The fires in the Amazon, which reaches across nine South American nations, are the result of an extreme drought fueled by climate change, experts said.
The region has been feeling the effects of a natural weather phenomenon known as El Niño, which can worsen dry conditions that were intensified this year by extremely high temperatures.
That has made the rainforest more vulnerable to fast-spreading blazes, said Ane Alencar, the science director at the Amazon Environmental Research Institute in Brazil.
“The climate is leaving forests in South America more flammable,” she said. “It’s creating opportunities for wildfires.”
Hopefully not too depressing of a take, but:
On the scale of the planet as a whole system (looking at the forest, and not the trees): humans are commodity – there are billions upon billions of humans. But there is only one planet, with one atmosphere. If we wait for every human life to have unlimited value in every jurisdiction on earth – we will wait forever. And then it will be too late and we’re all going to fry in our utopian hell on earth.
In whatever jurisdiction you’re in, you should be pushing for large scale planet-affecting changes to how the civilization behaves with regard to our stewardship of the planet.
And yes, you can do both at the same time.
(I’m a huge fan of Iain M Banks’s Culture series. There is a Utopian future that is possible, where everything is simultaneously carefully managed, but individual freedom and prosperity coexists.)