The rainforests are burning. This is a total crisis; we need all hands on deck. The Amazon provides most of the world’s oxygen, and these fires are completely unprecedented. Left alone, they’ll destroy the entire Amazon and the whole world will be doomed.
What’s worse is that the fires are being set deliberately. Brazillians are doing it to steal land from the indigenous people, and they’re doing it at the direction of Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro.
Bolsonaro is a mustache-twirling villain who stripped away environmental protections and told the people of Brazil to burn down the most important rainforest in the world. This is just another example of capitalism being racist and dooming humanity.
This is the narrative being pushed by leftists around the world right now. Celebrities and even political leaders (including Trudeau and Macron) are parroting these claims.
The Truth
This story might be the biggest lie of the year. Considering Jussie Smollett, the Covington scandal and the Mueller report, that’s not a small statement. Still, this whopper is something else. It’s so bad that even the New York Times has gone on record correcting the narrative. They then published roughly a dozen stories that contradict that correction, so don’t kid yourself about where they stand.
Let’s start debunking this idiocy with the truth. There are fires in the Amazon. When you consider that the Amazon is roughly as big as all of the states from the Pacific Ocean to the Mississippi River, you expect there to be at least a few fires every year. Another tiny fraction of truth is that a fair number of the fires in contention were in fact set on purpose. That’s where the truth ends.
First off, the fires that are actually in the Amazon are primarily in Bolivia. They’re also below the average rate of burning for the last 10 years. The rate of burning is technically a lot higher than 2018, but last year had all-time record lows.
The fires in Brazil are mostly south of the Amazon. They’re being set on farmlands as part of the annual agricultural cycle. It’s standard procedure to burn brush and logs to clear room for the next crop. None of that burning is actually in the rainforest.
Now, let’s discuss the Amazon itself. Since the turn of the century, deforestation has dropped by more than 20 percent. Less than four percent of the Amazon can be legally utilized for logging, agriculture or other commercial purposes. The rest is protected by law. Human activity isn’t threatening the Amazon at all, and Bolsonaro has been an advocate for keeping those protections in place.
Even if that wasn’t the case, the Amazon is nowhere near as important as the left will tell you. It isn’t the lungs of the planet. According to one of the lead authors on the most recent IPCC report, the Amazon is net neutral for oxygen and carbon dioxide production.
If it was gone, the atmosphere wouldn’t notice. It wouldn’t create massive new deserts. The left really is making this stuff up as they go.
The Ulterior Motive
Think about the magnitude of this lie. French President Emanuel Macron actually pushed the G7 to offer firefighting funds to Brazil, just to emphasize how serious he is about protecting the Amazon.
Yet, every satellite and scientist involved is telling us that there’s no problem. A decade or more ago, there was a huge problem, and the left was silent. But, now that everything is actually in good shape for the Amazon, they’re pouncing.
It boils down to two things. First, let’s talk about French President Macron. He inherited a trade deal with Brazil, and now that it is run by a conservative, he wants out. It’s no coincidence that he started talking about Amazon fires at the exact same time he made moves to end this trade deal. That’s the real motivation for him.
For everyone else, it’s just an attempt to smear Bolsonaro. He’s the most conservative leader Brazil has had, possibly ever. He has restored gun rights and rapidly ended a bunch of socialist policies in the country. Brazil is responding fast, and things are improving in one of the most important countries in Latin America.
The socialists of the world can’t afford to see Brazil succeed as a capitalist country. If they do, the rest of Latin America might follow suit, and the strongest socialist block in the world would crumble.
Ultimately, the virtue signaling you’re seeing around the Amazon is just the same, old, tired play the left throws at everyone. They’re treating Bolsonaro like the Donald Trump of Latin America. They blame him for problems that don’t exist, and, of course, the entire world will end if you don’t listen to them.
The easiest way to see through the lies is to look at the money. How much forest fighting could you actually do with $20 million? It wouldn’t be enough to save the entire Amazon. If human survival were really at stake, don’t you think the members of the G7 would be willing to fork over a little more help than that? President Trump could write a larger personal check than that.
So, no, the Amazon isn’t burning. It’s doing better than we’ve seen in decades, and the “evil” Bolsonaro is partly to thank for that. Don’t believe the lies. Don’t let the left use this bull to seize more power.
