The hashtag
#PrayForAmazonia went viral on Tuesday as social media users tried to draw the
world’s attention to the Amazon rainforest, which has been devastated for weeks
by fires so powerful they can be observed from space. According to Euro News,
it is uncertain if the fires were produced by agricultural activity or
deforestation. Both have accelerated fast under Brazilian President Jair
Bolsonaro, who made opening the Amazon to corporate misuse a key plank of his
election movement.
Twitter
users on Tuesday condemned the media for paying too little attention to the
Amazon fires, mainly given the vital role the rainforest plays in absorbing
planet-warming carbon dioxide—a capability that earned it the nickname “lungs
of the world.”
“The Amazon
has been burning for three weeks, and I’m just now finding out because of the
lack of media coverage,” wrote one observer. “This is one of the most important
ecosystems on Earth.”
Satellite
data gathered by the Brazilian government’s National Space Research Institute
(INPE) issued in June revealed that deforestation has increased radically under
Bolsonaro, who sacked the research as “a lie” and fired INPE director Ricardo
Galvão for defending the data. As The Guardian stated, the INPE results
revealed the Amazon “lost 739sq km during the 31 days [of May], equivalent to
two football pitches every minute.”
The fires
have become so strong that smoke from the blaze darkened the afternoon sky on
Monday in São Paulo, Brazil’s most populated city.
“The Amazon
rainforest has been on fire for weeks, and it’s so bad it’s literally blotting
out the sun miles away,” tweeted Robert Maguire, research director at U.S. government
watchdog group Citizens for Ethics and Responsibility in Washington.
The support
group Amazon Watch on Tuesday called the Bolsonaro regime’s attacks on the
world’s biggest rainforest “an international tragedy.”
“What can we
do?” the group tweeted. “1. Support the courageous resistance of the indigenous
peoples of the Amazon. 2. Make clear to the agribusiness and financiers
involved in the destruction that we won’t buy their products.”
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