[Brazil\COVID-19\Amazon]
CNN: “There is no telling how grim things might get for Brazilians left largely unprotected by their President, Jair Bolsonaro…the far-right populist sometimes known as ‘Tropical Trump’ also manages protection of the Amazon.”
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Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro “Tropical Trump” is mismanaging COVID-19–and is allowing devastation in the Amazon through economic exploitation by big business interests.
They are the two nations that can’t seem to bend the Covid-19 curve to save their own lives: the US and Brazil.
But while Americans complain about the lack of testing (rightly so), they need only look one country down on the list to see … it could be so much worse.
As the virus tears through big city favelas and remote rainforest communities at the official rate of a quarter-million people per week, Brazil is providing 80% fewer tests per capita than the United States. Virologists from Brazil’s major universities worry that the numbers of infections could be 12 to 16 times higher.
There is no telling how grim things might get for Brazilians left largely unprotected by their President, Jair Bolsonaro. But while Bolsonaro’s pandemic management influences immediate life and death for Brazilians, the far-right populist sometimes known as “Tropical Trump” also manages protection of the Amazon. And in the middle of a man-made climate crisis, earth scientists say this gives him an undue — and scary — influence over all of Life as We Know It. For generations.
The Amazon is one of Earth’s most vital carbon sinks, a keystone of diversity and home to a tenth of the world’s wildlife. Under Bolsonaro’s watch, it is being destroyed at record rates.
Studies found that last year alone, 3,000 square miles were destroyed, an area almost the size of Puerto Rico.
Ninety-nine percent of the deforestation came from illegal logging and slash-and-burn land grabs, while illegal gold mining not only destroyed plants and animals from thousands of species but also turned the soil into toxic sludge and sand where nothing can grow for centuries.
For the rest of this CNN story log on to: https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/19/americas/brazil-coronavirus-amazon-deforestation-bolsonaro-weir/index.html
