For months, fires have been raging in the Amazon rainforest in South America. About the size of the lower 48 U.S. states, the forest houses 10 percent of Earth’s plant and animal species. The flames threaten its biodiversity and people who live there, including a million indigenous, or native, peoples.
The fires are also a blow to the fight against climate change. The Amazon’s trees absorb carbon dioxide, a gas that is produced when people burn fossil fuels to power factories, homes, and cars. Carbon dioxide and other gases drive up global temperatures by trapping heat in the atmosphere.
Many of the fires are in Brazil. Most were set deliberately to help clear land for farms and ranches. Many people are blaming Brazil’s president, Jair Bolsonaro, for the number of fires. He is encouraging development in the Amazon and has weakened policing of illegal deforestation. He says rules meant to protect the rainforest hurt Brazil’s economy.
Many world leaders have expressed outrage over the fires and threatened to cancel trade deals with Brazil. Some companies have said they won’t buy products made there. So in late summer, Bolsonaro sent Brazil’s military to fight the fires and banned burning in the Amazon for two months.
Carlos Nobre, a scientist in Brazil, thinks one key to ending this crisis is pressuring companies to produce goods without harming natural resources.
“It’s very possible to have production of many, many products in the Amazon with a zero-deforestation policy,” he has said.