It is unknown how bleak things could be for Brazilians who were largely unprotected by their president, Jair Bolsonaro. But while the management of the Bolsonaro pandemic influences the life and immediate death of Brazilians, the far-right populist, sometimes known as “tropical Trump,” also manages the protection of the Amazon. And in the midst of a man-made climate crisis, Earth scientists say this gives it an undue and terrifying influence on all of life as we know it. For generations.
The studies found that last year alone, 3,000 square miles were destroyed, an area nearly the size of Puerto Rico. Ninety-nine percent of deforestation came from illegal logging and theft and burning of land, while illegal gold mining not only destroyed plants and animals of thousands of species, but also turned the soil into toxic sludge and sand where nothing can grow for centuries.
It posts complaints about its restrictions and tweets endorsements of its favorite antimalarial drugs, not proven by science but produced and stored by the Brazilian army.
After ousting two qualified health ministers who dared to argue against his science policies, a loyal general with no public health background is pursuing the response to the pandemic while refusing to speak to the media.
When Ricardo Galvao, a plasma physicist trained by MIT and director of the Brazilian National Institute for Space Research, insisted on sharing real-time satellite data of Amazon deforestation with the world, Bolsonaro accused Galvao of falsifying the numbers and He fired him.
“In a special area (in the protected Amazon) we gave more than 15 warnings per day, there was deforestation on the scale of 10 hectares or more,” Galvao told me. “There was no government action, no action at all. They ignored us. And when the alarm went off, they fired us.”
Like the coronavirus, Bolsonaro put the army in charge of stopping deforestation. And critics see another example of ignored scientific experience in favor of military loyalty and a vision of uncontrolled economic growth.
“Water is life,” Clareñcio Urepariwe told me. She is one of Xavante’s smaller and smaller people who had this edge of the Amazon to themselves for so long that their immune systems are weaker against invasive diseases. “Water is where we come from and how we live. So the veto is a form of extermination. The deputy (from Bolsonaro) says that we should drink from the rivers, but the rivers are contaminated.”
“Just like anywhere in the world, there are good and bad people,” says Fabianno Dall Agnoll as we walk through neat rows of black bean sprouts. He cultivates 2,000 acres in the Mato Grosso region where Fawcett disappeared, and is part of a local group that promises to “Produce, Conserve, and Include.”
He says hundreds of local farmers are committed to monitoring deforestation satellite data in an effort to heal forests and indigenous relations with smart land management. But the idea only works with access to national satellite data.
Thanks to the management of the environment and the Bolsonaro pandemic, as well as the corruption scandals that involved him and his children, the lower house of the Brazilian Congress received more than 50 formal impeachment requests. Given the fierce policy surrounding the pandemic, there are no signs of action.
The action also comes from outside of Brazil. Led by Norway, a trillion-dollar group of global investors and sovereign wealth funds recently threatened to take their money out of Brazil.
If that doesn’t lead to a real application, there are 27 more months before Bolsonaro is ready for reelection. Or 27 pieces from the Amazon, the size of Dallas, Texas.
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