Bolsonaro's government is a criminal regime. One of his first goals was to destroy the agencies that regulate the environment and disable the reporting mechanisms (which were "fake news" according to him). He personally fired the president of INPE, a state research agency, for publicizing a report about Amazon deforestation.
Of course he blames the NGOs. They've been fairly vocal against his policies for opening up further territory for agribusiness, so now he's blaming them saying that they have set fires in order to discredit him. The end result is almost certainly going to be multiple attempts to ban as many of those organizations as possible on the grounds that they are some sort of eco-terrorists destroying Brazil's rainforest. It won't make much sense but making sense is not the goal. Getting those organizations out of his hair is the goal.<p>Watch what he does, not what he says.
I live in BC where it’s not uncommon for wildfires to consume a million hectares in one summer (as was the case in 2018 with a total of 1.3m hectares burned.)<p>...Typically we put out the fires first <i>then</i> assign the blame, seeing as it doesn’t really matter who’s fault it is once it’s started...
There is a good interactive map: <a href="https://www.windy.com/-CO-concentration-cosc?cosc,-12.555,-77.520,4" rel="nofollow">https://www.windy.com/-CO-concentration-cosc?cosc,-12.555,-7...</a>
According to this NASA report, this is a natural occurrence on this time of the year:<p>> As of August 16, 2019, an analysis of NASA satellite data indicated that total fire activity across the Amazon basin this year has been close to the average in comparison to the past 15 years.<p>Source: <a href="https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/145464/fires-in-brazil" rel="nofollow">https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/145464/fires-in-bra...</a>
I see this meme pop up on social media all the time now about how the Amazon rainforest is burning and to spread the “awareness”.<p>But really, what are you <i>supposed</i> to do? Merely being aware of some tragedy occurring far away doesn’t do anything. The people who perpetuated it don’t give a damn. Are we supposed to go put out the fires? Are we supposed to go kill the people who did this?<p>If there’s nothing I can do, then I’m better off not knowing. I have more relevant things to care about. The only thing this awareness campaign tells me is that Brazilians have done a terrible job of protecting their rainforest, and they should be judged accordingly in the future.
The fires are in Bolivia, Paraguai and in the state of Amazonas and Rondonia in Brazil. Here is a picture of the emissions: <a href="https://twitter.com/m_parrington/status/1163834182860247040" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/m_parrington/status/1163834182860247040</a>
Current situation map from INPE:<p><a href="http://queimadas.dgi.inpe.br/queimadas/portal/situacao-atual" rel="nofollow">http://queimadas.dgi.inpe.br/queimadas/portal/situacao-atual</a><p>The <a href="http://queimadas.dgi.inpe.br" rel="nofollow">http://queimadas.dgi.inpe.br</a> site also has links to a lot of raw data on wildfires in Brazil.
The same president who recommended pooping every other day [1] in order to protect the environment.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-49304358" rel="nofollow">https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-49304358</a>