Why does the Amazon Rainforest matter so much to us? It matters most immediately because of the impact on climate change which affects every single person on the planet. That’s because as the rainforest burns it puts enormous amounts of additional carbon into the atmosphere. That’s the first impact. But then it has a second impact, because if you change the vegetation cover, you take away one of the places that absorbs a lot of the carbon that comes from industrial processes, and helps to lower the pressure. So it is a double whammy on the planet, by adding carbon dioxide, and diminishing your ability to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. So it is very bad news.
There are always fires at this time of year in Brazil, but on nothing like this scale. They have doubled in the last 12 months, and they increased in the twelve months before that. And that is clearly a result of the actions that the president of Brazil has taken. He has destroyed the ability to enforce the legislation that protects the Amazon. He has given a very clear signal to the farmers and the loggers, that there will be no inhibition on what they do. So they are encroaching on the reserved areas for indigenous peoples. So there is a very, very, clear message from the president of Brazil that he is not going to worry about preserving the Amazon Rainforest.