Resistance to the 'environmental sect' is a cornerstone of Bolsonaro's rule
Brazil’s populist president shows no sign of changing his policies on the climate crisis despite a backlash at home and abroad
Dom Phillips in Rio de Janeiro
Mon 27 Jul 2020 10.00 EDT
It is not just meat companies in Brazil that are under pressure over rising deforestation and widespread fires in the Amazon. The government has been forced to react after international investors and CEOs of Brazilian companies have protested, and now its own environmental officials have joined the chorus.
But its response is hobbled by a deep distrust of global heating, fed by a far-right ideology reluctant to admit that the climate emergency has a human cause.
Brazil’s foreign minister, Ernesto Araújo, has warned that climate change was a plot by “cultural Marxists” and President Jair Bolsonaro made a campaign promise to pull Brazil out of the Paris climate accord before reluctantly backing off.
The international community has fought back, with Jan Erik Saugestad, CEO of Norway’s Storebrand Asset Management, leading a group of 29 investors with $3.7tn under management who warned that rising deforestation and the dismantling of environment agencies was “creating widespread uncertainty about the conditions for investing”.
More:
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2020/jul/27/resistance-to-the-environmental-sect-is-a-cornerstone-of-bolsonaro-rule-brazil
Also posted in Environment and energy:
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1127139262
