Comments by "XSportSeeker" (@XSpImmaLion) on "Megafires Are Destroying the World's Biggest Tropical Wetlands" video.

  1. Brazil is in an extremely bad shape to fight against this, and we'll see a repeat over and over again in the next years... it's all very unfortunate. See, people shouldn't believe in easy answers for what is happening here. It's easy to fall into narratives that this is the government's fault, the president's fault, etc etc. But the problem is far more complicated than just that. First of all, people should know, Brazil is a huge country. Firefighters, military, NGOs and whatnot trying to study and fight against fires in these often isolated regions are often underfunded, but perhaps more importantly, just insuficient to cover such large areas. Like explained in the video, up until recently we also didn't have access to tech and real time information to locate and go directly into it... imagine trying to send not enough people to fight against huge fires in places you have hard access to and can't even pinpoint where to begin with. Historically, also, these regions are poor... like explained by the end of the video, several of these regions are currently controlled by big agricultural businesses and whatnot, but the practices remain as those of centuries ago, as those of small farmers. People have been always using fire in these regions to clear up land, maintain areas, and keep things up - it's cheap, easy and doesn't require much. It's not like a whole lot changed once we elected a new president... practices remain overall the same. So, what has changed in 2020? Put simply, climate change is finally having big and apparent effects. Something that is happening all over the world I guess. What we had in Brazil was a historical heat and drought combo like never before. We almost didn't have winter, and the rainy season never came. You didn't hear about it much via international news channels because the narrative was to attack brazilian government for being pro agro-business and trying to dismantle regulations and environmental policies, which is true to a point, but the real problem is far more complex than only that. I don't live close to Pantanal, but in my state that is a bit more to the South of Brazil, we had drought and heat that absolutely transformed the landscape like never before. Talking historical stuff that never happened for whatever length of time the records go back to. The city I currently live in had an unprecedented period of several months with water shortages where the entire capital city had water off and on, 2 days off, 3 days on, then 2 days off, 1 day on.... it just kept getting worse. This kinda thing happed before, just a few years back off and on, but not for the entire city. It was usually limited to some neighborhoods at a time, for a few weeks, but never the entire city for months and no end in sight. Reservoirs still didn't fully recover after months of rain. Now, can better more active regulation and action against big farmers and agro businesses help? Sure it can. But understand - it's change, and people will be resistant to it. Just fining people won't have enough of an effect to change much. Farmers from small to big are just too used to burning up stuff as part of farming life. Worst part of it, is that probably these climate change related extremes will only get worse from now on... so we need lots more tech, money, investment, people involved and effort towards stopping these megafires from happening, from starting. And it doesn't help that our current president has a very bad international relations positioning... he's beligerent and aggressive, mirroring Trump's tactics and politics down to his information sources, strategies and posturing. And we have two more years with him in power at least. So, the fact is, we need external help. Brazil being the second country worst affected by Covid and currently going through the second and worst peak so far, there won't be much of the economy surviving all this enough to ramp up preservation efforts unfortunately. Not even if we had a president that was really worried about all of that, which we don't. The countries who have been financially helping us and that pulled out after clashing with our current government, you need to keep going even if it's around the government and helping NGOs, universities, and people involved directly instead of through governmental channels. That's the way it is right now. As a brazilian citizen who is worried with the situation, I don't really see it going to a better direction unfortunately. We could elect a more pro environment president, but that's two years from now. The climate is still all wonky - we skipped winter, had extreme rains in a period that shouldn't be raining, heat and drought waves in period that should be raining... it's all warped up. And of course, it becomes a vicious cycle... with these forest burning up, it only gets drier and more hot down the tropics. Brazil is also no stranger to desertification phenomena... monoculture and overexploitation of huge tracts of land in northern states turned entire patches of a formerly huge rainforest into semi-arid desert. Things are only gonna get worse from now on.
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