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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsThe Amazon Fires Are More Dangerous Than WMDs
The Amazon Fires Are More Dangerous Than WMDs
One person shouldnt have the power to set policies that doom the rest of humanitys shot at mitigating rising temperatures.
10:35 AM ET
Franklin Foer
When Jair Bolosonaro won Brazils presidential election last year, having run on a platform of deforestation, David Wallace-Wells asked, How much damage can one person do to the planet? Bolsonaro didnt pour lighter fluid to ignite the flames now ravishing the Amazon, but with his policies and rhetoric, he might as well have. The destruction he inspiredand allowed to rage with his days of stubborn unwillingness to douse the flames has placed the planet at a hinge moment in its ecological history. Unfortunately, the planet doesnt have a clue about how it should respond.
In part, the problem is that so much of the world is now governed by leaders who share Bolsonaros sensibility. Even before Bolsonaro presided over the incineration of the worlds storehouse of oxygen, he led a dubious regime. His path to power began with the corrupt impeachment of Dilma Rousseff, followed by the arrest of his higher-polling electoral rival.
In part, the problem is the dismal state of international institutions, which havent been so tattered since World War II. In the face of global critics begging Bolsonaro to stop the destruction of the Amazon, he shouts about the threats to Brazils sovereignty. For that complaint to land, he would need democratic legitimacy, and this revanchist has none; yet those critics do nothing more than sputter inconsequential rage.
If a country obtains chemical or biological weapons, the rest of the world tends to react with fury or at least it did in the not-so-distant past. Sanctions rained down on the proliferators, who were then ostracized from the global community. And in rare ( sometimes disastrously misguided) cases, the world decided that the threat justified a military response. The destruction of the Amazon is arguably far more dangerous than the Weapons of Mass Destruction that have triggered a robust response. The consequence of the unfolding disasterwhich will extinguish species and hasten a worst-case climate crisisextend for eternity. To lose a fifth of the Amazon to deforestation would trigger a process known as dieback, releasing what The Intercept calls a doomsday bomb of stored carbon.
It is commonplace to describe the Amazon as the worlds lungs. Embedded in the metaphor is the sense that inherited ideas about the sovereignty of states no longer hold in the face of climate change. If the smoke clouds drifted only so far as the skies of Sao Paulo, other nations might be able to shrug off the problem as belonging to someone else. But one person shouldnt have the power to set policies that doom the rest of humanitys shot at mitigating rising temperatures.
more...
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/08/amazon-fires-show-limits-sovereignty/596779/
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The Amazon Fires Are More Dangerous Than WMDs (Original Post)
babylonsister
Aug 2019
OP
Mike 03
(16,616 posts)1. Once again, the Cruelty is the Point
From the article:
What makes Bolsonaros behavior so galling is the pointlessness of it. Of course, he has ties to agribusiness, which would like to raze the forest for their cattle and crops. And he campaigned on the promise of damming the river and developing the region into the countrys economic engine. But there are even baser motives driving Bolsonaros gleeful policy of deforestation: The man has a demonstrable record of racism, and hes compared the indigenous people who live on protected lands to animals in a zoo. And like Donald Trump, he squeezes personal joy from his confrontations with foreign leaders and NGOs, posing as the manly enemy of the effete elites. In other words, hes letting the fires burn, at least in part, to troll his enemies. Hes cutting out the worlds lungs for the sake of owning the libs.
Superb article. Thanks for posting!
Anon-C
(3,430 posts)2. And the Siberian fires still burning as well.
"This week on As the World Burns"
CrispyQ
(36,421 posts)3. We are FUBAR.
I don't know how the G7 can even address this if the orange asshole shows up. He'll whine about how all the other countries are taking advantage of the US & make it all about him while the world burns.