Opinion
You’re a bunch of hypocrites
By Alma Fabiani
You read that correctly and I’ll repeat it again: you’re all a bunch of hypocrites but then again, so am I. You’re probably wondering where these accusations are coming from. What could I possibly be referring to? That in itself is sort of ironic because it is exactly where our problem lies—it is likely that you haven’t even heard of what I’m going to mention. And if you did, unfortunately, with the whole COVID-19 pandemic going on, you just ignored it completely.
Enough suspense for now. Remember last year, August 2019 to be more precise, when a light was shone on the record-breaking volume of wildfires that had been raging across the Amazon in Brazil for a few months? No? What about #PrayForAmazonia, is it starting to come back to you now? I bet it is, because I went through the same process. If you need a more in-depth recapitulation, Screen Shot wrote about it at the time.
I clearly remember posting those eerie photos and videos of São Paulo covered by plumes of smoke from the fires, which led to a mid-day blackout in Brazil’s largest city, to my Instagram Story. I remember using the same hashtag everyone was using just to reassure myself that, as bad as the situation was, at least I was doing everything I could to help. I probably even donated here and there, and I’m sure you did the same. And then, once the whole thing quieted down, we patted ourselves on the shoulder because well done for saving the Amazon rainforest and then we forgot about it.
What you probably didn’t hear about though, is that the exact same thing happened this summer too. Only this year, there wasn’t a #PrayForAmazonia in sight—not on my Instagram feed and certainly not on yours. Even when it comes to the few of us who might have heard about it somewhere, somehow, that didn’t change anything. We were all too busy worrying about coronavirus (and for good reasons), which simply meant that we didn’t have the time nor the mental energy to care about something other than ourselves.
Of course, I’m not blaming any of you for that. We’ve now become incapable of accepting more than one world problem at a time, and there’s a reason for that. We’re constantly bombarded with bad news. We then sort through it and pin the worst one, or at least the one we think is the most important, to the top of our worries. All the rest becomes background noise.
Now is the time to multitask, and by that I mean it’s time we post our Instagram posts and tweets full of crying emojis again, and we should do more. Brazil has a variety of different environments, from grassland and wetland to rainforest. To put that into perspective, around 60 per cent of the Amazon rainforest is in Brazil, and it plays a crucial role in absorbing harmful CO2 that would otherwise escape into the atmosphere. That’s why, when people learned about the fires in 2019, they freaked out.
Until July 2020, the total number of fires in Brazil’s Amazon were high but slightly lower than last year. But after July, a surge in blazes appeared earlier than normally expected, which represented a 55.6 per cent increase of the average. As it later turned out, an increase had also happened in June (19.6 per cent compared to June 2019, and 36.1 per cent compared to the average for the month of June between 2010 and 2019).
Furthermore, the peak of the fire season is often seen in August and September, and while alerts in August were similar to the number recorded last year, fires in 2020 are at the second-highest level since 2010. According to the BBC, “In the first seven months of 2020, more than 13,000 square kilometres (5,019 square miles) of the Brazilian Amazon was burned, according to analysis of satellite data provided by Dr Michelle Kalamandeen, a tropical ecologist on the Amazon rainforest.” That’s more than eight times the size of London.
On top of that, once forests are torched, they struggle to grow back. Recovery may occur but never fully. In areas around Novo Progresso in Para state, farmers reportedly held a “day of fire” last year. Satellites have picked up more than 1,300 fire alerts in August, according to official statistics. To the north-east, the large municipality of Altamira recorded the most fires in Brazil’s Amazon region during this period.
As fires continue in the region, critics complain about a lack of sufficient enforcement. And Brazil is not the only country suffering from alarming fires. The number of forest fires in the Amazon regions of Colombia, Peru and Venezuela is also up from this time last year. According to Dr Kalamandeen, who spoke to the BBC, for Amazonian countries, mining and agriculture are driving deforestation and as a result, forest fires.
We’re now reaching the end of September and the latest fires, which are likely to continue in October, are bound to have a massive impact on the environment. That’s why we’re all hypocrites. So, if you’re willing to help—or at least if you want to make yourself feel a tiny bit better—now is the time to do so. Let’s post #PrayForAmazonia once more. Let’s force Bezos to pledge his donation of $1 million again, just like we did during the Australian fires. Let’s just do more, do something so we don’t continue as hypocrites until there is nothing left.
