The vast majority of the fires have been set by loggers and ranchers to clear land for cattle. The practice is on the rise, encouraged by Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil’s populist pro-business president, who is backed by the country’s so-called “beef caucus.”
While this may be business as usual for Brazil’s beef farmers, the rest of the world is looking on in horror.
So, for those wondering how they could help save the rainforest, known as “the planet’s lungs” for producing about 20% of the world’s oxygen, the answer may be simple. Eat less meat.
Right. They’re burning it in order to make room for cattle (i.e., meat). And the most insidious “fascist supporters” of Brazil’s fascists are those who seek profit from deforestation. And given how much Brazilian meat is exported, those who buy and eat it are supporting fascist exploitation of the planet’s natural resources.
I’m not really seeing the validity of the corrective disconnect that you’re making here.
Because if it’s not for meat, the fascists will find other excuses. Logging, you mentioned. Soy. Biofuel crops. Real estate scams.
Like I said (and @Mindysan33), it’s not an either/or, but let’s not kid ourselves that not eating meat will solve this particular problem. We should eat less meat, regardless of whether the Amazon is burning, but until we solve the fascist-capitalism problem, we aren’t going to save the rainforest.
That is exactly right. The majority of the burning is for cattle, but second most is for soy. The overarching theme is right wing “fuck the planet rape it for all the short term profits we can get and screw everyone else” mentality. And Trump has already reassured Bolsonaro that “our trade propects are great” so not to worry about European opposition to his policies. It’s not meat eaters, as such, burning the Amazon, it is fascists.
In 2017, Brazil produced 16.3 million tons of soymeal for its domestic market, and more than 90 percent of that became animal feed, with 50 percent used as chicken feed, 25 percent as pig feed, and 12 percent for beef and dairy cattle feed.
Yes, but fascists selling a huge portion of what gets made to meat eaters.
If not for that, it will be for logging, industry, whatever. The point is to turn the rainforest into “profit.” Eating less meat is a good idea for the sake of the planet, and our own health, but this particular disaster is fascism as ecoterrorism “own the libs,” get rid of indigenous peoples, demonstrate our machismo. The problem is not exactly carnivory, that is juzt the tool being used at this moment. The problem is fascism. Oh, and short term capitalist profit motive, of course.
I would actually argue (at least anecdotally) that we don’t actually eat too much meat but hat we waste too much. Too much prepped at grocery stores and never sold. Too much waste at restaurants and dinner tables.
I often hear complaints from people about portion sizes being too small and I feel like they are just right or even too much for one sitting.
And then whoever buys the logs, or whatever, would also be helping to tear up and burn the Amazon.
I don’t know if you read my whole post at the top, but at the bottom, where the article I quote says the solution is simple, “Eat less meat,” I wrote, “Well okay, the answer isn’t quite that simple.”
I know that meat eaters like to cast those who eschew it as simplistic morons, so I’m not surprised to see that reflex directed in this thread at me. I obviously understand that if fascists don’t have a market for something, they’ll find something to exploit for another market, okay?
That doesn’t mean, though, that any particular set of buyers aren’t also implicated in the chain of destruction.
This is absolutely the case. Buying more consciously is a part of the solution, as is constantly being aware of supply chains, which pretty much all major corporations try to cover up. What’s frustrating is just how much of the supply chains for any number of goods are dripping in blood of one kind or another. Just that fact alone makes one want to go live in a cave and consuming absolutely nothing made in the globalized economy. Our entire global economy is implicated in one evil or another. That most certainly does not absolve us from being aware and taking action where we can. If enough global north consumers are aware and make more ethical choices, like eating less or no meat, we can create change, I think. We just have to get ourselves and others on board and that can be tough. Because people get defensive about it, because they feel like they are being told that they are the problem, but that’s not what’s being said. What’s being said is that we have some power via our consumption habits. There are other things that need to happen that are out of our control, but this can be one lever that we can very much use to move things in a particular direction. I mean, that’s what Ralph Nader told us back in the day with his consumer rights movement, that consumption has ethical choices, that we need to be aware of. If we’re aware, we can make better choices and move the needle, at least a little.
I wonder if it’s useful to conceptualize the evolving network that is the economy as a poorly compatible artificial layer of Earth’s biosphere, where the incompatibility results from the ability of mass human motivations to force the Anthropocene layer to unsustainably serve us at potentially catastrophic detriment to the balance of the system to which it’s been fused.
I agree, but I also suspect one of the reasons at lot of people become cynical about environmental conservationism is because they see that individual behavior is insufficient to achieve sustainability so long as those with the wealth and concomitant power to shape policy pay lip service or outright deny the need for systemic reform. This isn’t, or at least shouldn’t be, an excuse to indulge in mindless waste, anymore than the existence of the tax-dodging investor class justifies tax evasion. But it is understandable.
Recycling is a good example of this. Because comprehensive national and international policies were never geared to favor recycling over waste wherever possible, and specifically never supported the research and infrastructure needed to make recycling competitive with waste, populaces who were for a long time told recycling was helping are now in many cases being told that it’s so poorly implemented that it’s worse.
ETA: In my pre-coffee haze I initially read the headline as Man Eaters Are Among the Biggest Burners of Amazon, and momentarily wondered why Amazon was sending man-eaters to Burning Man and wanted to see their Art Cars.
