As the Amazon region undergoes eco-collapse, corporate media focuses on the shiny
Last week’s death by heat of a young Brazilian Swiftie concertgoer was breathlessly covered by global media. The record heatwave involved was noted as a component of the story, but typically missed the much much larger story: the accelerating eco-collapse of Amazonia as Brazil recorded its highest temp of all time (112.6°F) and the nation’s hottest driest winter ever. One more broken record in the hottest planetary year in hundreds of thousands of years.
We are now in mid-spring in the Southern hemisphere and the web of waterways that are the lifeblood of the region are drying up, leaving boats stranded in the muddy river bottoms. Water levels in the mighty Amazon and its tributaries are at never before seen lows as the ocean forces salt water deeper into the delta. If the pattern prevails, the hydroelectric dams that are the main source of energy in the Amazon region will fail.
The global climate catastrophe is the driving force behind the emergency, but human activity – as always – has pushed the region to the brink. Healthy forests once generated regular rainfall and cooled the region naturally. Those days are gone. The pattern now in effect is a typical climate feedback loop, with higher temperatures triggering more fires which burn more trees which create a warmer climate. The local crisis is a climate disaster within a climate disaster.
“The forest is succumbing,” Climate Observatory executive secretary Marcio Astrini told the Financial Times in November. “It doesn’t happen as a whole or all at once, but in some regions you’re already experiencing these inflection points.”
With forests already slashed by cattle ranching, mining and illegal logging, new blazes are filling the air with smoke so toxic that school is canceled in Manaus and other cities. Through the bleak landscape wander emaciated cattle, simultaneously cause and victims of the drought and toxic air in the shrinking tropical forest.
The wandering cows are evidence of one of the most dangerous and persistent climate crimes on the planet, as the herds serve to protect the claims of the criminals who introduce them to the land they have cleared by fire. Brazil’s 220 million cows produce a carbon footprint greater than all of the nation of Japan.
Palm trees shrivel and the leaves wrinkle up. Mass dolphin die-offs are photographed and cataloged in 102°F waters as the rains decline to make an appearance. Food and drinking water are already scarce.
States of Emergency
With forests already slashed by cattle ranching, mining and illegal logging, new blazes are filling the air with smoke so toxic that school is canceled in Manaus and other cities. Through the bleak landscape wander emaciated cattle, simultaneously cause and victims of the drought and toxic air in the shrinking tropical forest. Palm trees shrivel and the leaves wrinkle up. Mass dolphin die-offs are photographed and cataloged in 102°F waters as the rains decline to make an appearance. Food and drinking water are already scarce.
Seventy-five percent of the states in the Amazonas region have declared a state of emergency, this only two years after the worst flooding catastrophes of all time. The flood drought flood model that characterizes the dawning Anthropocene epoch becomes more extreme with each cycle.
Like Moses’s wives, the name of this deceased Brazilian music fan is not easy to find in the reporting. Ana Clara Benevides Machado’s death is only important to the media in the context of megastar Taylor Swift. Similarly, the fact that her death was a small component in the collapse of the world’s largest rain forest was barely noted…and then they move on to the next shiny thing.
Until we grow up as a species, our prospects for surviving the climate crash will continue to dim.