Opinion: “Environmental Psychosis” and Brazil’s Amazon

RIBEIRÃO PRETO, Brazil – On his return from Japan, where he participated in the G20 meeting and met several of the world’s great and near-great, Brazilian president Bolsonaro said he told German chancellor Merkel about “environmental psychosis” in relation to Brazil.

The Curmudgeon agrees with the idea, if not the rhetorical overkill. There is a surfeit of irrationality involving Brazil and its Amazon region. The principal irrationality is that both Brazil and foreign countries insist upon labeling issues and concerns as “environmental”, when they are usually just self-serving defenses of their own economic wealth and status.

Abroad, notably in Western Europe, there is a prevailing sentiment that the Amazon belongs to all of humanity, rather than to Brazil, and that any country claiming to represent humanity is perfectly entitled to tell Brazil what it can and cannot do in or with the Amazon.

That is irrational.

Within Brazil, there is a prevailing sentiment that any foreign country opining on the Amazon is plotting to diminish Brazil’s sovereignty over the region, either to impede Brazil’s thriving agribusiness sector from competing with their domestic economy or, worse yet, to permit foreigners to take over the Amazon’s natural resources.

As Jair Bolsonaro put it, “Brazil is a virgin that every sex fiend abroad covets.”

That is irrational—it might even be psychotic.

Brazil says it is doing just fine, thank you, on environmental matters, and then points out that Europe uses more coal and more pesticides than does Brazil, so who are the Europeans to go all pious and soppy about the environment?

Europe does not deny its past failures—it used to be covered in forests; none are left—but says it is trying to avoid Brazil making the same mistake—allegedly for the good of all humanity.

“Rubbish!” says the Curmudgeon.

Europe (and particularly France) has always been hugely protective of its highly subsidized agribusiness and does not want competition from outsiders (e.g. Mercosur) whose production costs are cheaper. Therefore, Europe criticizes Brazil’s deforestation, low wages for workers, lack of recycling, and anything else it can think of.

Brazil, on the other hand, continues in its firmly held belief that the Amazon is far larger and more resilient than anyone in Europe can comprehend. Furthermore, it contends that deforestation is as essential to Brazil’s future economic growth as deforestation was to Europe’s economic growth in the past.

Pope Francis has gone public with his opinion on the Amazon: “social justice and ecology are deeply integrated” because, he says, the poor suffer most from environmental devastation, so it is the obligation of everyone, including the Church, to speak up.

Brazil, on the other hand, maintains that clearing rain forest for agribusiness purposes generates jobs, which help the working poor, and particularly the indigenous peoples inhabiting the rain forest.

So, who is right? Those who say the Amazon belongs to all humanity or those who say it belongs solely to Brazil?

The Curmudgeon prefers to echo Shakespeare’s character Mercutio in “Romeo and Juliet” and say, “A plague on both your houses!”

In other words, stop the irrational rhetoric and start to think rationally about how to deal with the problem, for there is a problem—the Amazon is important to Brazil’s future, but it is also important to the future of the world.