The Burning Amazon
In the last 2 weeks the media has been ablaze with warnings about the thousands of fires that are burning currently in the Amazon. Besides the destruction of one of Earth’s most bio-diverse regions, it is also threatening the ability of this rainforest to continue to be the “lungs of the earth”.
Since the election of Brazil’s current president, Jair Bolsonaro, there has been a noticeable slack in the country’s environmental laws which has made it possible for destruction of the Amazon on a large scale. There has been intentional burning of forest for agricultural purposes, mining, logging and other industries as well as an increase in wildfires due to climate change. And while, many publications are focusing on the political responses to this issue, in this article, we will take a closer look at what it means for the lungs of Earth to be in peril.
Breathing for the planet
The Amazon Rainforest is one of the great natural marvels of the earth. It contains about half of all biodiversity as well as about half the planets remaining rainforests. The sheer size and diversity of the rainforest does two major things for our planet. It hold about 10% of the carbon dioxide in its 390 billion individual trees, as well as absorbs another 10% of the carbon dioxide released in the air every year by human activities like driving cars and flying plane.
What the many species of plants in The Amazon do so effectively is use the natural process of photosynthesis to literally wash our air of excess carbon dioxide. But, this year the Amazon has seen a record amount of forest fires that threaten the entire region. With the Amazon on fire, this puts the planets lungs in critical condition, and further exacerbates climate change.
The G7 and climate change
This past weekend the G7 summit was held in Paris. But before world leaders from the UK, Germany, USA, Italy, Japan, and Canada had arrived, President Macron refocused the agenda to the emergency in The Amazon. While climate change was already set to be a topic of discussion at the summit, Macron’s shift made the ongoing fires in the Amazon a central part of the meeting.
As a result, the G7 came to an agreement to fund a long term initiative to protect the rainforest and to deal with the current crisis of the Amazon’s ongoing fires. But Brazil’s president recently rejected the aid package agreed upon at the G7, as well as aid offered by individual nations like the UK and Canada and groups such as Earth Alliance, claiming that the west was trying to gain access to his nation’s resources. Even with the efforts being made to end the fires in The Amazon, many climate change activists feel that it is not enough to ensure that we reverse the effects on the planet. Although there has been an unprecedented agreement in the Paris Climate Accord, which requires each of the 196 countries to determine, plan, and regularly report on its efforts to mitigate global warming, many agree that more has to be done in order to make a significant difference.
What more can be done?
The need to protect the earths ecosystems from destructive climate change will have to involve a multi-pronged approach. The attention of the world, and the world’s leaders, is currently focused on the emergency of climate change. That focus has been put squarely on carbon emissions and the role that it has in greenhouse gas built-up and the warming of the planet.
Plainly stated, carbon emissions are a part of natural processes. Every time we breath out, we exhale carbon dioxide. But since the industrial revolution there has been a marked increase due to combustion of fuels, the increase in agriculture and livestock, as well as deforestation.
This is why the Amazon’s function as the world’s largest rainforest is so vital. It is a natural cleanser for some of the excess carbon dioxide that human activity has created in the world. But, activities like forest fires, which simultaneously destroy trees that take in carbon dioxide, as well as release more carbon dioxide from the burning forest, create large threats to our ability to reverse carbon emissions and therefore help to reverse the effects of climate change.
To help remedy our ongoing “carbon problem” a new industry has sprung up around carbon capture and utilization. Carbon capture involves trapping carbon that is in the atmosphere and storing it for further use down the line. Carbon utilization is the process of using that stored carbon, or even carbon produced during a process, so that it never gets released into the atmosphere.
The combination of these two methods, often referred to as CCUS (carbon capture utilization and storage), is seen by many as an integral piece of the puzzle of meeting the worlds energy demands while also reducing the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. Even with the adoption of clean energy and efficient energy solutions, without CCUS our world CO2 problem won’t be solved. Nature’s solution to this has been photosynthesis, and perhaps the best way to assist nature is to be inspired by it.
Biomimcry and CCU
While the concept of biomimcry (creating systems that emulate natural ones) is nothing new, it’s role in sustainability is paramount. This concept was popularized by scientist Janine Benyus in her 1997 book Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature. In it, Benyus describes how the study of nature is revolutionizing the way that we design, invent, and solve problems sustainably.
The Amazon rainforest is a sustainable ecosystem that helps to extract extra carbon dioxide from the air without creating harmful waste. As we scale up CCU systems to assist in dealing with excess carbon dioxide in the air, we should work towards emulating the same process. Finding pathways, such as photosynthesis that can continue the work that the earth’s plants and forest do is a big part of what drives us here at Cemvita Factory.
While the fate of The Amazon hangs on the choices we make as individuals, businesses, and societies, we cannot forget to also invest in additional methods to spur along the process of sustainable energy. The destruction of The Amazon further drives back our ability to combat climate change efforts, secure biodiversity, and maintain quite possibly the most important lungs on the planet. In its wake, we also need to proactively continue to work toward efforts that augment nature’s systems in this critical fight against an abundance of carbon dioxide on earth.
