A weekly reckoning with life in a warming world—and the fight to save it

The first half of this year has seen the highest rate of deforestation of the Amazon rain forest in history, the AP reported yesterday. Between January and June, 1,500 square miles were razed—and this in the rainy season, when deforestation typically slows.

This news dovetails with a piece Andre Pagliarini wrote for TNR last week, looking at current Brazilian politics. “Amazon deforestation today is perpetrated mainly by illicit prospectors, loggers, and cattle ranchers—some of [current President Jair] Bolsonaro’s biggest supporters,” Andre wrote. But in October, Bolsonaro will be facing a challenger, former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who has  a much stronger record on environmental protections. As Andre explained:

Lula’s campaign platform, crucially, rejects Bolsonaro’s thesis that economic development and the health of the Amazon rain forest are a zero-sum game. (Bolsonaro has blamed environmentalists and Indigenous peoples for holding back the exploitation of natural resources.) In sketching out his vision for a return to national office, Lula has emphasized two major themes. First, improving living conditions for the millions of poor Brazilians who have faced hunger and immiseration as the country’s economic fortunes dwindled in recent years.… But the second priority Lula has staked out is defending the Amazon from wanton destruction. “We will fight environmental crimes … and we will ensure protection of the rights and territories of Indigenous people against the advance of predatory activities,” the former president announced last month.

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The electoral contest in October, then, will have both local—in terms of affecting the people who live in the Amazon—and global ramifications, given the rain forest’s status as a vital carbon sink. Many world leaders “have barely disguised their eagerness to see Bolsonaro cast out of office,” Andre added.

This isn’t the only sign we’ve had recently that climate change is rapidly transforming global politics. TNR contributor Stephen Lezak also emphasized this recently, writing about how the anticipated melting of the Arctic Ocean has emboldened Russian President Vladimir Putin. Putin “is counting on climate change to unlock the Arctic Ocean,” Stephen argued. Increased navigability of these waters would allow Russia to exploit the world’s largest natural gas reserves and ship them easily. In that sense, the melting Arctic represents a way out of economic dependence on the West.

Read Andre’s and Stephen’s pieces together this week. They’re a good introduction to what Stephen terms “the new geopolitics of the Anthropocene”—a phenomenon that will only grow in the coming years. 

—Heather Souvaine Horn, deputy editor

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—Heather Souvaine Horn, deputy editor