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Earth

As Brazil Cracks Down on Forest Clearing, Emissions Fall (yale.edu) 12

Last year Brazil saw its biggest drop in emissions since 2009, new data show. The decline comes in the wake of a crackdown on deforestation. From a report: Since returning to power in 2022, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has moved to stem illicit clearing of forest by miners, loggers, and farmers, stepping up enforcement that had been weakened under his predecessor, far-right president Jair Bolsonaro. Deforestation of the Brazilian Amazon is now at its lowest level in more than a decade.

In Brazil, forests are largely destroyed to create new cropland and pasture, and together, the loss of forest and raising of cattle are its biggest sources of emissions. Lula's crackdown on illegal deforesters has put those emissions in check. According to the Climate Observatory, a green group, Brazilian emissions fell by 16.7 percent last year. "The new data shows the impact of the federal government retaking control over deforestation after a deliberate lack of control between 2019 and 2022," when Bolsonaro held office, the group said in a statement.

Lula aims to end illegal deforestation entirely by the end of this decade, but as he makes progress on this goal, Brazil is still facing worsening droughts and fires fueled by warming. Last year, fires accounted for two-thirds of the primary tropical forest lost in Brazil, according to the World Resources Institute. Often small fires used to clear land get out of control, burning through larger, drought-ridden areas.

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As Brazil Cracks Down on Forest Clearing, Emissions Fall

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  • by Anonymous Coward

    Now if we could get your mom out of her SUV and out of the drive thru for Starbucks and McD emissions could fall even more. Damn woman learn to feed yourself.

  • Far right? (Score:1, Informative)

    by _dj6_ ( 8250908 )

    Come on people... think for yourselves and stop blindly repeating the propaganda framings and labels. Bolsonaro is not 'far-right'. For a party or a movement or a person to be genuinely 'far-right' they'd have to be advocating or implementing extreme policies like zero social services, zero regulation, official legal state discrimination on the basis of immutable characteristics like race, sex, disability, etc.., or outright violent ethnic cleansing. Bolsonaro is not for any of those things, obviously.

    • by habig ( 12787 )

      "Far right" as opposed to "Center right" seems accurate.

      More so than the "radical leftist democrats" who seem to be the only sort that exist in the US political discussion, for example. Or the repeated labeling of our President's adversaries as "Communist Marxist Fascists", for another example. Gotta love oxymorons.

      Bolsonaro is a guy convicted of trying a coup to overthrow a legit election. That tends to push opinions "far" in whichever direction. In TFA's case, this wasn't a case of pushing for differe

    • >advocating or implementing extreme policies like... official legal state discrimination on the basis of immutable characteristics
      TIL the Democratic party is far right.
      • "Northern Democrats, led by Stephen Douglas, supported letting territories decide on slavery, while Southern Democrats insisted on allowing slavery in all territories. "

  • When you stop every little possible cause of fires you're not preventing them. You're delaying them and making them much larger when they do happen such that they cause all their problems at once; are harder to control fight and manage; and are more likely to burn into areas that otherwise wouldn't burn.
    • by shilly ( 142940 )

      It says right there in the summary that these are deliberate deforestation fires set by humans, which often get out of control. We can absolutely not do that, as a species.

    • They're not talking about the type of "forest clearing" here that constitutes cleaning up dry brush and dead leaves and trees and other kindling from the forest floor, they're talking about the literal removal of vast swaths of forest entirely.

    • Given the lack of any background connecting warming to fires and droughts and the many uses of "left", "right" and "far right" in the article, it falls into a political opinion piece and not reporting.

      Example quote - "Brazil is still facing worsening droughts and fires fueled by warming"

      No expansion on the use of "warming" just an acceptance and propagation of the implied causality.

      A classic journalism 101 needs to be applied to this so that things affirmed need backup facts or information.

      The perpetual pan

    • When you stop every little possible cause of fires you're not preventing them.

      I don't know about that. Stopping people from purposefully setting a forest on fire using a fuckton of accelerant in a way that makes it virtually impossible to get under control does prevent that fire.

      You're delaying them and making them much larger

      The world has survived millions of years without all the forests burning down. I think from natural causes it'll be fine.

      when they do happen such that they cause all their problems at once; are harder to control fight and manage;

      The hardest to control fires are the ones deliberately lit. We have lots of experience of controlling accidental forest fires. It's not perfect by any means, but we're pretty good at it whe

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