If the Amazon rainforest is critical in holding back global warming – as a lung which helps the planet to breathe – then the wildfires now burning across the Amazon region of South America can be likened to lung cancer, a threat to life. Nothing could be more alarming, therefore, than the fact that the leaders of the two states most implicated, Brazil and the United States, are both climate change deniers. Presidents Jair Bolsonaro and Donald Trump refuse to accept that the planet is sick, and scornfully disparage international efforts to heal it.
The Brazilian government has rejected the offer of $22m from the countries of the G7, agreed at the summit hosted by the French in Biarritz, saying it smacks of colonialism. Yet Brazil has recently complained that it lacks sufficient resources to fight the thousands of fires now raging.
29 August 2019, The Tablet
Amazon synod must speak out
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