Amazon Fires - A Weapon of Mass Climate Destruction

There is currently a tragedy of immense proportions occurring in the world's most bio diverse area, Amazonia.

Aaron Mak writes that most of the fires have been deliberately (or occasionally, inadvertently) set by people clearing land, as encouraged by Brazil's tyrant Jairo Bolsonaro.

Up until now, this blog has largely been written in support of carbon-free nuclear energy as a way to stave off climate change.

That support still exists, but these events in Brazil show that the world's environmental situation is dire and drastic.

The fires in Amazonia are a double blow to Earth's ecosystem. As the trees burn, enormous amounts of carbon are released into the atmosphere. Once the trees have burned, the destroyed trees can no longer act as a carbon sink and source of the oxygen that all animals including you and me need to survive.

Robinson Meyer notes that even if people were to attempt to replant the burned areas of the Amazon, millions of species of plants and animals would be lost and biodiversity would not be regenerated for 10 million years, multiple times longer than Homo sapiens has existed.

I have personally seen "replanting" in areas of the Andes. The trees that were planted were mostly a monoculture non-native Eucalyptus.  These Australian introductions consume more water than the native vegetation once consumed. The current government is now encouraging people to cut the eucalyptus down for lumber or firewood. and is trying to get people to plant native trees.

France has canceled a trade deal with Brazil because of Brazil's destruction of the most bio diverse region of Earth. In return, tyrant Bolsonaro raised a furor when he claimed that France was applying a colonialist mindset.

Bolsonaro is a tyrant because his actions threaten the survival of millions of people and the natural world itself.

Bolsonaro must be brought before the International Court of Justice in the Hague.

There must be an international commitment to protect Amazonia (what's left of it) with an international peacekeeping force that would block unauthorized entry by outsiders attempting to clear land but would strictly protect the rights of indigenous people who live in Amazonia. This concept is mentioned in part in an article by Franklin Foer in the The Atlantic. Foer notes that the existential threat to humanity posed by the burning of the Amazon is greater than the threat from weapons of mass destruction. He argues that the response to Brazil's governmental abuse of the Amazon must be as robust as the world's response to countries that produce WMD's.