Smokin’ and Chokin’

 

It’s an interesting question: what are an individual and sovereign nation’s moral and legal responsibilities to the rest of the world in managing its own natural resources? By way of example, I remember in my travels to view animal species in their indigenous habitats – preserved in game parks that catered primarily to foreign tourists – being asked by a Masai leader: “Why should Kenya preserve and maintain its game parks and wilderness areas to preserve unique species (and their habitats) – which are visited mostly by rich foreign tourists able to afford travel – when the Western world got rich by ripping open the earth to resource extraction, industrialization and large-scale corporate farming that decimated their wilderness areas? Why are we the custodians of your playgrounds?”

The issue is equally confounding when it comes to tearing down forests, or allowing them to burn, in order to open more land for possible mineral exploration or agribusiness expansion. Most folks concentrate on the loss of oxygen production (oxygen is a vital 20% of our atmosphere) as the major consequence, but in truth, oxygen levels would probably remain fairly stable even with serious reductions in rain forests.

What really goes wrong, however, is that without rain forests, jungles, etc., the ability to take excess and rising carbon, mostly as carbon dioxide, out of the global ecosystem plunges. Carbon that solidifies that atmospheric lid of greenhouse gasses that is steadily warming the planet. The big controversy today is what is happening in Brazil right now, but before I address the politically distressed quagmire in that country, it is worth understanding what the stakes truly are.

Writing for the August 27, 2019 Newsweek, Aristos Georgiou explains: “‘The Amazon is a carbon sink, which slows the rate of carbon dioxide build up in the atmosphere, and thus climate warming,’ James Randerson from the University of California, Irvine, told Newsweek… ‘Deforestation and fire-driven forest degradation affect the carbon cycle in two ways. First, there is a direct release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere in the conversion process. Second, the loss of forest reduces the ability of the forest as a whole to absorb carbon. More forest fires in the Amazon will accelerate the buildup of greenhouse gases and we will have higher levels of global warming,’ he said.

“Ecologist and author Sandra Steingraber from Ithaca College said that around half of the carbon dioxide that is pulled out of the atmosphere by the earth's biosphere on land is sucked up by tropical forests. But in the face of deforestation, the Amazon, at least, may be losing this ability… ‘The Amazon is a big carbon sink but its ability to scrub carbon dioxide from the atmosphere is declining,’ she said. ‘This will contribute to climate chaos, turning tropical forests from a global carbon sink to a global carbon source is perhaps the most important consequence of destroying the Amazon.’” Amazonia contains roughly 20% of the world’s forest covering, so the impact of anything that seriously reduces that blanket impacts the entire planet.

Mirroring Donald Trump’s policies in the United States, downplaying the spread of COVID-19, keeping as much of the Brazilian economy open without restrictions and opening up public lands to accelerated development (mining and agriculture being the targeted industries), President Jair Bolsonaro has wreaked havoc across the nation, pitting governors from his own party against him.

As world leaders pressed Bolsonaro to take responsibility to contain the massive wildfires set to clear forests for these commercial uses, the Brazilian President told them to mind their own business; Brazil, he maintained, had every right to do as it pleased with its own territory. Even as millions of dollars have been funneled to Brazil by European nations as payments to save rain forests, the devastation continues. Bolsonaro, like Trump, has become the master of mixed and often contradictory messages.

As global pressures mounted, as his own constituents expressed their alarm at this decimation of their rain forest heritage, which also threatens indigenous peoples and unique species of increasingly rare wildlife, Bolsonaro relented. “A year ago this month, the forest around the town of Novo Progresso erupted into flames — the first major blazes in the Brazilian Amazon’s dry season that ultimately saw more than 100,000 fires and spurred global outrage against the government’s inability or unwillingness to protect the rainforest.

“This year, President Jair Bolsonaro pledged to control the burning, which is typically started by local farmers attempting to clear land for cattle or for soybeans, one of Brazil’s top exports. Bolsonaro imposed a four-month ban on most fires and sent in the army to prevent and battle blazes… But this week [third week of August] the smoke is again so thick in Novo Progresso that police have reported motorists crashing because they can’t see.

“As smoke wreathes Novo Progresso, this year’s burning season could determine whether Bolsonaro, an avid supporter of bringing more farming and ranching to the Amazon, is willing and able to halt the fires. Experts say the blazes are pushing the world’s largest rainforest toward a tipping point, after which it will cease to generate enough rainfall to sustain itself, and approximately two-thirds of the forest will begin an irreversible, decades-long decline into tropical savanna…

“Bolsonaro is sending mixed signals: He greenlighted an army-led operation to fight Amazon destruction in May, but this month he denied that the region’s trees can catch fire. Speaking at a video summit about the Amazon with fellow South American leaders, he also touted a year-on-year decrease in July deforestation data, omitting the fact that it was still the third-highest reading for any month since 2015… ‘This story that the Amazon is burning is a lie,’ he asserted, even as smoke from more than 1,100 fires wafted over the region that day…

“The Amazon has lost about 17% of its original area and, at the current pace, will reach a tipping point in the next 15 to 30 years, said Carlos Nobre, a prominent climatologist. As it decomposes, it will release hundreds of billions of tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, making it ‘very difficult’ to meet the Paris agreement’s climate goals, said Nobre, a scientist at the University of Sao Paulo’s Institute of Advanced Studies… He added that signs of change are emerging already: The dry season in the southern third of the Amazon — where Novo Progresso is located — has reached nearly four months, up from three months in the 1980s. It’s grown hotter, too.’ Associated Press, August 22^nd.

There’s a reason climate change issues have resonated so much more around the world. As Millennial and younger generations become voting members of their nations, clearly the case in the United States, they have sensed that it is they who will bearing the accelerating consequences of past political leaders’ decisions to prioritize uncontrolled economic growth without containing the increasingly obvious devastating effects of resulting climate change. Even as alternative energy offers untold numbers of new opportunities and job growth.

Incumbent corporations and older voters figured that the anticipated damage from that prioritization of existing power-generating and land use practices would mostly occur after their passing. They preferred the “here and now” to some abstract future cost… perhaps one that technology just might solve. They ignored the floods, increased intensity storms, droughts, wildfires, migrating insects, mass migrations of peoples no longer able to pull a livelihood from their land… it was too abstract, too easily bypassed by relying on religious beliefs and denigrating scientific truth. They were wrong. And now, younger generations are demanding a big change.

            I’m Peter Dekom, and if we are ever to grapple with the serious consequences caused by callous and ignorant politicians, we just might have one last chance… now.