Amazon burning: Reichstag part II?

[viper37]

Ok, a little far fetched, he didn't set fire himself.  But that's convenient...
Link to full article

Brazil's right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro on Wednesday accused non-governmental organizations of setting wildfires in the Amazon rain forest to damage his government's image after he cut their funding.
Environment and climate experts disputed his unfounded claim as a "smokescreen" to hide the dismantling of protections for the world's largest tropical rain forest, and said farmers clearing land were the cause of a surge in forest fires.
"Everything indicates" that NGOs are going to the Amazon to "set fire" to the forest, Mr. Bolsonaro said in a Facebook Live broadcast. When asked if he had evidence to back up his claims, he said he had "no written plan," adding "that's not how it's done."
The former army captain turned politician said the slashing of NGO funding by his government could be a motive.
"Crime exists," he said. "These people are missing the money."

Mr. Bolsonaro's latest comments enraged environmentalists, who are increasingly concerned by his attitude toward the Amazon rain forest, a vital bulwark against climate change and to which Brazil is home to more than half.

[The Brain]

Maybe less joking from environment and climate experts would convey a more serious attitude to this problem.

[Tonitrus]

From the thread title, I initially thought Trump had finally struck at Bezos.

Also: thread title is missing a "Boogaloo". 

[Syt]

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-49479470

Amazon fires: Brazil to reject G7 offer of $22m aid

The Brazilian government has said it will reject an offer of aid from G7 countries to help tackle fires in the Amazon rainforest.

French President Emmanuel Macron - who hosted a G7 summit that ended on Monday - said $22m (£18m) would be released.

But foreign minister Ernesto Araujo has said a new initiative is not needed, because international mechanisms are in place to fight deforestation.

And the defence minister said the fires in the Amazon were not out of control.

President Jair Bolsonaro has accused France of treating Brazil like a colony.

Commenting on the G7 offer of aid, Mr Bolsonaro's chief of staff, Onyx Lorenzoni, told the Globo news website: "Thanks, but maybe those resources are more relevant to reforest Europe.

"Macron cannot even avoid a predictable fire in a church that is part of the world's heritage, and he wants to give us lessons for our country?" Mr Lorenzoni added, in a reference to the fire that hit Notre-Dame cathedral in Paris in April.

He also said Brazil could teach "any nation" how to protect native forests.

Mr Araujo says there are already mechanisms under the auspices of the UN climate convention to fight deforestation.

"Efforts of some political currents to extrapolate real environmental issues into a fabricated 'crisis' as a pretext for introducing mechanisms for external control of the Amazon are very evident," he added in a tweet.

A record number of fires are burning in Brazil, mostly in the Amazon, according to the country's space research agency, Inpe. President Macron last week described the fires as an "international crisis".

Mr Bolsonaro has previously said his government lacked the resources to fight the record number of fires in the Amazon.

Critics have accused him of making deforestation worse in the Amazon through anti-environmental rhetoric.

Greenpeace France has described the G7's response to the crisis as "inadequate given the urgency and magnitude of this environmental disaster", it said in a statement (in French).

On Monday, actor Leonardo DiCaprio pledged $5m towards helping the rainforest.

One world expert on forestry says what is needed in Brazil is a change in political priorities.

"The funding for Brazil's environment agency has gone down by 95% this year, it [has] essentially gutted large part of the actions that have been put in by the agricultural ministry," Yadvinder Malhi, professor of Ecosystem Science at the University of Oxford, told the BBC's Today programme.

"So the real thing is to look at the political direction of governance in the Amazon that's changing under the new Brazilian government."

What was pledged?

The $22m was announced on Monday as the leaders of the G7 - Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the UK and the US - continue to meet in Biarritz, France.

Mr Macron said the funds would be made available immediately - primarily to pay for more firefighting planes - and that France would also "offer concrete support with military in the region".

But Mr Bolsonaro - who has been engaged in a public row with Mr Macron in recent weeks - accused the French leader of launching "unreasonable and gratuitous attacks against the Amazon region", and "hiding his intentions behind the idea of an 'alliance' of G7 countries".

Why is Mr Bolsonaro so prickly about foreign aid?

President Bolsonaro has long maintained that European countries are trying to gain access to Brazil's natural resources. He alleges that European interest in the welfare of the Amazon is a thin guise for attempts to gain a foothold in the region.

Asked by international journalists about environmental protection of the Amazon at a press briefing on 6 July, he said: "Brazil is like a virgin that every pervert from the outside lusts for".

He also said Europeans had "got it into their heads" that the Amazon did not belong to Brazil.

Since then, he has stressed the issue of sovereignty time and time again.

"These countries that send money here, they don't send it out of charity," Mr Bolsonaro said last week. "They send it with the aim of interfering with our sovereignty."

And on Monday, he tweeted that "respect for the sovereignty of any country is the least that can be expected in a civilised world".

He also accused the leaders of G7 countries of treating the Amazon "as if it were a colony or a no-man's land".

What is Brazil doing?

On Friday, facing mounting pressure from abroad, President Bolsonaro authorised the military to help tackle the blazes.

Brazil says 44,000 soldiers have been deployed to combat the fires and environmental crimes in the Amazon, and military operations are under way in seven states as the result of requests for assistance from local governments.

On Saturday, EU Council president Donald Tusk said it was hard to imagine the bloc ratifying the long-awaited EU-Mercosur agreement - a landmark trade deal with South American nations - while Brazil was still failing to curb the blazes.

Wildfires often occur in the dry season in Brazil, but satellite data published by Inpe has shown an increase of 80% this year.

BBC analysis has also found that the record number of fires being recorded also coincides with a sharp drop off in fines being handed out for environmental violations.

Why is the Amazon important?

As the largest rainforest in the world, the Amazon is a vital carbon store that slows down the pace of global warming. It spans a number of countries, but the majority of it falls within Brazil.

It is known as the "lungs of the world" for its role in absorbing carbon dioxide and producing oxygen.

The rainforest is also home to about three million species of plants and animals and one million indigenous people.

[Tamas]

Love it how everything becomes a global fighting ground for the unholy "alt-right" (nice PC name for fascist, btw). Apparently, these fires are brought up as journalistic questions in Hungary to "embarrass Prime Minister Orban".

And in general online the usual suspects seem to be trying to trivialise the whole thing because it is Brazilian Trump in charge.

[The Brain]

In Sweden we chopped down all our forests a long time ago, today there are only some tiny isolated pockets of virgin forest left.

[Tamas]

In Sweden we chopped down all our forests a long time ago, today there are only some tiny isolated pockets of virgin forest left.

Well, that's something that has been bugging me in general, i.e. that we Europeans enjoy prosperity and a highly advanced infrastructure because we have eradicated our ancient forests a long time ago and have no intentions of returning them, but we demand that the ROTW indulges us and keep things conserved for the greater good.

But, in this particular case, as I understand, a big reason for the fires is the extremely dick move of farmers to burn the forest for a new piece of land they can totally destroy with a couple of years of cultivation and then moving on to burn out a new portion to destroy.

[Duque de Bragança]

In Sweden we chopped down all our forests a long time ago, today there are only some tiny isolated pockets of virgin forest left.

Judging by what happened in the Virgin Spring, those forests were dangerous anyways.
Back to topic, Mijairzinho really outdid himself this time but he is still a free-marketeer, more so than Macron, of course.

[Legbiter]

But, in this particular case, as I understand, a big reason for the fires is the extremely dick move of farmers to burn the forest for a new piece of land they can totally destroy with a couple of years of cultivation and then moving on to burn out a new portion to destroy.

Seems there's an annual burning season when farmers and ranchers do controlled fires that in dry conditions can get out of control.

Amazon forest fires are hidden by the tree canopy and only increase during drought years. "We don't know if there are any more forest fires this year than in past years, which tells me there probably isn't," Nepstad said. "I've been working on studying those fires for 25 years and our [on-the-ground] networks are tracking this."

What increased by 7% in 2019 are the fires of dry scrub and trees cut down for cattle ranching as a strategy to gain ownership of land.

Against the picture painted of an Amazon forest on the verge of disappearing, a full 80% remains standing. Half of the Amazon is protected against deforestation under federal law.

"Few stories in the first wave of media coverage mentioned the dramatic drop in deforestation in Brazil in the 2000s," noted former New York Times reporter Andrew Revkin, who wrote a 1990 book, The Burning Season, about the Amazon, and is now Founding Director, Initiative on Communication & Sustainability at The Earth Institute at Columbia University.

Deforestation declined a whopping 70% from 2004 to 2012. It has risen modestly since then but remains at one-quarter its 2004 peak. And just 3% of the Amazon is suitable for soy farming.

Both Nepstad and Coutinho say the real threat is from accidental forest fires in drought years, which climate change could worsen. "The most serious threat to the Amazon forest is the severe events that make the forests vulnerable to fire. That's where we can get a downward spiral between fire and drought and more fire."

Today, 18 - 20% of the Amazon forest remains at risk of being deforested.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2019/08/26/why-everything-they-say-about-the-amazon-including-that-its-the-lungs-of-the-world-is-wrong/#55a9dc15bde0

[Valmy]

Well, that's something that has been bugging me in general, i.e. that we Europeans enjoy prosperity and a highly advanced infrastructure because we have eradicated our ancient forests a long time ago and have no intentions of returning them, but we demand that the ROTW indulges us and keep things conserved for the greater good.

I mean you eradicated those forests in the pre-industrial era did you not? In any case I don't think a modern state needs vast farmland to be successful.

Anyway this is the whole "we are not deforesting YOU ARE" shit the nationalists always pull. It is not like only European countries who care about this sort of thing. It is just whataboutism.

[viper37]

In Sweden we chopped down all our forests a long time ago, today there are only some tiny isolated pockets of virgin forest left.

but you did it for a noble goal: reducing human population through conquests so the Earth would not warm so fast

[The Brain]

In Sweden we chopped down all our forests a long time ago, today there are only some tiny isolated pockets of virgin forest left.

but you did it for a noble goal: reducing human population through conquests so the Earth would not warm so fast

It was done in the 19th-early 20th century, so we cannot credibly use that defense.

[Syt]

Comment on Twitter:

G7 offer $20 million to save the rainforest
Netflix paid $100 million to stream Friends

[Solmyr]

In Sweden we chopped down all our forests a long time ago, today there are only some tiny isolated pockets of virgin forest left.

Well, that's something that has been bugging me in general, i.e. that we Europeans enjoy prosperity and a highly advanced infrastructure because we have eradicated our ancient forests a long time ago and have no intentions of returning them, but we demand that the ROTW indulges us and keep things conserved for the greater good.

Well yeah, just because Europeans did crappy things in the past doesn't mean everyone else should be doing the same things today.

[garbon]

Well, that's something that has been bugging me in general, i.e. that we Europeans enjoy prosperity and a highly advanced infrastructure because we have eradicated our ancient forests a long time ago and have no intentions of returning them, but we demand that the ROTW indulges us and keep things conserved for the greater good.

I mean you eradicated those forests in the pre-industrial era did you not? In any case I don't think a modern state needs vast farmland to be successful.

Anyway this is the whole "we are not deforesting YOU ARE" shit the nationalists always pull. It is not like only European countries who care about this sort of thing. It is just whataboutism.

But it isn't just deforesting. Same issue when India wants to use polluting sources of energy production that the West used with impunity for a long time.