Environment – the threatened future

22/08/2024

Partners • Ecology

By LISZT VIEIRA*

The threat of the ecological crisis points to a true crisis of civilization, to the need for a new way of life and production

Flying rivers in the Amazon become corridors of toxic smoke. The smoke that has been burning the Amazon and the Cerrado for weeks has already reached large areas of the South and Southeast. It is fraught with the dangers of toxic carbon, emitted by burning vegetation. This highly absorbent material causes atmospheric heating and causes respiratory diseases.

The National Institute for Space Research (Inpe) has already registered 5.454 fires in Amazonas in the first 20 days of August. In the same period last year, 2.331 outbreaks were registered, which means a growth of 233% (Royal Amazon, 20/8/2024),

Brazil reaches 1/3 of native vegetation lost since colonization. According to MapBiomas, Brazil has reached the mark of 33% of native vegetation (281 million hectares) destroyed in its territory since the beginning of European colonization in 1500. The areas have been altered by human activities, such as agriculture and urbanization (UOL, 21/8/2024).

Traditionally, the environmental issue was denied in Brazil, and in almost the entire world, considered as non-existent. Politicians, whether right, center or left, have always rejected the environment as a political issue deserving special attention from governments and societies. Left-wing politicians said that, in Brazil, the issue was social, the environment was a fad imported from Europe. And they called ecologists and environmentalists “cricket animals”.

Those on the right said that the problem in Brazil was economic, the environmental issue was nonsense, “faggot stuff”. And the media in general called environmentalists “alfacinha”. This affected university professors and scientists who warned, decades ago, about the importance of environmental protection.

In recent years, especially since the beginning of this century, the situation has begun to change. The perception that the environmental issue was very serious and could have disastrous consequences began to overcome the ignorance fueled by economic interests.

Scientists from all over, especially those gathered in the UN body called the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, IPCC, published their research and warned of the urgent need for environmental protection measures to combat the emission of greenhouse gases ( GHG) caused by the abusive use of fossil fuels – oil, gas, coal – and by deforestation and destruction of natural resources.

Environmental scientists and ecologists, once seen as court jesters, began to be taken seriously, but polluters continued to destroy nature for their economic production for profit.

Around the world, the number of extreme weather events, such as floods, droughts, extreme heat, hurricanes, fires, etc. has increased alarmingly. We live in the period of greatest warming in more than 2.000 years. The last decade was the hottest on record. The month of June 2024 it becomes the thirteenth consecutive month to exceed the 1,5°C limit of the Paris Agreement. Recent climate changes are unprecedented in thousands of years.

The first Table below shows the increase in global temperature in relation to the pre-industrial level. And then, the second Table shows the biggest countries historically responsible for climate change. It is interesting to note that the two most responsible, the USA and China, were the first two at the 2024 Paris Olympics, as well as in previous Olympics.

As you can see, Brazil occupies fourth place, after the USA, China and Russia. In Brazil, the big villain is deforestation caused by agribusiness – agriculture, livestock, mining, logging, miners.

When deforested, the forest releases GHGs that will contribute to global warming and climate change, as well as releasing viruses, previously stored in the forest. In July/August 2024, the fire reached animal sanctuaries in the Pantanal. The scenes of charred animals repeat the tragedy of 2020, considered the record for destruction of the biome. The droughts in the Amazon and the fires in the Pantanal become repetitive and point to a dark future.

According to scientist Carlos Nobre, the Amazon has suffered intense degradation over the last 50 years, with the highest deforestation rate among the world's tropical forests. Annually, 16.000 km² of forest are cut down, totaling more than 1 million km² deforested and another million in degradation. The Amazon is approaching its “critical point”, its point of no return, from which the forest will be transformed into savanna. To prevent this, according to the scientist, it is essential to eliminate all deforestation and forest degradation.

Around 13% of all known plant and animal species on planet Earth are found in the Amazon, with around 50 species of plants, 16 of trees, 350 of primates, 800 of amphibians and reptiles, 1.330 of birds and another 100 thousand insects, among many others that are discovered every year. The forest stores around 150 billion to 200 billion tons of carbon in the soil and above-ground vegetation, as well as being a major exporter of water vapor outside the Amazon Basin.

These “flying rivers”, which release a quantity almost identical to the flow of the Amazon River, around 200 thousand cubic meters per second, feed the hydrological systems of the tropical savannas of the southern Amazon and even central-eastern South America, a important ecosystem service for the planet.

The report “Violence against indigenous peoples in Brazil”, released by the Indigenous Missionary Council (Cimi) in July 2024, points out that 208 indigenous people were murdered in 2023, an increase of 15,5% compared to 2022, when 180 murders were recorded . The number of suicides increased by 56%. In total, cases of “Violence against the person” – which covers murders, manslaughters, abuse of power, threats, bodily harm, racism, attempted murder and sexual violence against native peoples – have declined, but the numbers do not reflect the promises of the current government.

One of the main conflicts faced by indigenous peoples in recent years is the time frame, according to which only lands that were occupied until October 5, 1988 – the date of promulgation of the Federal Constitution – can be claimed by indigenous peoples. The Federal Supreme Court had judged the thesis as unconstitutional in September 2023, but days later the Senate approved the time frame law. President Lula vetoed it, but the veto was revoked by Congress.

Recent climate tragedies in Brazil, such as the major floods that flooded Rio Grande do Sul again in May 2024, show that the country is not adopting the necessary public policies to guarantee environmental protection. These policies require a long-term vision. But the market and governments generally have short-term views, the former aiming for profit, the latter aiming for elections.

To avoid these climate catastrophes that tend to increase, it is necessary to eliminate deforestation, forest degradation and vegetation fires in all biomes. And establish an energy transition policy to overcome the use of fossil fuels in favor of renewable energy. Heat waves, floods, droughts and fires hit, sometimes simultaneously, all continents in 2024.

Direct effect of global warming caused by man, accentuated by the phenomenon El Niño, the environment burns, suffocates, dries up or dies. For weeks, if not months, climate disasters have been occurring one after another, hitting every country, sometimes at the same time.

Today, we release carbon into the atmosphere at a rate 100 times faster than at any time before the start of industrialization. Half of the carbon released into the atmosphere due to the burning of fossil fuels was emitted in the last three decades alone. Maintaining the current emissions standard, we will reach more than 4º C of warming by the year 2100. This means that many regions of the world would become uninhabitable due to direct heat, desertification and floods.

According to United Nations projections, we will have 200 million climate refugees by 2050. Other estimates are even more pessimistic: 1 billion vulnerable poor people with no means of survival. Climate disasters have led to the displacement of more than 43 million children in six years.

The current geological era is being called Anthropocene, as it is human action that causes a drastic reduction in the planet's natural capacity to absorb carbon and transform it into oxygen, which implies higher temperatures, more forest fires, fewer trees, more carbon in the atmosphere, a hotter planet .

It is clear that the poor are more vulnerable and will suffer more than the rich. This is a problem of environmental justice or, in other words, of apartheid environmental. Countries with the lowest GDP will be the hottest. Natural disasters and extreme weather events today constitute the greatest risks to human life.

The five main long-term risks are as follows: (i) failure to mitigate climate change; (ii) failure to adapt to climate change; (iii) natural disasters and extreme weather events; (iv) loss of biodiversity and destruction of the ecosystem; (v) mass refugee immigration crises.

The world, in its current state of affairs, is being catapulted into a new ecological phase – one less conducive to maintaining biological diversity and a stable human civilization. The conditions for existence of millions or perhaps billions of people will be destroyed and the very basis of life as we know it today will be under threat. putting the lives of the most vulnerable populations on the planet at risk.

We must recognize that it is the logic of our mode of production – capitalism – that prevents the creation of a world of sustainable human development that transcends the disaster that awaits humanity. To save ourselves, we must create a different socioeconomic logic, which points to another model of civilization based on the project of an ecosocialist revolution.

Fossil fuel civilization threatens human survival on the planet. It produces lethal heat, hunger due to the reduction and increase in the cost of agricultural production, destruction of forests by fires, depletion of drinking water, death of the oceans, typhoons, floods, unbreathable air, plagues, droughts, economic collapse, climate conflicts, wars, refugee crisis .

Renewable energy sources have become competitive, but the economic forces of the market and the governments they control sabotage the transformation of polluting fossil energy into renewable energy, which, however, has been growing considerably. But fossils will dominate the energy matrix by 2040 at least. Fossil fuels – oil/gas/coal – are expected to still constitute three quarters of the global energy matrix in 2040.

On the other hand, the concept of economic growth based on the destruction of natural resources has been questioned everywhere by environmentalist movements, based on new concepts such as, among others, Ecosocialism and Degrowth. Man is the only animal that destroys its habitat, which calls into question its rationality of Homo sapiens.

All in function of economic production based on the search for maximum profit. This is a crisis of civilization. The lifestyle we inherited from industrial society is threatened. The future will be based on renewable energy or there will be no future.

But the shift to a global economy based on the energy transition will lead to conflicts, with geopolitical implications by affecting the sources of national power, the globalization process, relations between great powers and between developed and developing countries.

In any case, the energy transition alone will not be enough. The threat of the ecological crisis, motivated by the destruction of biodiversity and global warming caused by climate change, points to a true crisis of civilization, to the need for a new way of life and production, that is, for a profound ecological transformation to guarantee the survival of humanity on the planet.

*Liszt scallop is a retired professor of sociology at PUC-Rio. He was a deputy (PT-RJ) and coordinator of the Global Forum of the Rio 92 Conference. Author, among other books, of Democracy reactsGaramond). [https://amzn.to/3sQ7Qn3]

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