Chart of the Day: The Amazon Is Burning, But Not Everyone Cares

The Amazon is burning and everyone is appalled. Almost everyone, anyway. Jeffrey Hoelle, who has done field research in the Amazon, says the residents of the rainforest often have a very different view:

A cattle rancher put it to me bluntly a few years ago: “You all tell me not to deforest. It’s easy, isn’t it? Mix a drink there [in the U.S. or Europe], and talk. Now why do we have to stop deforesting? I agree that we should not deforest more, but we have a lot of people here. How will they live? What is the average income in the USA? Give that much to every person here. Then we can all sit around and watch the little birds fly.”

This is the dynamic I was talking about yesterday. Everyone wants to halt climate change but no one wants to give up whichever part of it they depend on. The coal miners want to keep mining coal. The Germans want to get rid of their nukes. Fossil fuel companies want to keep drilling for oil. Drivers don’t want a big gas tax. And people who depend on the Amazon for their living don’t want to give up their clearcutting.

The saddest part of this is that for many years we were making substantial progress in the Amazon. Then Jair Bolsonaro, the Brazilian Donald Trump, took office:

We are not yet back up to the bad old days of the ’90s, but Bolsonaro has been in office less than a year. Give him time.

But Bolsonaro aside, that cattle rancher represents billions of people who live in poor countries. Sure, global warming is bad. But we live in shacks. Call us back when you’re willing to cut your carbon emissions back to the level of a rural Chinese farmer.

This is a hard argument to refute. Clearly the global West is not going to collectively agree to live like Chinese peasants. Just as clearly, the Chinese peasants aren’t willing to live in shacks while we sit around watching football on 60-inch TV screens in our air-conditioned houses while we lecture them about climate change. This is the hinge point on which the future of climate change depends. Even if we magically decarbonized the entire economies of America and Europe, it would have little effect unless developing countries also agree to rein in their carbon emissions at their current very low levels.

There’s no simple answer to this. But it has to be answered by any climate plan worth the name.

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with The Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with The Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate