The re-election of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva on the eve of the Cop27 climate summit is a signal of hope for Amazonia and the planet (Editorial, 31 October). The Guardian was among the first to raise the alarm at the impact of road-building by the Brazilian dictatorship that cut through the forest, publishing a long article of mine in the early 1970s, which I followed up later in my 1978 book Assault on the Amazon. Since then, there has been remorseless, bit-by-bit felling and burning of life-sustaining trees, exacerbated in recent years by Jair Bolsonaro.
But no one should underrate the challenge facing Lula, an older man coming into office next January in less auspicious circumstances than in 2003. He faces a divided country, a hostile congress and many state governors who support both Bolsonaro and his reactionary policies.
