Brazil is going to eat you up! {part 2}: about the Amazon fires

A view of Indigenous Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau land in the Brazilian state of Rondônia being burned on Sept. 24, 2016. Photo: Gabriel Uchida. https://theintercept.com/2019/07/06/brazil-amazon-rainforest-indigenous-conservation-agribusiness-ranching/

So, the current climate in Brazil is completely devastated. Both the environmental climate and the public climate. Every day we have a new nonsense political news about this or that stupidity said by a far right politician. I think I got it right when I said last November that craziness was the main principle of the anthropophagic way Brazilians deal with outside influence. Now, it appears our politics works in the same way. 

We are applying the expression “smokescreen” for this continued bullshit politics, as we perceive it as a way by which our politician are deviating the attention of the country. “We just approved a ton of new pesticides to use in our cash crops, the public must not pay attention to this, so let’s put that crazy minister on TV to say that Elsa from Frozen is turning our little girls gay!” “Another minister was accused of corruption, let’s put Salnorabo live  (we don’t write his name right, it’s like a Voldemort thing) to say that we will kick out all the communists to Venezuela!”

The weird thing is that this rhetoric smokescreen is being used right now to cover a more important origin of real smoke, as the Amazon is ablaze.

The real smokescreen over Brazil in 19-20 of august, 2019. Source: https://piaui.folha.uol.com.br/fogo-na-amazonia-apaga-o-sol-no-sul/

It’s the “coivara”. An indigenous term that names the methodological use of fire to clean out forests to make new fields for raising cows and planting transgenic soy, rice and other crops that we sell mainly to other countries. We are killing off the Amazon to raise sources of meat. We are destroying one of the few great rainforests left to open new fields for the agribusiness. As Brazil is rapidly deindustrializing, the agroindustry is the only big source of revenue left aside from mining.

In this regard, we had a few accidents over the past few years and had already killed off three rivers. Yes, I said this correctly, we killed off three entire rivers. All life in it, gone.

This probably is the future for the Amazon, beyond the destruction of huge parts of the rainforest to open new fields, we know its soil is rich in minerals never explored before. But they were never explored for a reason, the Amazon River is the largest in the world by volume of water. Imagine all that life, also gone in a disaster.

The forest also plays an important role in regulating the entire rainfall system of half of the South American continent. It is what causes rainfall to occur throughout Southeastern Brazil through the humidification of air that is carried by winds to this southernmost region, what we call “rivers in the air”. If it were not for this, the entire southeastern region of Brazil would be semi-arid land. This caused one of the most bizarre episodes I have ever seen (aside the obvious putting-fire-to-the-Amazon thing), the same wind that carries rain, carried the smoke from the fires to southeastern Brazil. Leaving São Paulo dark in the middle of the afternoon.

The Intercept made a great analysis of this and I can only point to it and ask you to read it. Maybe Brazil feels it has to do its part in the Climate Breakdown and not having enough industries to really cause a havoc, just get and set the Amazon on fire for the LOLs of it. 

I don’t know. I don’t know what else I can say. I don’t know what else I can do. I’m just too tired. The only thing that comes to my mind is that phrase from Hunger Games: “If we burn, you burn with us.”

PS: As always, I apologise for possible grammar problems on the post, I will happily take critiques on this since I’m not a native speaker.

PS2: I recently discovered a site that allows us to follow the current carbon oxide emissions live. Just click the link https://www.windy.com and you can navigate through its menu, there’s a “CO emissions” option.