Fires Blaze in Record Numbers in Amazon Rainforest

According to INPE, more than 1½ soccer fields of Amazon rainforest are being destroyed every minute of every day.

Fires are raging at a record rate in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest, and scientists warn that it could strike a devastating blow to the fight against climate change.
The wildfires are so intense that smoke loomed over the city of Sao Paolo, more than a thousand miles away, according to Greenpeace.

The fires are burning at the highest rate since the country’s space research center, the National Institute for Space Research (known by the abbreviation INPE), began tracking them in 2013, the center said Tuesday. There have been 72,843 fires in Brazil this year, with more than half in the Amazon region, INPE said. That’s more than an 80% increase compared with the same period last year.

The Amazon is often referred to as the planet’s lungs, producing 20% of the oxygen in the Earth’s atmosphere. It is considered vital in slowing global warming, and it is home to uncountable species of fauna and flora. Roughly half the size of the United States, it is the largest rainforest on the planet.
Dramatic images and videos on social media show giant plumes of smoke rising from the greenery and lines of fire leaving blackened waste in their wake. The smoke has reached all the way to Sao Paulo, more than 1,700 miles away. Images from the city show the sky pitch-black in the middle of the afternoon, the sun blanketed by smoke and ash. The European Union’s satellite program, Copernicus, released a map showing smoke from the fires spreading all along Brazil to the east Atlantic coast. The smoke has covered nearly half of the country and is even spilling over into neighboring Peru, Bolivia and Paraguay
The Amazon River stretches across several of these South American countries, but the majority — more than two-thirds — of the rainforest lies in Brazil.

According to INPE, more than 1½ soccer fields of Amazon rainforest are being destroyed every minute of every day. People worldwide are sharing their horror on social media. Fans of the K-Pop band BTS, who call themselves the Army, are even rallying on Twitter to spread word of the fires, with tens of thousands of people tweeting the hashtag #ArmyHelpThePlanet.

Activists blame Brazil’s president

Environmental groups have long been campaigning to save the Amazon, blaming Brazil’s far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, for the endangerment of the vital rainforest. They accuse him of relaxing environmental controls in the country and encouraging deforestation. Bolsonaro’s environmental policies have been controversial from the start. A former army captain, he made campaign promises to restore the economy by exploring the Amazon’s economic potential.Just weeks ago, the director of INPE was fired after a spat with the president; the director had defended satellite data that showed deforestation was 88% higher in June than a year earlier, and Bolsonaro called the findings “lies.”Bolsonaro also criticized the agency’s deforestation warnings as harmful for trade negotiations, according to the Agencia Brasil news agency.

Info and graphics via ABC, CNN, and the New York Times