Last week, the world’s fourth-largest democracy swore in a new (and old) president after kicking its own second-rate Trumpian demagogue to the curb. Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, better known simply as Lula, was sworn in on Jan. 1, his second time at the helm of the diverse and massive nation after becoming the first candidate to defeat a sitting incumbent in Brazil’s relatively young democracy, squeaking in a thin victory over Jair Bolsonaro.
The transition of power is itself a monumental relief for the country and the world, after Bolsonaro spent weeks toying with the idea of staging some kind of self-coup before ending up trundling off to Florida with his tail between his legs (sound familiar?). Yet Lula taking the reins is a development with significance much beyond the interest of 217 million Brazilians.
It is, in a very real sense, an event with planetary consequence for one key reason in particular: Brazil hosts the majority of the Amazon rainforest, the lungs of the Earth, a vast ecosystem with the globe’s richest biodiversity and 150-200 metric gigatons of carbon that would otherwise get released into the atmosphere and supercharge climate change in a way that would be uncontrollable. A disappearing Amazon doesn’t just release existing carbon but stops capturing the carbon released from other sources, and affects the entire Earth’s climate in ways we don’t fully understand.
Bolsonaro seemed rather unbothered by this catastrophe in the making, and in fact seemed content to accelerate it for short-term economic gain. Lula, for whatever faults he might have, understands that no narrow commercial interests are worth the immeasurable costs and future devastation of a planet with a depleted Amazon.
The new president has already appointed a team with a real record of reversing deforestation, and has pledged to reinstate enforcement and regulatory actions that his corrupt predecessor relaxed. Brazilians will be watching as Lula makes a litany of crucial decisions in the coming months, but the whole Earth is watching the leader’s approach to the rainforest.
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