In order to succeed in our fight against climate change, we need all countries working together. We need to retain all current Carbon dioxide sinks, as well as getting our carbon emissions down to near zero.
This is why it is so encouraging, that now Brazil has come back to the table.
This article is a few months old, which is why it is so encouraging that since it was released, the Australian people have risen up, and thrown out the government of Scott Morrison.
Why should he draw so much ire? He worked incredibly hard, while in office to both blame states for not doing the right thing, while at the same time making it as hard as possible. He made comments attacking many of the necessary changes that were going on.
Following on from my last post, we are trying to deal with the problems which have been pushing the website offline – it is in hand, but for now the website is still fragile. When all is sorted, we will go back to trying to move forwards with fulfilling the aims of this website. For now, as much as possible I am able to post some entries.
For a long time, governments in the west have injected bonds into the market in order to get it going in times when it is struggling. Between the Covid epidemic and various other issues there are far more countries that are trying to do this.
So, this website has suffered some sort of horrible attack which blocked me out of being able to post. We do have protection from such an attack, and so it appears that the attack failed to get in, but it did still stretch our website facilities beyond breaking point at times which has meant periods of time when the website was not live – and me being locked out of the back-end, hence no posts.
For the time being, we have won. How long lasting this will be is anyone’s guess.
It is perhaps encouraging that someone feels that this little website is worth attacking.
Hopefully regular services will return, and we will start adding to our offerings, with several members areas.
There is a constant tug of war, between developed countries which are encouraging developing countries to continue to protect their wildernesses, and the developing countries wish to be able to develop – to lift their citizens out of poverty.
Granted, the majority of deforestation does not benefit the people on the ground, but it does not stop politicians in these countries arguing that those in the west cannot stop development by demanding conservation of ecosystems.
However, the amount of land that has been deforested in Brazil, is far in excess of what is needed for cattle pasture and experts have calculated that Brazil (the worlds number one Soy producer, and biggest beef exporter) could increase the amount of land used to grow Soy by a third without cutting one extra tree down.
We can only hope that with the election of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the unregulated deforestation will stop. There is a great deal of space in Brazil for intensifying agriculture, which would allow a significant increase in productivity and goods coming from the agriculture lands, without cutting down any more rainforest.
Of course, this is partly a matter of survival. While some people on the ground in Brazil may wish to cut down more rainforest in order to have more cropland, the more forest is cut down, the less rain the remaining forest produces.
There is a constant tug of war, between developed countries which are encouraging developing countries to continue to protect their wildernesses, and the developing countries wish to be able to develop – to lift their citizens out of poverty.
In one shot: soy farming at the front, rainforest behind and you can see cattle grazing areas at the back
The most recent estimate, puts the French wolf population on about 620 in the country. They have recently moved into the department of Lot which lies just a few miles north of Toulouse.
Given the growing population of wolves in France, it would be ridiculous to kill these wolves, as others will replace them pretty quickly.
Time will tell how good Lula is, but the world has had a reprieve!
WE MUST KEEP OUR EYE ON THIS SITUATION, BUT FOR NOW WE CAN RELAX
So what has Brazil turned its back on?
Jair Bolsonaro time in office was characterized by attacks on:
Democratic institutions (from human rights institutions to deforestation watch, many more)
The Media
The Left (given Bolsonaro was far right, this means virtually every opponent politician)
The Amazon rainforest
So what did Lula run on?
Social Justice
Environmental protection
Defending democracy
Reunifying the country
Will there be a peaceful handover of power? No one knows. Jair Bolsonaro, like Donald Trump before him has stated many times over the last few months, that he cannot loose a fair election. As an outsider, it is hard to see how he would ever win a fair election but there we are.
He has the support of much of the army (a former soldier himself) and there is much concern that he could throw the country into chaos, and would have a far greater chance of actually overthrowing the government than Trump did in the USA.
He only won with a margin of 2%, and as of yet Bolsonaro is still yet to comment on the results. If Lula is allowed to retake the presidency, then it will mark the end of an incredible comeback,
Lula was president from 2003-2010. After this, he spent time in prison for corruption convictions – later annulled.
Pro – Bolsonaro Truckers have blocked highways across Brazil in protest, but nothing worse has yet occurred.
The worlds rainforests are concentrated in a small number of countries. As a result, there are a handful of countries where, they have the potential on their own to make climate change far worse.
These countries include many of those in the Congo basin in Africa, and the countries of south east Asia.
Perhaps the biggest, is Brazil: and unfortunately we have had to watch as the current president Jair Bolsonaro has done everything as badly as possible. Could it have been worse for the world? Perhaps, but it would have been hard.
What is frustrating, is that he is terrible for Brazil. He has the bizarre support of the evangelical Christians, and he has made sure that the middle class has benefitted from his time in office, never-the-less, he has destroyed much of the institutional blocks to serious damage in his first term, so may be able to do more damage in his second.
What is his worst record? 688,000 deaths from Covid, having declared what should he do and having minimized it as the little flu. This is the second most deaths in the world after the USA (largely as a result of Donald Trump minimizing the issue -see a pattern?) despite being 5th in the number of cases. The illness hit indigenous people hardest (possibly intentionally? Certainly it helps Bolsonaros many aims). For the world, though, Bolsonaro will be remembered as someone who vastly increased the destruction of the Amazon rainforest, and there is a great deal of fear that the rainforest is getting close to collapse as a result of his behaviour. Not only will this cause huge problems around the world, by releasing billions of tonnes of carbon, but it will also change rain patterns, leading to crop failures in Brazil as well as countries around.
Currently Lulu has a 4%-8% lead in the polls, however, unfortunately 4 years ago the polls underestimated Bolsonaro support so this may mean little. In a similar way to Trump, there is a certain proportion of the population who are embarrassed by their support for the leader, so are unlikely to be honest in polls.
In a debate Bolsonaro spent his time just attacking his opponent and does not seem to have any ideas for the future of the country.
In the first round, Jair Bolsonaro got 43.2% while Lula got 48.4% so he is comfortably ahead, but what happens now is still on a knife edge.