How bad would that be? For starters, the plan to open up the Amazon would mean Brazil has absolutely no chance of meeting its Paris commitments. A group of Brazilian scientists has estimated that between 2021 and 2030, Bolsonaro’s deforestation would release the equivalent of 13.12 gigatons of carbon. Last year, the United States emitted about five gigatons. This means that this one policy would have between two and three times the annual carbon impact of the entire American economy, with all of its airplanes and automobiles and coal plants. The world’s worst emitter, by far, is China; the country was responsible for 9.1 gigatons of emissions in 2017. This means Bolsonaro’s policy is the equivalent of adding, if just for a year, a whole second China to the planet’s fossil-fuel problem — and, on top of that, a whole second United States. This is not a climate that can tolerate another China; according to the U.N.’s recent IPCC report, we may not even be able to tolerate the one we have for 12 more years. Bolsanaro’s single policy would fully eat up 20 percent of a stable climate’s total remaining carbon budget. As Emily Atkin put it at The New Republic , “The livability of the entire planet is at stake.”
But wait! There’s more!
But the problem is bigger than that extra carbon, believe it or not. The Amazon, alone, produces 20 percent of the world’s oxygen. A smaller, degraded rainforest won’t threaten our breathing air — there is just way too much oxygen around for us to ever worry about that. But the figure does signal just how prolific the Amazon is as a photosynthesizing force, which is critical because it produces all that oxygen out of carbon, which it sucks out of the air. And not just a little: The trees of the Amazon take in a quarter of all the carbon absorbed by the planet’s land each year. This is what makes it what scientists call a “carbon sink,” taking in large stores of CO2 that would otherwise be warming the planet even more drastically…
