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22 September 2024
There are so many things going wrong with the world, our home. Yet, many of us constantly live in a state of apathy and denial. We point fingers and push the blame to someone else who’s magically supposed to save us. We’re waiting for a technological breakthrough to fall down from the heavens and rescue us. We’re allowing business to continue as usual when we are watching parts of our planet go up in flames all around us. What will it take for us to wake up and realise, we need to do something drastic, and we need to have done it yesterday.
Our world is on fire. Literally. The lungs of our planet, the Amazon, have been burning for days now. What’s crazy is, I used to live there. For a period of time, I worked as the Director of Administration for Comunidad Inti Wara Yassi in Bolivia. Our head office, my home for 10 months, was in Parque Machia, where we supported the running of our other two branches, Ambue Ari, and Jacq Cuisi. Ambue Ari is on fire. An article about the blaze reads, “One of the complex cases of moving is a cougar, called Marley, rescued from illicit trafficking that must be sedated for its transfer.” Marley, the puma that came to us as a wee kitten. She’s tattooed on my leg and I still bear scars from her little paws. It hurts me to know that she and so many other animals and staff that I still know, are victims to those flames. Flames that will affect the entire planet. Those flames are causing rain to fall on the countries surrounding them – black rain. Uruguay’s Montevideo is 2,840km away from Ambue Ari – yet all the way over there residents have “experienced poor visibility for several days due to the dense smoke cloud and black rain”.
Why should we care about something happening so far away from us?
Why should we care in our little comfortable air-conditioned well-fed bubbles?
Because the Amazon is what is keeping us alive. It is home to a third of all the world’s tropical rainforests and 10% of all the recorded wildlife species. Already, the Amazon has been decimated through deforestation. Swathes of forests are cleared and burned for agricultural use, logging, and mining. A lot of the forest clearing is illegal. While lithium is being hailed as a clean-energy source, its origins include the Amazon. Activities funded by countries around the world are driving poor, local people to evacuate, animals to lose their habitats, and vast areas of forests to be dug up.
You know all the carbon emissions everyone is talking about? The race to net zero? The IPCC reports? Well, all that carbon dioxide given off by burning fossil fuels (yes, there are many other things emitted) stay around in our atmosphere for a very, very long time. While methane has global warming potential 28 times that of carbon dioxide, it stays in the atmosphere for 7-12 years. Carbon dioxide, anywhere between 300 to 1000 years. So, the absolutely terrifying fact is that even if every single carbon dioxide producing plant, factory, company, country stopped tomorrow, we’d still be in big trouble. But trees, they’re carbon sinks. A report by Nature Climate Change stated that forests sequester “7.6 billion metric tonnes of CO2 per year. 1.5 times more carbon than the United States emits annually.” That was recorded between 2001 and 2019. Now, between 2017 and 2022, “more than 800 million trees” were cleared to make way for beef production in the Amazon. Couple that with the current raging wildfires and then think about where all the carbon dioxide that used to be absorbed by those felled trees and the carbon dioxide (among other things) being released into the atmosphere as the Amazon burns, is going.
Why is carbon dioxide such an issue? Carbon dioxide is one of three major greenhouse gases, the other two being methane and water vapour. The greenhouse effect is necessary to make sure that Earth remains habitable. Without it our global average temperatures would plummet to -18°C. To put that into perspective - the difference between our ‘comfortable’ temperatures today and the last ice age, 20,000 years ago – was only 5°C. And now think about why the Paris Agreement is trying to keep global temperature increase to between 1.5°C and 2°C. Excess carbon dioxide, which we now know stays in the atmosphere for a very, very long time is causing an additional greenhouse effect. Wrapping the planet in blanket after blanket after blanket – thus causing extreme weather, shifting seasons, and raging fires.
2°C is a big deal.
The more we sit and point fingers, the more people and animals around us will die. We’re already facing the 6th largest mass extinction. Scientist have proven that it is human activity that is perpetuating all this chaos. And not just recently, they’ve repeated this over and over. In 2019, 11,000 scientists warned of “untold suffering due to the climate crisis”. Not the first warning, definitely not the last.
How much more destruction needs to happen to our home before we take a step back, listen, and decide that we need a full systems overhaul?
How many will we just leave to let deal with the plight of the planet while we continue with our convenient luxurious lives?
When will you wake up and realise that you’re responsible?
That we’re all responsible?
We’re all part of the problem and everyone has to do their part before we all go up in flames.
The days of finger pointing, denialism, and apathy are over.
We can only do what we can do, in our own way – but you need to do that at least.
What are you waiting for?
Pull in that hair Rapunzel. Hike up your gown and get to work saving yourself.
The castle is on fire.