Trump and the DNC: Fiddling while the Amazon burns
As an immigrant born in Brazil, I’ve always felt a closeness to the lungs of the world, as the famous Amazon rainforest is known. This summer, I had the privilege to meet and talk with Amazonian Wao-Rani queen Nemonte Nenquimo of Ecuador, when she visited San Francisco. Queen Nemonte was here to talk about just how urgent deforestation and climate change are in the rainforest, and about oil companies’ malpractices in the region.
Queen Nemonte’s urgency is apropos. The deforestation of the Amazon means the displacement of people and the acceleration of the earth’s environmental emergency. Now, those lungs are clogged with smoke. The smoke of more than 72,000 fires covers nearly half of the country and has begun to spill into neighboring Peru, Bolivia and Paraguay. The French and German governments are calling the situation an international crisis.
I grew up knowing from a very early age, the Amazon is integral to the health of the planet and of humankind, playing a crucial role in our global ecosystem. Half of the world’s remaining rainforest is in the Amazon. While deforestation has slowed from its peak in the 1990s — an area larger than California was decimated in just a couple of years — the Amazon rainforest is still shrinking. The practice of clear-cutting has greatly increased under President Jair Bolsonaro — an 80% increase in deforestation has occurred so far this year compared to last year, according to the Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research.
A quarter of the world’s land is stewarded by Indigenous Peoples like Queen Nemonte and the Wao-Rani; though they have done the least to create the current climate crisis, they are often the most affected by it. It is disturbing and wrong, how often they are left out of international summits and conversations about the environmental emergency. These are the people we must listen to and learn from to use land in ways that don’t destroy Earth.
Forests, and particularly the Amazon due to its size and vegetative biodiversity, are indispensable carbon sinks that absorb emissions and exhaust from our industrialized life. As the Amazon shrinks, so too does its capacity to take in atmospheric carbon dioxide and release much-needed oxygen (of which the Amazon rainforest produces 20% of the world’s supply).
What we can do
The Earth’s lungs are hurting. Deforestation is a result of our economic system’s constant need for profit, sustained by incessant consumption of resources and labor. We need to protect the forest still standing: it plays an essential part in slowing the effects of greenhouse gases.
For the land already cleared, regenerative systems of agriculture would reverse the current practice of treating the farmland as an expendable commodity and usher in more responsible stewardship of the land.
We have to stop treating the earth as an infinite store of natural resources; it’s not.
We have to stop treating the Indigenous Peoples who call the Amazon home as disposable; they’re not.
The Green New Deal calls for nationwide mobilization to address climate change, green energy, income and wealth inequality, and worker dignity simultaneously. It demands policies be centered around frontline communities — whether economically or environmentally disadvantaged, and oftentimes both — as the only way forward to true climate justice.
Our elected officials acknowledge that climate change is real, yet the Democratic National Committee this week voted against allowing 2020 candidates to participate in a climate debate, despite support from the Sunrise Movement and candidates Elizabeth Warren and Beto O’Rourke. At the same time, President Trump skipped the Climate Crisis and Amazon Fires talks at the G7 conference.
But there are things we can do. This week, I dropped in on the Sunrise Movement’s Bay Area Summit meeting, one of their largest training events yet. I met passionate young people from all over the country getting ready for the #GlobalClimateStrike. Visit the Sunrise Movement website and make a pledge to participate on September 20, 2020.
Fiddlers go home
Legend has it that while a fire destroyed the city of Rome, the emperor Nero played his violin rather than looking after the welfare of his citizens and his empire. Since then, ‘fiddling while Rome burns’ means to be irresponsible or focus on trivialities during an emergency. The climate crisis is an emergency, and Congress is fiddling.
Now it is time to act — we don’t have a second to waste. We don’t have time for congressional leadership that ignores the urgency of the climate crisis and dismisses bold policy plans as a “green dream, or whatever”.
San Francisco has long been a leader in environmental sustainability, being the first American city, for instance, to ban plastic bags. It’s not just San Francisco, either — voters around the country are ready for their representatives to take action on climate justice and labor dignity, and to lead the national and global conversation with ambitious policies. As the richest country in the history of the world, which built much of its wealth through unrelenting extraction of resources and incessant consumption of poorly compensated labor, we surely have a responsibility to be a leader in climate solutions. We must do, at a minimum, our fair share.
