What You Need To Know About The Amazonian Fires: 'The Climate Crisis Is Here, Now, Today'

By Lauren Rearick


At 3 p.M. On Wednesday, August 21, darkness fell over São Paulo, the hugest city in Brazil. For one hour, the mid-afternoon sky of the seventh most populated city in the world was shrouded in smoke, resulting in a scene that some on social media compared to the apocalypse.


Brazil’s National Institute of Meteorology attributed the smoke and resulting darkening to unprecedented wildfires currently raging in the Amazon rainforest, Buzzfeed reported. As experts warned, mid-afternoon darkness is just the starting of potential repercussions from the fires that have grown large enough to be spotted from space.


The supply gained viral prominence immediately after celebrities and popular social media accounts urged people to take action. Zoë Kravitz reposted a tweet that asked why billionaires and media outlets weren’t rushing to completely mask the fires with the same urgency because the fire that threatened Paris’s Notre Dame cathedral earlier this year. Actor and environmentalist Leonardo DiCaprio reposted a telephone call to action from the Rainforest Alliance. Other celebrities, including models Adriana Lima and Alessandra Ambrosio, who are from Brazil, helped signal boost the crisis with reposts of their own.


Wildfires are a usual occurrence in the Amazon rainforest, particularly while in the dry season, Reuters announced, yet this year, the rainforest has experienced a record breaking variety of blazes. The INPE, Brazil’s National Institute for Space Statistics, has detected 72,843 current fires, Reuters announced, and environmentalists blame the relaxed environmental policy of the country’s President, Jair Bolsonaro for the spike, CBS News reported.


Bolsonaro took office in January 2019; since then, the INPE noted a marked increase in the collection of wildfires. The president has fought back against announced claims that his lax environmental policies encouraged an increase in deforestation, telling reporters on Tuesday, August 20, that it was “the season of the queimada,” a period in which farmers clear land with fire, CBS News reported. Bolsonaro also claimed without any proof that “foreign-backed nonprofit groups” began some of the fires as a personalized attack against him.


However according to ecologist and National Geographic Explorer-at-Large Thomas Lovejoy, there’s only one thing to blame for the fires: deforestation.


Carlos Durigan, WCS Brazil Nation Director at the Bronx Zoo, explained to MTV News that it is typical for Amazonian people, both Indgenious and non-indengious, to rely on burning a section of land for farming, nevertheless that agriculture practice is routinely focused on a localized and small area, and is often done in keeping with practices that sustain and support the rest of the forest. It is any time groups like cattle ranchers clear vast swaths of forest with little regard to the ecosystems that things can and do become more dire.


should these fires continue at their current rate, experts are concerned about potential environmental impacts and the displacement of nearly one million Indgenious peoples that call the rainforests house. “Rainforests are crucial to our planetary health as they supply a wide span of biodiversity and other ecosystem services, including keeping carbon locked in land,” Alex Antram, Rainforest Trust conservation outreach manager, told MTV News. “Uncontrolled anthropogenic (human caused) fires speedily release stored carbon into our atmosphere, damaging global ecological processes. The Amazon alone produces over 20 percent of Earth’s oxygen and its preservation is vital. Without the defense of the hugest rainforest on earth, our planet will be left more and more at risk of the climate crisis which threatens all species, including us.”


More than half of the earth’s flowers and animals call the rainforest residence, Karen Vacco, assistant curator of mammals at the Pittsburgh Zoo and PPG Aquarium told MTV News. She mentioned that a loss of those creatures could have a potentially “devastating” impact on the environment, and noted that rainforests slow climate change by taking in carbon dioxide. And also a loss of animals, Durigan warned that neighboring areas could experience air pollution which may result in sickness, and that the farmers and people which rely on the rainforest for their livelihood may experience a loss of income.


Under typical circumstances, rainforests are able to recover from wildfires, Antram mentioned. However this year’s wildfires are “unprecedented” Antram, and also Laurel Sutherlin, spokesperson for Rainforest Action Network, believe our best way forward is preservation. “The climate crisis is here, right now, today,” Sutherlin mentioned. “If we hope to leave a livable world for future generations the only proportionate response is to drastically transform our current fossil fueled economy and take every action needed to protect irreplaceable treasures like the Amazon, and that demonstrates standing up for the land rights of the indigenous people who live there."


For those that aspire to help sustain the rainforests, Antram planned finding a business to support: Rainforest Trust, Rainforest Action Network, Amazon Watch, and the Rainforest Foundation are just some of the several charities you could donate to. In case you don’t have the monetary means to help, Antram mentioned that changing your day-to-day habits to be more environmentally friendly is also an excellent place to start: Try purchasing environmentally friendly products, supporting agencies that don’t rely on deforestation, decrease or reuse your use of paper and animal products like meat, and encourage politicians and agencies to get involved in preservation efforts through social media. .