When Brazilians elected a right-wing strongman as president in January, many environmentalists and climatologists were fearful of the harm he might allow profiteers to do to the Amazon rainforests, and their worst fears have been realized. President Jair Bolsonaro, a pig-headed strongman cut from the same cloth as Donald Trump, made a promise when he was campaigning for the office that he would allow ranchers, loggers, miners and farmers to burn huge swaths of the precious rainforest so they can raise cattle and otherwise exploit the land and he has delivered on his promise.
Brazilian environmental officials and federal prosecutors say that they sent a warning to the Bolsonaro administration that the land-grabbers who want control of vital parts of the Amazon were planning a day of coordinated fires on August 10, but the government stood by and did nothing to stop them. Now the fires are raging out of control while the government sits on its hands claiming they don’t have the resources to contain the conflagrations, all the while refusing financial assistance from other countries.
Bolsonaro commented that the international discussions to save the rainforest that took place during the recent G7 Summit in France were the product of a “colonial” mindset, and one of his top aides said any efforts to assist would be viewed as “imperialist” meddling.
Scientists consider the Amazon rainforest to be the “lungs” of the planet since it produces 20 percent of the world’s supply of oxygen. So if plunderers that are only interested in short-term profits are allowed to have their way eventually everyone on the planet will have to pay the price.
Nonetheless, Brazilian foreign minister Ernesto Araujo tweeted that it was “very evident” that the G7 was attempting to spin the fires into “a fabricated ‘crisis’ as a pretext for introducing mechanisms for external control of the Amazon.”
Germany and Norway both formerly contributed to Brazil’s Amazon Fund but suspended their efforts earlier in August. Over the past decade, Norway has donated $1.2 billion to the conservation fund, which is managed by the Brazilian Development Bank. Germany has contributed $68 million. However, the German Environment ministry said earlier this month it was suspending the program, and its planned donation of up to $35 million euros ($39 million), because of doubts over Brazil’s efforts to reduce deforestation. A few days later the Brazilian government dissolved the fund’s steering and technical committees.
By now it should be very clear to world leaders that current Brazilian regime is putting profit over people, and everyone on the planet will eventually suffer as deforestation takes place. So maybe it really is time for external control of the Amazon, even if the world powers have to take control by force. Oxygen is simply too necessary to allow complete fools to be in charge of such a vital resource.
From CoolCleveland correspondent Mansfield B. Frazier mansfieldfATgmail.com. Frazier’s From Behind The Wall: Commentary on Crime, Punishment, Race and the Underclass by a Prison Inmate is available in hardback. Snag your copy and have it signed by the author at http://NeighborhoodSolutionsInc.
One Response to “MANSFIELD: Whose Planet Is It Anyway?”
Mike Johnson
Hear, hear