Bolsonaro came into power sending all these signals to ranchers and miners and soy farmers - everybody who's interested in ripping down the rainforest - that he wasn't going to punish them. He cut the budget of the governmental agency fighting global warming by 95%. He butchered all the regulatory agencies protecting against deforestation on indigenous reservations.

Live from Sao Paulo, Brian Mier reports from under the cloud of the burning Amazon - as swathes of the rainforest go up in flames, decades of 'development' policies imposed by the Global North and destructive extractive and agricultural export complex unleashed by president Jair Bolsonaro lit a thousand matches in the jungle.

Brian wrote the article The Day the Sky Went out for Brasilwire.