By Allegheny Sierran Staff

By late August 2019, 40, 431 fires in the Amazon Rainforest had been reported by Brazil's National Institute for Space Research, a government agency tasked with tracking deforestation in that swath of plant habitat that accounts for 20% or one-fifth of atmospheric oxygen generated on earth. And the vast majority of these fires were started by human beings.

According to the New York Times, "natural fires in the Amazon are rare and the majority are set by farmers preparing the Amazon and adjoining land for next year's crops and pasture." July and August are considered the "fire months" in Brazil because that is when the majority of such fire-setting activity occurs. However, the average number of fires in the first eight months of 2019 has been recorded as 35% higher than in 2010, the next highest year in the current decade, and a 79% increase for the same period in 2018.

Photo by Elijah O'Donnell on Unsplash

While climate change did not cause the fires in the Amazon, the warmer and drier conditions can make fires worse by their burning hotter and spreading more quickly.

The primary cause of the increase in burning this year appears to be political. Last November, Brazilians elected as their president the far-right Jair Bolsonaro.

Sometimes called "the Trump of Brazil", Bolsonaro declared that "Brazil's vast protected land were obstacles to economic growth and promised to open them up to commercial exploitation", according to the New York Times.

What Bolsonaro was referring to was a series of laws and regulations enacted and enforced during the administrations of left-wing President Luiz Ignaciio da Silva and his successor President Wilma Roussef designed to protect the Amazon from illegal deforestation. Indeed, protecting the Amazon was the heart of Brazil's environmental policy during the time of their presidencies.

But in the first six months of the Bolsonaro presidency, 1,330 square miles of rain forest cover have been lost, an increase of 39% over the same period of time in 2018. During the same period, enforcement against illegal cutting, ranching, and mining on the part of Brazil's main environmental agency dropped by 20%.

Deforestation is a grave concern when it occurs anywhere on Earth, but, perhaps, most of all in the Amazon. The Amazon Rain Forest is often called "Earth's lungs" because of its huge capacity to store carbon and release oxygen. If enough of the forest is lost and can't be replaced, the Amazon will become a savanna which does not store as much carbon and the Earth would be afflicted with a case of planetary emphysema.

Like Donald Trump, Bolsonaro has dismissed the new data on deforestation and called his own government's figures "lies". He also reportedly told a European journalist: "The Amazon is ours, not yours."

And there he is wrong. As Thomas Jefferson said :"The earth belongs to the living." To all the living. What happens in the Amazon affects all of us, not just Brazilians. And what happens in the United States affects the rest of the world, not just North America..

The Earth belongs to all of us, and not just to reactionary politicians and their corporate puppet-masters. It is our right and our duty to let them know that.