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from IPS Website
We live in different worlds.
Global spheres of international finance, politics, climate change, etc., contexts that might threaten our smaller circle of relationships:
However, even at those levels there exist small circles of acquaintances and associates able to make decisions that affect the entire humankind.
Let me take one example:
Ten years ago, I flew across the Amazon Jungle, amazed by its immensity though also alarmed by scares where thick greenery had been cleared away and substituted by dismal remains of dead trees, or dry cattle pastures and soy plantations.
Logging and mining are
the greatest dangers to Amazonia since its exposed soil is generally
old, weathered, acidic, infertile, and subject to compaction from
intense solar radiation.
The IPCC, which in 2007 was rewarded the Nobel Peace Prize, was established in 1988.
The U.S. Government was
the main force for making the IPCC an autonomous intergovernmental
body supporting a consensus between the participating nations.
In 2013, one of its reports declared that:
Nevertheless, several influential world leaders and their sycophants refuse to accept unequivocal findings and warnings issued by the IPCC, among them the U.S. president, who continues to make badly informed, even mind-numbing statements, like:
While speaking about any scientific issue he does not know much about it is common that President Trump refers to "Uncle John", to whom he quite obviously did not speak about climate change, since Dr. Trump was a professor of engineering at a time when the phenomenon was hardly spoken of outside limited expert groups. 3
Donald Trump likes to refer to John Trump, who died in 1985, arguing that,
The current U.S. president assumes he has 'superior' genes as well:
On 8 August this year, the IPCC launched a 1,200-page Special Report of Climate Change and Land, highlighting that human activities directly affect more than 70 percent of earth's ice-free land.
A quarter of this land is already severely degraded.
Five hundred million people are currently living in areas experiencing desertification, while agriculture continuous to use 70 percent of the earth's freshwater.
Our planet's vegetation currently absorbs only 30 percent of CO2 emissions, which contribute to global warming, but the ongoing clearing of forests increases average world temperature at an alarming speed, while access to freshwater is constantly decreasing.
During the last decades, the average temperature has 'increased' by 1,53º C. 5
This critical situation could probably be reversed if agricultural and forestry methods are drastically changed from a present state of overexploitation, characterized by excessive use of,
...and other harmful
practices favored by large-scale agricultural producers.
The world's largest tropical rainforest is currently under a lethal threat from President Bolsonaro, a powerful supporter of large-scale agribusiness he is complaining about foreign pressure to safeguard Amazonia.
Bolsonaro is following in Trump's footsteps, for example by threatening to withdraw from the Paris Agreement.
His Minister of Foreign Affairs has called global warming a plot by "cultural Marxists", while Bolsonaro declares that "Amazonas is ours and ours alone", accusing "foreign NGOs" of intending to steal natural resources of its rainforest from Brazil and hand it over to European exploiters.
Furthermore, he accuses indigenous groups of keeping Amazonia away from the Brazilian people, trying to maintain it "at a prehistoric level".
Accordingly, Bolsonaro
has withdrawn governmental support to FUNAI, the National Indian
Foundation, which up until now has carried out policies related
to indigenous people. He has also eliminated the Climate Change
Division of the Ministry of Environment, as well as two
departments that dealt with climate change mitigation and
deforestation.
Credit: Amazonian Network of Georeferenced Socio-Environmental Information
Bolsonaro immediately
fired INPE's director, Ricardo Galvao, accusing him of being
in the service of "some NGO's" and that he himself would not fall
victim to any "environmental psychosis". 6
Bolsonaro's regime is already after half a year threatening not only Brazil with a moral and ecological meltdown, but the entire world as well.
On March 28th The Economist described Bolsonaro's government as being in a state of monumental confusion.
Apart from the economic team, it is a warring assortment of retired generals, mid-ranking politicians, evangelical Protestants and far right ideologues.
Despots like Hitler, Stalin, and Mao Zedong have proved that a single man and his acolytes can bring,
Remembering men like those and learning about the views, aspirations, and actions of people like Trump and Bolsonaro make it imperative for all of us to become aware of the craziness of these two leaders and the fatal consequences of their actions.
All humanity must now join forces to support national and global efforts to save our planet.
References
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