Climate rights and voting rights are growing more and more interconnected. When an elected government doesn’t care about the environment we live in, it also doesn’t care about our right to vote. Elected officials who are more interested in taking money from oil lobbies than in saving billions of peoples’ lives, are not going to let our right to vote stop them.
We already see this in the United States. The elimination of all federal climate programs is the opening act to attempts to restrict our voting rights. If we vote the way they want, our vote counts. If we vote in a state that supports common-sense climate policies, our vote may be delayed, lost or disqualified.
Brazil faces similar challenges where one political party wants to extract and exploit the environment, while another is more likely to preserve and sustain it. Unlike the United States, Brazil is home to one of the nine global-climate tipping points. An ecosystem so significant that it’s collapse will lead to the inevitable global change of Earth’s weather and food systems. That global climate tipping point is the Amazon rainforest. The Amazon rainforest is not only one of the Earth’s largest natural sequestration engines, but it’s natural transpiration creates rainfall thousands of miles away, including throughout the United State’s Midwestern region.
Both global warming and deforestation threaten the Amazon rainforest. Brazil’s adoption of common-sense climate policies and forest management have the potential to save the Amazon. It’s continued deforestation has the potential to turn far-flung regions, including the U.S. Midwest, into deserts.
Join host, Bob Grove, and Claudio Angelo to discuss the Survival of the Amazon Rainforest and Brazilian Democracy.
Guests
Claudio Angelo is the International Policy Coordinator at Brazil’s Climate Observatory. Angelo worked as a Science Editor and environmental journalist for over two decades. He has published in Nature magazine and Scientific American. His 2016 book titled, The Death Spiral: How Humanity Altered the Climate Machine, was the science book of the year in Brazil. His latest book is, The Silence of the Chainsaw: When Brazil Decided to Save the Amazon.
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