Fighting Fire with Ire

“Presumably, this is not just the result of Macron’s rhetoric — ‘our house is on fire,’ the French leader tweeted late last week — but what followed: a promise to spike a major European trade deal with Brazil if Bolsonaro did not take the fires seriously. In other words, a threat to apply the same tools of leverage and sanction and shame to crimes of climate as have been applied, in the past, to violations of human rights and territorial sovereignty.” David Wallace-Wells in NY Mag: The Glimmer of a Climate New World Order.

+ “Bolsonaro didn’t pour lighter fluid to ignite the flames now ravaging the Amazon, but with his policies and rhetoric, he might as well have. The destruction he inspired—and allowed to rage with his days of stubborn unwillingness to douse the flames—has placed the planet at a hinge moment in its ecological history.” The Atlantic: The Amazon Fires Are More Dangerous Than WMDs. “One person shouldn’t have the power to set policies that doom the rest of humanity’s shot at mitigating rising temperatures.”