Brazil and Australia: Indigenous Peoples and the Fires This Time

Abstract

In 2019 and 2020, the signature malady of the global climate crisis became raging wildfires. They occurred with previously unknown size and ferocity in California, the Amazon Valley, and Australia (as well as many other places, from Chile, to Siberia)—and even, as an indication of things to come, along the west coast of Greenland. In each of the wildfires’ major sites, environmentalists ran smack into political systems dominated by established nationalistic interests with mindsets (whether the USA’s Donald Trump, Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro, or Australia’s Scott Morrison) at least a century and a half old, which is to say able, with straight faces, to deny that greenhouse gases are a problem at all. In each case, this denial was fed by copious amounts of political cash from established interests that have become very good at combining oil, gas, and coal to produce copious corporate profits. If carbon dioxide had a sense of irony (or even a sense of humor) it would have been roaring with laughter. As it is, in our world, greenhouse gases have no political preferences, no emotions, no envy, and no sense of guilt about ruining the Planet Earth. All they do is hold heat.