Amazon Basin:

AMAZON BASIN

Gasping For Air

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro has been under fire for his stewardship of the precious Amazon Basin, the so-called “lungs of the Earth” that filter carbon out of the atmosphere and sustain a remarkably diverse ecology.

Deforestation has soared under the conservative president and former army captain who served under Brazil’s military junta in the 1970s and 1980s. Woodcutters cleared more than 1,620 square miles of Brazilian Amazon forest between Jan. 1, when Bolsonaro took office, and late July, wrote Science magazine. That’s 50 percent more than in the same seven-month period last year and double the amount lost in that period in 2017.

Bolsonaro has denied the veracity of the data, setting off debates in Brazil about fake news, the media and the frequent inclination among politicians to twist the truth. “Mr. Bolsonaro often makes spurious statements,” reported the New York Times in coverage of the president sacking the head of the agency that tracks deforestation in the Amazon.

Meanwhile, the Amazon has experienced a record number of fires this year, according to new data released by the country’s space agency, the National Institute for Space Research. The agency said its satellite data detected more than 72,000 fires since January, an 83 percent increase over the same period of 2018.

Recently, the president offered a novel solution to a dilemma posed by a journalist in Brasilia, the country’s capital. The journalist asked Bolsonaro whether it was possible to simultaneously grow the economy, feed the hungry and protect the environment.

“It’s enough to eat a little less,” the president said, according to Agence France-Presse. “You talk about environmental pollution. It’s enough to poop every other day. That will be better for the whole world.”

Writing in the Washington Post’s letter section, a Brazilian diplomat defended Bolsonaro’s policies, saying the government is developing a better system to monitor deforestation.

German officials weren’t convinced. They intend to stop paying aid to Brazil to fund conservation projects that might preserve trees, Deutsche Welle reported. Bolsonaro didn’t appear to care. “They can use this money as they see fit,” he said. “Brazil doesn’t need it.”

Brazil needs to take action, however. The world is on “deathwatch” for the Amazon, the Economist warned, explaining that ranching and agriculture were transforming the rainforest. “South America’s natural wonder may be perilously close to the tipping point beyond which its gradual transformation into something closer to steppe cannot be stopped or reversed, even if people lay down their axes,” the British magazine wrote.

The Amazon continues to educate humanity. Researchers, for example, recently discovered that the Amazon acquires a vital nutrient – phosphorus – from smoke that wafts across the Atlantic Ocean from fires in Africa, the New Scientist reported.

That’s knowledge that makes the pronouncements of presidents seem small in comparison.

Gasping for Air