I was going to blog about something relatively light-hearted and meaningless today, but then...
...this has been going on for over three weeks.
I find it hard to believe that anyone wouldn't know what this is in direct reference to, but just in case you missed it - a massive swathe of the Amazon rain forest is currently burning. A huge amount of it. Beyond any conception of what a fire should be. In fact - let me see if I can't find you the image that NASA put out.
Yeah.
Why is it burning?
Well there's been a lot of wildfires out there in recent years, and the climate being as it is, they have only gotten worse - but that isn't what is actually happening right now. It's far more basic, than that. It's far more stupid and evil and selfish.
Over a month ago, several of the indigenous tribes won a legal challenge to stop oil drilling and other industrial exploitation of their land, including deforestation to make way for pastoral farmland.
And now this happens:
And Bolsonaro's government claims there's nothing they can do, so sorry, so sorry.
I mean. Evo Morales of Bolivia is sending a fucking fire fighting tanker plane, but yeah, nothing anyone can do. So sorry.
So in summary, the Amazon is being deliberately burned to kill off the indigenous individuals who live there and to clear the land for industrial purposes, in an act of deliberate mass murder and environmental mutilation that would make the bad guy in a 90s anime stop and reconsider.
I've blogged before about Saturday morning cartoon evil - and about how stupid the villains in Captain Planet were.
I've also blogged before about how a bunch of stuff that is happening to the world is coming across like the news montage at the beginning of a disaster movie.
This is it, right here.
This is the part where it goes from "something bad might happen" to "fucking awful things are literally happening right now".
There are things we can do.
Short of actually heading out there and fighting fires our damn selves, there are organisations trying to help. The Instituto Socioambiental, AmazonWatch, Imazon and Friends Of The Earth. Do some research, make some donations. Spend your money smarter. Boycott assholes. Hit them in the wallet where it hurts. Consider cutting the meat and plant products they grow in the cut-back areas of the Amazon out of your diet. That might mean giving up meat and soy altogether, but you want solutions, you got em.
Write to your representatives. Keep writing to your representatives. Sure, a lot of us live in areas where our representative couldn't give a fuck and probably gets a backhander from someone who will be made rich by this whole fucking affair, but it can't hurt to try, god dammit.
Oppose the kind of nationalist, neoconservative, pro-industrial, pro-capitalist, right-wing asshole that would burn down half of a continent in order to make some scratch and appease the agriculture lobbyists. Oppose them at every fucking turn. I guarantee you that a bunch of the other social causes that you care about a lot will be helped by rejecting this kind of asshole.
Most of all? Don't look away.
Don't let this happen. Don't just LET it happen. I know it sucks. I know it's unpleasant. I know it hurts. I know it's sad. But if we just let things happen then things just keep on happening, and then the world is fucked and we are all dead.
Hank Green did a video about it. It deserves watching.
This, by the way, is what swaps the imminent apocalypse from Blade Runner to Mad Max.
God fucking help us all.
If you'd care to share my blog with your friends, I'd appreciate that! If you'd like to thank me in a fiscal form for entertaining you a little bit, I do have a Patreon right here, but please - no pressure. Thank you for reading, and check my social media to the right to keep in touch.
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