Horrifying; the Amazon is still on fire.

This is horrifying.

Remember when Notre Dame was burning and the world watched in horror?

Notre Dame, by comparison, was intriguing, inanimately morbid, but an exciting curiosity. Sadness was a feeling we felt too, but curiosity was prevailing.

You know. You felt it.

THIS is indescribable considering the potential consequences.

The Amazon isn’t an old building.

The Amazon isn’t burning wood, paint, and stained glass whose builders and artists died hundreds of years ago.

The Amazon is one of the most unique ecosystems on the planet.

The Amazon is the home to hundreds of species of plants and animals that exist nowhere else.

The Amazon is one of the last places on earth to sustain lightly contacted indigenous groups.

The Amazon is a place of legend, of stories you’ve heard that linger in the back of your mind.

The Amazon is a place that encourages inspiration when we try to visualize other worlds.
This is a jungle the likes of which we may never see again.

It is on fire.
It is burning.
It is currently being allowed to burn. Constantly.
All eyes to look have claimed blindness and turned away.

And?
This could affect you too. No matter where you live.
This is the rainforest – it’s on fire.
This is global, ecological terror.
This is evil.

Ultimately we are looking at the result of humanity’s careless careening into environmental apathy.

We own this now.

Just like we’ll own the death of the Great Barrier Reef and the calamity its demise will wreak in the ecosystem.

Just like we’ll own the melting polar ice caps and the resulting destruction of infrastructure and life.

This is the 21st-century result of a political class that cares not for pretensions of delusion that they care about their voters, about people, or about the planet.

This is the 21st-century result of a world that is more connected than ever before, but whose connection results only in self-centered decision making.

A world whose residents, as a collective, have determined that apathy and inaction are more important than the lives of their neighbours.

This IS your neighbourhood.

With the true Empire of The Internet upon us, your neighbour is no longer the person who lives beside you.

We live on one planet.

The borders that defined us before are rough designations of the origin of a veritable menagerie of culture.

If you’re online, the border that you learned in school cannot be the line that represents where your compassion ends.

This is a visual representation of why we accept others.
Each human has value – so to do the beasts and the trees.

From The Independent: “These fires are no accident. Brazil’s President, Jair Bolsonaro, has done nothing to discourage ranchers and land grabbers to stop” deforestation of the Amazon, said Anna Jones, Greenpeace UK Head of Forests. “Despite the Covid-19 pandemic, deforestation has soared and now we are seeing fires deliberately lit to clear that land for industrial agriculture.”

“This is just the beginning. Over the next few months, unless we see strong intervention, fires will be likely to increase and engulf vast areas of forest, endangering the lives of Indigenous Peoples, wildlife and worsening the climate crisis globally.”

You don’t get to choose to not care about a crisis in another country just because you don’t live there.

While it’s not always possible to help, it’s always possible to stay engaged. It’s always possible to care.

This is humanity visually disengaging.
This is the result of what happens when we don’t care.
Ultimately…

This is hate.

Hate. Traditionally presented as fire.
This is the embodiment of that projection.

I am afraid of what this will do to our planet and our future.

You should be too.

This is horrifying

The Independant: Satellite images reveal spread of Amazon fires amid fears over deforestation in looming dry season