Quite simply, a huge part of the planet's entire ecosystem depends on the vast Amazon rainforest in Brazil. It contains 10 percent of all the world's fresh water. It produces 20 percent of the world's oxygen. It functions as a massive carbon sink, sucking the carbon out of the atmosphere. Unfortunately for us all, the Amazon has been under siege by developers, agribusiness giants, and mining interests until, in 2018 alone, nearly four million acres of the rainforest was lost.

And now, Brazil's president, Jair Bolsonaro, got elected at least partly on a platform of declaring the rainforest an exclusive economic zone. From Bloomberg:

"I don’t accept this idea that the Amazon is world heritage, this is nonsense," General Augusto Heleno Pereira said in an interview in Brasilia. "The Amazon is Brazilian, the heritage of Brazil and should be dealt with by Brazil for the benefit of Brazil." Pereira’s comments coincide with government plans to review existing conservation areas amid growing pressure from mining and agriculture lobbies. This month the president canceled a trip to New York City after Mayor Bill de Blasio and activists criticized the president over matters including his stance toward the Amazon rainforest, whose conservation scientists say is key to the climate change debate.

In one of his first acts as president, Bolsonaro stripped the National Indian Agency of the right to demarcate indigenous territories. He also moved the National Forestry Service to the Ministry of Agriculture. The moves, which Congress may still alter, outraged indigenous campaigners and environmentalists, but pleased Brazil’s powerful farm lobby. This month, eight former Brazilian environment ministers warned in an open letter that Bolsonaro is dismantling environmental protections and hurting the country’s image abroad. Current Environment Minister Ricardo Salles responded by saying his office has maintained its autonomy and that NGOs are the ones hurting Brazil’s reputation.

As you can imagine, this has not made the Bolsonaro government popular with the other oxygen-consuming nations of the world. And the folks back home, as the Guardian reports, well, they're not happy, either.

“We are watching them deconstruct everything we’ve put together,” said José Sarney Filho, who served as environmental minister under the rightwing presidents Fernando Henrique Cardoso and Michel Temer. “We’re talking about biodiversity, life, forests … the Amazon has an incredibly important role in global warming. It’s the world’s air conditioner; it regulates rain for the entire continent.” Silva, the environment minister under Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, said: “What is happening is a dismantling, taking education and the environment and making them ideological issues.” She said the government risked “transforming our country into the exterminator of the future – and we can’t let that happen."

Just as the next wars likely will be over water, the next diplomatic conflicts are going to be about whether we as a species want to survive, and the political arrangements into which we've sorted ourselves be damned. The Amazon may not belong to the world, but 20 percent of the world's oxygen sure as hell does. Of course, we in the United States are in no position to demand that some other country rein in its reckless leader.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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