How a Progressive White House might handle the Amazon
The world is burning, and to the surprise of no one, President Trump is failing us. Actually, he’s not failing us, he’s actively making it worse. Times seem grim, but they provide plenty of opportunities to do better. Imagining and exploring how a Progressive White House would handle the Amazon crisis can better equip our movement for the challenges ahead.
It’s the Economy, unfortunately…
At the time of this writing, over 74,000 fires have destroyed about 7,200 square miles of forest in the Brazilian portion of the Amazon in 2019 as per Brazil’s National Institute of Space Research [1]. By all accounts, this is a total disaster brought upon by Brazil’s president Bolsonaro’s approval to overlook illegal logging and fire clearing of the forest.
The primary reason for burning the lungs of our planet at a time of global climate crisis? Economics. The land is being cleared for cattle grazing and raising. The world eats a lot of meat, and Brazil is the largest global exporter of beef, accounting for 20% globally [2]. USDA Research shows us that the United States imported 140.9 million pounds of beef from Brazil in 2018. Comparing January 2018 to 2019, we see a 39% increase in our Brazilian beef purchasing.
