Pissing Into the Inferno
By: Ocean Malandra
Tags: Environment, Brazil, Amazonas, Amazon, Agribusiness

To Stop the Destruction of the Amazon, We Need Real Systemic Change

As a freelance journalist that’s been covering the Amazon for years, the best thing about this horror show of fire and destruction that's been playing out over the last couple of months is to see the world finally paying attention to the fate of the greatest eco-system on earth.

I believe we can stop the ecocide, but we need to be seeing through the Matrix here. Despite much of the media coverage, what is happening has little to do with our “choices” and more to do with our lack of choices in a completely corrupt corporate-controlled world system.

Only confronting that will change things. Let me explain.

First of all, none of this is new. As much as this Bolsonaro clown is a bundle of bad news, the truth is that scientists have been putting out warnings on the Amazon Rainforest reaching a tipping point for years now. Here is an article I wrote in 2014 that was picked up by AmazonWatch that has everyone from Greenpeace and the World Wildlife Federation (WWF) to environmental activists within Brazil condemning previous president Dilma for her and her Worker Party’s (PT) role in driving the Amazon to what scientists called the “brink of no return”.

While the current situation is bad, it's hard to argue that the “brink of no return” is any better.

Like Bolsonaro, Dilma was corrupt to the core. Not only did she roll back important environmental protections, but it later came out that she was actually getting kickbacks for green-lighting projects like the Belo Monte dam, a mega-catastrophe that environmental groups had been fighting against for decades.

The Belo Monte Dam displaced 20k-40k indigenous people and caused massive destruction to the Xingu River watershed. Source: AmazonWatch

It is hip to blame Bolsonaro because he is right-wing, but our silence when a left-wing crook did much of the same should be a source of shame. In fact, it's a large part of why things are so bad right now. Environmentally-minded progressives were blinded by partisan politics, even defending Dilma when these charges came out. But really, she was just part of the same system that continues to decimate the Amazon for corporate profit.

Which brings me to my next point.

Second, no amount of “consumer choice” is going to solve this. Yes, the Amazon is being burned by ranchers looking to expand cattle grounds or feed farms. And yes much of that beef demand is in the North. But it is not really a consumer demand, it is being demanded by large industrial agricultural corporations that control large amounts of the global food supply.

Again, it's systemic.

Let’s break that down. According to a recent report by Mighty Earth entitled The Companies Behind the Burning of the Amazon:

“the incentive for the destruction comes from large-scale international meat and soy animal feed companies like JBS and Cargill, and the global brands like Stop & Shop, Costco, McDonald’s, Walmart/Asda, and Sysco that buy from them and sell to the public. It is these companies that are creating the international demand that finances the fires and deforestation.”

But aren’t the consumers who are buying these burgers still responsible? To some extent yes, but what’s missing from the conversation here is that most of these companies are receiving huge government subsidies created from taxpayer money. That’s right, even vegans are funding the destruction of the Amazon Rainforest.

Take Cargill for example. The largest privately held corporation in the world, they made over $US 110 billion dollars in 2018. But as Michael Pollan pointed out in the NYT Bestselling The Omnivores Dilemna, they, and other large corporate agri-businesses, still receive the lion’s share of farm subsidies put out by the U.S. Government.

In other words, the reason McDonald’s offers a 99 cent burger is because they have bought some cheap ass beef from Cargill or JBS, already mostly paid for by you and me.

As someone who grew up in the ghetto, I can tell you that there is no real “consumer choice” after this price engineering has already taken place. Poor people buy cheap shit. They have no choice.

Only a yuppie living in a bubble would claim that people should just not buy these burgers, yet according to my Facebook feed, that seems to be the only real solution to the Amazon burning. Along with axing Bolsonaro of course.

Unfortunately, neither will do diddly squat. To stop the destruction of the Amazon Rainforest, which has been and will keep on accelerating, we need to come out of our comfort zone folks. And fast. Voting, either at the ballot box or with dollars, is a passive action that is simply not enough to come even close to changing things.

Like the USA, Brazil is a fully corporate-run government, no matter what puppet is president. Huge corporations are calling the real shots, using vertically integrated control over the entire food system to force products that are bad for both our health and the planet on us so that they can turn a profit.

In fact, Brazil and the USA just met last month to agree on MORE development in the Amazon, claiming “ opening the rainforest to economic development was the only way to protect it.”

Sadly, this claim is not new. Even so-called “Green” news sites like Grist.org have been pushing the argument that only development and industrialization will save the planet while poor people are actually to blame for its destruction (something I had to call them out on in an environmental column I used to write for Paste Magazine).

This map from the World Wildlife Federation shows how closely overlapping indigenous areas and “protected” areas of the Amazon are. Indigenous people manage and protect nearly 50 percent of the remaining Amazon Rainforest Biome. Source: WWF

It's all a bunch of BS of course. Numerous studies backed up by satellite imagery show that the most preserved parts of the Amazon Rainforest are the areas inhabited and managed by indigenous people. The most decimated? Those already exploited for big agriculture or energy projects. In fact, according to the World Resources Institute (WRI), forest loss in the Brazilian Amazon “rarely” happens inside the borders of Indigenous Lands. Check out their map that proves it.

We are being fed lies by the government and the media funded by the corporations that profit from this. But instead of confronting the system, we rally around political candidates and try to change our consumption habits — as if we were the cause of all this.

Let’s get real. What we face cannot be turned around by voting “choices” or by consumer “choices”.

Both Republicans and Democrats receive campaign money from multinational agribusiness corporations like Cargill. Yes, even Bernie Sanders. These corporations are then given the keys to the world food supply through government subsidies (to the tune of $1 million dollars a minute!) and“free” trade agreements that by design leave little room for competition. And in fact, small American farms are fast going the way of the dinosaurs.

In the meantime, as the Amazon burns, we fight among ourselves over already bought and paid for politicians and point our fingers at the poor lined up for 99 cent hamburgers.

The illusion of choice must be dispelled. Are we also choosing these never-ending wars over oil in the Middle East? Are we choosing the massive rise in inequality both in the USA and around the globe? No, let’s stop pretending. Nothing will change until we confront the corporate capitalist system that is playing monopoly with the whole planet. To turn things around we need full systemic change.

Anything less is like pissing into the inferno.