Hmm...while obviously not a bad thing, I just read a piece that puts things into perspective a bit. It probably won't make me popular, but I'm not on this forum for that.
The article itself can be found
here, but as it's both in Dutch and a premium for my newspaper, I translate a bit.
It mainly questions the alarming number of the amount of reported fires. This is a bit exaggerated, based on the following points:
1) it's not that easy to measure the actual amount and size of the fires. And the number ("nearly 75'000 fires") came from a wrong interpretation of data, namely the 'fire counts'. Due to how fires are counted, individual fires are often counted multiple times.
2) the current amount and size doesn't seem to be a record (yet). In this period of the year, 2016 had much more carbon dioxide emission than currently. The peak, however, is usually around the end of August and goes on for some months. Meaning: there's no sign that it'll stop soon.
3) the smoke shown on satellite photos don't exactly show the actual fires. More specifically: farmers often burn down pieces of their own ground to make it better for plantation. On satellite photos, it can seem a whole lot worse than it is
4) the media attention itself isn't here "because of the fires" (as said: this happens every year), but because the media attention is already on fires in e.g. Greece and California. Sao Paolo being dark due to smoke in the middle of the day obviously didn't help.
5) yes, Bolsonaro cut the power of his government in preservation of the rainforest largely, but he's not the first president at all to allow it. He merely accelerated it (okay: and he pisses off the community).
6) some shared pictures that are currently going viral are years old. That's...obviously not helping to solve the actual problem (protesters: "stop this fire!" Bolsonaro: "sure thing. THIS fire has been dealt with...in 1989
").
It's not because we disagree with each other that I'm misinformed. Shall we leave it at that, or shall I return the favor and get personal for no reason?