y ago
  You know how US gathers forces to go fight in iraq etc? Imagine if they did the same thing to help nature. I am not even talking about sending their people, just the mobilisation of politics to act on important subjects. Til we forget the "my lawn, your shit" way of thinking shit will be going south
  - lucasfcosta 7y ago
    This is not how it works. This situation is entirely different. You are missing a lot of the nuance here. Brazil is a huge country which supplies many countries with countless commodities and other products. External military intervention would only make the situation worse. This is not how international politics work. I'm definitely not in favour of what has happened in Iraq, but brute-forcing every problem with external intervention makes absolutely no sense. In this case, it's reasonably clear that this situation is awful, but if we start turning everything into B/W and ignoring the value of dialogue soon we'll run into other more nuanced disagreements being solved through violence.
    - enibundo 7y ago
      I think your logics is flawed here : > external intervention We are all internal to the same world/nature.
      - gtirloni 7y ago
        Ignoring the very concept of countries and sovereignty will not help fix the current situation. I understand people are disillusioned with politicians everywhere in the world but we should not abandon politics because of that.
      - newsgremlin 7y ago
        Your mixing logic between the issue of a "one world" and a solution that lays in the conceptual boundaries of nationhood. A world green police sounds great (better than a world oil reserve police atleast) but that requires a world government to come up with the authority and solution that does not result in suffering. It's not going to work if the country you live in is secluded from the world and is exploiting the resources of the world for the commodities and relative fortune.
  - krick 7y ago
    Seeing people like you, perceiving USA invading whoever they want as a completely normal thing to do since "USA is good, obviously" makes me ready to support even fucking China in the military race against USA...
  - isostatic 7y ago
    > You know how US gathers forces to go fight in iraq etc? So you want to invade Brazil to stop them burning their forest?
- tluyben2 7y ago
  Something has to be done; this president will be remembered for doing a lot of damage. He'll be dead (and at least he made the history books with something...) so he won't care, but the generations after will suffer.
- adrianN 7y ago
  Trade sanctions would be a good start. Just don't import any agricultural products from Brazil. Make important tariffs inversely proportional to rain forest area.
  - isostatic 7y ago
    And the public will support that?
    - adrianN 7y ago
      I'd support it, I don't know about the public.
      - isostatic 7y ago
        Say that you're planning to increase the cost of food and see how well it goes down
        adrianN 7y ago
        Say that you're protecting domestic farmers from international competition that drives prices down by literally burning down one of the most precious ecosystems on Earth and see how well that goes down.
onevu 7y ago
>we are all responsible, it's not Brazil's responsibility, it's World's responsibility to take care of nature. Eh, no. The part of the Amazon that is in Brazil belongs to Brazil.
- enibundo 7y ago
  This is how it has been functioning til now. Of course. But one should have 1% critical/analytical brain to understand that this is not how it should be going. If you don't consider yourself subject subject to change you are doomed to disappear.
  - lucasfcosta 7y ago
    I think that the problem here is not agreeing on whether this is awful. It's already pretty clear that it is. However, other countries cannot intervene. Brazilian borders are Brazilian, any other country that wants to help needs to be authorised by Brazilian authorities. The real problem here is that Brazil's leaders are awful and there's nothing that can be done in regards to that. It's only possible to protest and fight against them in a legal manner. Romanticizing revolution is ineffective. It's not only extremely hard but also infeasible to destroy all power structures already in place.
    - hjrnunes 7y ago
      Funny how no one proposed to remove California from US sovereignty when the fires were raging awhile back. Or the Gulf of Mexico coast with the Deep Horizon incident. --- Não vai encontrar razoabilidade aqui, amigo. Esta gente julga que manda no mundo inteiro.
      - icebraining 7y ago
        There's only one person in the thread even suggesting anything close to "removing sovereignty", yet you're already seeing a horde of enemies.
lucasfcosta 7y ago
Even as a Brazilian I have to agree with the comments stating that it's our responsibility to take care of our part of the Amazon. Unfortunately, people chose to elect an awful president and there's nothing we can do about it other than protest. Bolsonaro is the worst leader this country has ever had since the military dictatorship.
- burning-madness 7y ago
  > Bolsonaro is the worst leader this country has ever had since the military dictatorship. The military dictatorship's human rights record was horrible and perverse, but at least they had better technical management and were nationalists. It's crazy we're down to the level of saying "well, but at least" when talking about the military dictatorship, but it is what it is. Embrapa, Embraer, Petrobras, Eletrobras, the Rio - Niterói bridge, the nuclear power plants in Angra dos Reis, the nuclear power plant in Itaipu, the satellite launch station in Alcântara, among many others, were investments of the military dictatorship. The current guy on the other is an entreguista and wants foreign military forces to have authority in Alcântara. A que ponto chegamos?! I think Bolsonaro is the worst leader this country has had since, well, since pretty much recorded history.
kebman 7y ago
I think nobody is commenting because it makes them feel helpless... It's sad, but what can one man do about it? I mean, I wish I could, but...

AlexDragusin 7y ago

It took me a few good seconds to realize that the title is not about Amazon burning cash or something, shows how entrenched in our lives Amazon (the company) is.

bromuro 7y ago
In *your life. I would indeed make myself few questions :)

nikivi 7y ago

The sad part of reading news like this is the feeling of paralysis and helplessness of watching it all unfold. 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. https://github.com/nglgzz/awesome-clean-tech https://github.com/nglgzz/awesome-clean-tech

enibundo 7y ago
Thanks for your github Nikivi. I remember asking this question some time ago and it got ignored by people here (of course): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12864591 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12864591 If it doesn't include the words: dividend, stock, option, etc. it doesn't work here.
emblaegh 7y ago
If the government is not comitted to the preservation of the Amazon, then there's really nothing that can be done. One could consider imposing international sanctions, but the chance of that backfiring would be quite high IMHO.
pjc50 7y ago
Individual action is very limited. Collective action is the only way forwards, which means you're going to have to get political, and convince other people that it's real, important, and deserving of action.
- chrdlu 7y ago
  Money talks, if companies can make billions of dollars from individual $10-20 subscriptions, I don't see why we can't do it for climate change/deforestation! I personally use Project Wren (https://projectwren.com/ https://projectwren.com/) to offset my own footprint and a bit more!
antocv 7y ago
You are a victim of learned helplessness. Throughout history men have taken up guns to do what they think is right. There is nothing stopping you and friends to begin a war against environmental destruction. They will call you eco-terrorists, like they called french revolutionaries murderers, like they called G Washington and his friends, gang rebels and bandits. To get political is not enough, armed uprising war is just a political tool, but a highly effective one.

MaximumYComb 7y ago

Is anyone surprised? It's easy to be upset over this but most readers here live relatively privileged lives. The poor farmer lighting a fire is doing his best to improve his life by clearing more land. I don't know to improve the situation but I feel like we also need to have empathy and understanding.

KozmoNau7 7y ago
AFAICT this is not a matter of small farmers clearing a bit of land in order to survive. It's a matter of huge cattle producers and industrial soy farms burning clear vast swathes of the Amazon jungle, for profit.
- paganel 7y ago
  And producing soy in Brazil has become even more profitable now that the US vs China trade war is in full swing and the Chinese have stopped purchasing US soy. There’s no easy solution for this in an world as inter-connected as ours, apart from breaking all said connections (for example the Chinese reverting to only eating things that they actually grow in their land, which will most probably create a mass famine or two) or somehow for us to consume a lot less things, which hasn’t been the case for at least 200 years (since the Industrial Revolution started).
emblaegh 7y ago
I can be proven wrong, but I don't think it's poor farmers who are responsible for the deforestation of the Amazon. It's mostly big latifund owners with lots of lobbying power.
- jeanlucas 7y ago
  Gonna scream that one here: mining, look at norwegian and international companies mining in the middle of the forest. Plus previous administrations actions, like a giant power plant that will divert one of the biggest rivers over there.
  - 7y ago

vfc1 7y ago

Brasil needs to be heavily sanctioned by the international community, I'm talking Cuba-level stuff if we want to even have a chance at stopping the rise above 2 degrees, we only have 12 years which means that it's already probably too late. 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?

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
darkwater 7y ago
> 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.
- icebraining 7y ago
  Anecdotally, having met a few Brazilians who voted for him, the phrase "taking him seriously, not literally" does seem to apply as well. 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.
dna_polymerase 7y ago
Would be all for the sanctions, but the EU just signed a free trade agreement with Brazil (Mercosur). That agreement put Brazil's farmers at an advantage, they can now sell to the EU, and produce cheaper than European farmers. If anything that accelerated the trend we see now in the Amazon. 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.
- icebraining 7y ago

justanegg 7y ago

the upside is we could uncover a lost civilization. downside is ours might be the last.

honestoHeminway 7y ago

How much would one need to pay per square kilometer rainforrest for keeping it to be competitive against steak/soy-farming?

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

hjrnunes 7y ago

If environmental disasters are enough pretext for questioning sovereignty, shall we compile a list, together with the territory to be subtracted? I suggest with start with North America. I'll go first: - Deepwater Horizon platform; Gulf of Mexico, 2010.

jeanlucas 7y ago
This is downvoted, but it is a fair point, that is being used as politics weapon. The Amazon forest was savaged before, but the previous administration was seen as "good". 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.

jeanlucas 7y ago

Gonna give my 2 cents, bear in mind I'm in Brazil and am involved in projects related to the Amazon forest. 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-forests-are-opened-to-mining-83034 http://theconversation.com/the-world-protests-as-amazon-fore... [1] - https://www.tnp.no/norway/panorama/toxic-waste-from-norwegian-hydro-amazon-water-brazil https://www.tnp.no/norway/panorama/toxic-waste-from-norwegia...

gtirloni 7y ago
That's the problem right now in Brazil. Any criticism to the current administration is because "ideology", like that's a valid argument to invalidate anything that's said. The current president thinks there are communists in every corner. 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.

turrini 7y ago

Please stop. 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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5bOtqmvJHE (in Portuguese only, sorry)

anodari 7y ago
What you wrote is the government narrative, it lacks sources. The reality is that the current government has been loosening its controls a lot by dismantling the Ministry of Environment's supervisory bodies, using the narrative that climate change is alarmism. This veiled incentive to deforestation promoted by the government is being reflected in satellite data and increased burns.
doliveira 7y ago
Just so you know guys, this sounds like a typical Bolsonaro voter. Even implying that the multi-hundred-percent increase in deforestation just this year was fabricated by the communist scientists and that Lula somehow has anything to do with it. Or that it's good that Bolsonaro is "reorganizing" the research departments to get rid of the commies that dare to present evidence against his corrupt children or about his family's relationships with Rio militias. Or just plain firing scientists and managers from organs like INPE (National Institute of Space Research) and IBAMA (Brazilian Institute of the Environment and Renewable Natural Resources) that dared to speak out against his anti-environment speech, policies or even environmental infractions.

isostatic 7y ago

How about the rest of the world buy the rainforest and put it in a trust? It could then be dealt with like Antarctica - an area that isn't a country. Same applies with say the DRC and other rainforest areas.

stevespang 7y ago

Send in the enviro-mercenaries, a new Rambo movie, where the good guys slaughter all the evil forest destroyers in great style with mini guns and awesome weapons . . . .

higherkinded 7y ago

For some reason I've thought about the other Amazon. Even São Paulo didn't help the title to ring a bell.

newsgremlin 7y ago

If we truly care about nature then Brazil should be made one of the most politically and economically stable countries in the world by the powers of the world. 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.

PauloManrique 7y ago
Your point implies that we need to deflorestate in order to be economically stable. No, our economy is not bad because of the environment, it's bad because of bad decisions of politicians of the past.
- newsgremlin 7y ago
  Think you misunderstood my point, I'm saying that deforestation is a result of a economic woes. If the economy was in better shape we would be seeing less deforestation. 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.
  - PauloManrique 7y ago
    Not in our case. Our current president is a climate change denial, in favor of reducing protected areas, he's cutting funding to inspections and so on.

screye 7y ago

This hits at one ideological conundrum that I have been grappling with for a while. 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.