It's no coincidence that, less than a year after populist Jair Bolsonaro came to power in Brazil, satellite imagery shows vast tracts of the Amazon rainforest on fire, more than ever before. According to Brazil's space agency, 72,843 fires are currently burning, an 83% increase offer last year, and the highest since records began.
These are not just wildfires like we experience in North America and Europe. Wildfires do occur in the Amazon during the "dry"season, but to get it to burn on this scale, fires need to be set deliberately and even managed. So brazen have the region's farmers become in this new political environment that they even give advance notice of "fire days". These are farmers burning down extensive parts of the world's largest tropical forest, including areas where indigenous tribes eke out their precarious existence, and they are doing so for agriculture, particularly for cattle and beef production. So, think twice before you have that next beefburger or corned beef sandwich.
And this wilful deforestation is being presided over by the maverick right-wing politician Bolsonaro, who has expressed disdain for environmental regulations, and openly encouraged farmers and industrialists to pursue development at any cost. Well, this is what that development looks like.
And now Bolsonaro, in a move straight out of Donald Trump's playbook, is suggesting that the fires are being set by NGOs and environmentalists in order to discredit him and his environmental record. And what an environmental record! Almost the first thing he did after his election was to slash funding to environmental groups and government departments. These people don't have the resources to go about setting fires, even if they wanted to!
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