“Studies have warned, but the government also has other agendas”, replied Eduardo Leite when asked about the lack of investment to combat floods in Rio Grande do Sul, the need for which had already been highlighted by studies. The brutal sincerity he showed there takes its toll, but it would be true in several Brazilian states. We are poorly adapted to climate change.
In speech, it is a priority for different sides of the ideological spectrum. The real current division between liberals and the left is whether the State, when incorporating this environmental agenda, has to make choices and prioritize what is most important or whether it can simply spend more without any limit for each new need that arises. But this is a theoretical discussion.
In practice, things are quite different. The lack of investment is general. Bahia and Minas in 2021 and 2022, Pernambuco in 2023, Rio Grande do Sul in 2024. This applies both to investments that mitigate the impact of extreme climate events and to technologies that stop contributing to (or even reverse) the destructive processes that make these events are becoming more and more frequent.
Natalie Unterstell, president of the Talanoa Institute and a member of the federal government, narrated, in her account on 2015, among other reasons for pointing out the stupidity of projects like Belo Monte. It seems like little has changed. The Lula government's new PAC allocates 1.5% of its R$1 trillion to disaster prevention.
The broader environmental agenda also seems alien to the major economic policy discussions, which include encouraging car purchases and Petrobras' subsidy on the price of gasoline. The good news is that, after long sabotage (from the Dilma government to Bolsonaro), we have a Ministry of the Environment committed to reducing deforestation in the Amazon. If the rest of the government does not cooperate, however, it will be insufficient.
The real face of the climate emergency is not the Hollywood apocalyptic events that destroy the entire world at once. It is the increasing frequency of floods that flood cities, droughts that destroy crops, forest fires that last longer, desertification of soil, peaks of heat and cold that harm health, etc. Human life will not be extinguished, but it will gradually become more expensive, more precarious and more brutal, especially for those who live at the bottom of the social pyramid and have no way to protect themselves.
It is almost unbelievable that this topic is no longer central in Brazil. We have 60% of the Amazon jungle in our territory, the greatest biodiversity in the world, the largest volume of fresh water in the world. Our agriculture directly depends on the climate and rainfall that these conditions provide. Our electrical matrix is relatively clean, and just by keeping the forests standing we help the global effort.
Brazil, alone, cannot combat climate change. That's why we should take the lead on the issue and stop getting lost in the noise about wars in which we are not involved (and in which we have been on the wrong side). If the world pays what it owes for the Brazilian effort to preserve our Amazon, we will even be able to invest more in adapting to future disasters.
Meanwhile, here, liberals, developmentalists, leftists, rightists, should all unite around a new consensus that the environmental agenda is not only a global priority but also an opportunity for Brazil.
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