Deforestation in Brazil: Exacerbating Climate Change

On July 17, 2020, satellite data from Brazil's space agency showed that deforestation in Brazil's Amazon was accelerating. "Nearly 3,000 square miles of tree coverage were lost in the 11 months that ended June 30 .That is a 64% increase from the year-earlier period, when 1,772 square miles of forest were destroyed."[1] The deforestation in 2020 was "likely to exceed 2019's total of 3,900 square miles by a 'wide margin," according to a senior scientist at the space agency.[2] Under normal circumstances, which the Wall Street assumed, we would consider the government's claim that not enough troops were available to patrol enough of Brazil's massive Amazon jungle to even slow the acceleration. According to Ricardo Salles, the environment minister, the government wanted to "attract foreign investors to fund sustainable economic development in the jungle."[3] That is to say, the matter boils down to (international) political economy. 

However, the circumstances were not normal. I am not referring to the coronavirus pandemic still ravaging globally, though the refusals of a significant proportion of people to wear masks indoors and on public transportation coupled with the lack of will, competence, knowledge, or ideological inclination to even to enforce the relevant laws, especially in Arizona, reflect the same mindset as that which does not take climate change seriously by electorates and governments around the world. 

Just a week earlier, the World Meteorological Organization had announced that the global temperature-increase threshold set in the Paris Accord of 1.5C (2.7F) over preindustrial levels could occur before 2024.[4]  At this level, the impact of the accelerating deforestation means less CO2 being absorbed by vegetation such as trees, and thus more of the gas being left in the atmosphere. Just as the case of governments of Florida, Texas, and Arizona lifting economic restrictions too early in May, 2020 only to have skyrocketing cases of coronavirus in June and July, governments were also failing in not only not reducing carbon emissions, but also permitting them to continue to increase such that the threshold global temperature could come sooner rather than latter. Given the priorities given the lack of political will over economic and political expediency, we could expect other, more dangerous, thresholds whether in terms of pandemics or climate. 

Perhaps it is precisely because of the mentality that heads in the opposite direction from that which leads to the species' viability that Nature's own instruments for constraining and even eliminating such a species were really beginning to kick in by 2020. Whether the Brazilian government was quietly looking the other way as illegal deforestation was occurring or that government could not supply enough military troops to protect the massive jungle is a question that pales in comparison to the observation that the deforestation itself came at the expense of reduced carbon in the atmosphere. The fact that continued deforestation rather than increasing forestation was happening--that humans living in Brazil (or the world) werte not up to the task of stopping the trend--evinces a weakness in our species that may finally render us extinct by Nature's means, which we cannot necessarily control. As with any overpopulated species, Nature's tools are disease, starvation, and war, according to Malthius. It seems that the refusal of humans to adequately protect ourselves (and societies) even in the midst of a raging pandemic and increasingly urgent climate change may have already doomed our species. It is also possible, though not probably, that the species' ineptitude in protecting itself will be countered by technological innovation. Yet even so, making things worse rather than better does not render our species particularly attractive, at least to Nature. 

1. Paulo Thevisani, "Brazil's Forest Losses Quicken," The Wall Street Journal, July 17, 2020.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Associated Press, "UN Report Predicts the World Could Surpass Dangerous Warming Theshold by 2024," NY Post, July 9, 2020.

The Plague, the Spanish Flu, and the Coronavirus: Equivalence and Progress in Infectious Diseases

History forgotten is history to be repeated, for evolution occurs over such vast oceans of time that for our purposes, human biological nature is fixed. Yet history kept fresh can permit progress such that the species is better equipped to combat problems such as pandemics. At the time of the coronavirus pandemic of 2020, serious comparisons to the Spanish Flu of 1918 and the Black Death of the fourteenth century were lacking in the American media, including by public health officials and government officials even as claims of vague equivalence were made. Such claims, I submit, were erroneous. In fact, they did more harm than good by instilling excessive fear in the population.

Hearing the coronavirus being referred to as a plague on National Public Radio in the United States, I instinctively bristled at the assumed equivalence. A plague is a contagious bacterial disease with a high mortality rate. Coronavirus is a virus rather than a bacterium. The Black Death was a plague pandemic that “devastated Europe from 1347 to 1352 CE, killing an estimated 25-30 million people.”[1]  Paris buried 800 dead each day of the peak, or apex, there. “On average 30% of the population of affected areas [in Europe] was killed, although some historians prefer a figure closer to 50%, and this was probably the case in the worst affected cities.”[2] In 2020, two months after the first recorded death from the coronavirus in Europe, 97,000 people there were dead. The global mortality rate of coronavirus as of March 3, 2020, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), was just 3.4%, which is much closer to the 1% from seasonable flu.[3] Therefore, the coronavirus pandemic was not a plague.

The coronavirus pandemic was also publically likened to the Spanish Flu, which hit the U.S. in 1918. At least both were viruses, unlike the Plague. “The Spanish flu of 1918 lasted only a few months but took an estimated 50 million to 100 million lives around the globe, including 675,000 in the U.S.”[4] Ten days short of two months since the first death from the coronavirus in the U.S., 38,917 people were dead from the disease and less than 5% of the population had been infected. Worldwide, at least 158,000 people had died.[5] Clearly, the two pandemics were not equivalent. The assumed equivalence in the comparisons in 2020 demonstrates not only ignorance, but also a lack of interest in acquiring even a bit of historical knowledge so as to make tolerable comparisons.

In spite of historical knowledge being available and there being advances in knowledge, weaknesses of our species exerts a countervailing wind on the road of progress. The Spanish flu itself may not have been more virulent, however, because medical and public-health knowledge was so significantly less in 1918 than a century later. To put the two eras in perspective, model-T cars were on the road in 1918, whereas electric (and hybrid) cars were being driven and self-driving cars were being tested by 2020.

Parades and “other large public gatherings were common, contributing to the spread” of the Spanish Flu.[6] American governments facing the coronavirus pandemic prohibited or recommended people to maintain a physical distance from each other and stay home as much as possible (e.g. shelter-in-place orders). Retail businesses either shut voluntarily or by government order. Medically, antibiotics “to treat secondary bacterial infections that often accompany the flu had yet to be discovered” by 1918.[7] In addition to antibiotics, physicians in 2020 could put patients struggling to breath on ventilators.

It cannot be assumed, however, that people in 2020 could not have improved their chances of staying healthy by learning more about the 1918 societal protocols. During the Spanish Flu, it was thought “that keeping windows open would deter the spread.”[8] Trolley cars in Cincinnati, Ohio displayed fliers encouraging the practice, “which was utilized nationwide.”[9] In contrast, bus drivers in Phoenix, Arizona kept the bus’s narrow upper windows closed during the coronavirus pandemic a century later. Missing the larger point, the bus company’s management claimed that even open slits were unsafe because passengers could throw small objects out of the buses. Even though medical knowledge was clear that the coronavirus stays airborne relatively long due to its small size among flus and could even be transmitted by normal breathing, the bus company in the desert did not bother to read up on how trolley companied had dealt with the pandemic in 1918. Nor did the passengers figure that physical distancing applied to getting on the bus (i.e., giving deboarding passengers some space). In grocery stores in Phoenix, employees and customers alike overwhelmingly ignored the store policies on keeping at a distance from other people. In spite of the signs and announcements, the managements did not have control over their own employees.

In grocery stores in Phoenix, employees and customers alike overwhelmingly ignored the store policies on keeping at a distance from other people. In spite of the signs and announcements, the managements did not have control over their own employees.

Arizona at the time had one of the worst public education systems in the U.S.; even bad judgment could be traced back to this factor. Perhaps it is too idealistic to assume that everyone can be educated enough to reason his or her way to better secure even self-interested self-preservation. Even with historical knowledge and advances thereof available, human nature presents a limit as to how much actual progress can be made against infectious diseases.

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[1] Marak Cartwright, “Black Death,” Ancient History Encyclopedia (accessed on April 18, 2020).

[2] Ibid.ev

[3] Tedros Ghebreyesus, press briefing of March 3, 2020. As Director-General, he headed the World Health Organization at the time.

[4] Aaron Kassraie, “Spanish Flu: How America Fought a Pandemic a Century Ago,” AARP (accessed April 18, 2020).

[5] Ben Westcott et al, “Global Coronavirus Death Toll Passes 158,000,” CNN.com, April 18, 2020.

[6] Aaron Kassraie, “Spanish Flu: How America Fought a Pandemic a Century Ago,”

[7] Ibid.

[8] Ibid.

[9] Ibid.