Fires in the Amazon: A Growth-Capacity Story

This past week the news has been highlighting the fires burning in the Amazon. Most stories focus the fact that the record number of fires relate to the world’s desire for more meat. The story hit a fever pitch when some claimed that the Amazon generates 20% of the world’s oxygen but then quickly died down when that turned out to be false. If there is no imminent crisis, we just don’t seem to care.

Many of the fires a result of land being cleared for cattle grazing and or to grow crops, like soy, to feed the animals. Other fires related to an increase in dry land as a secondary effect of land cleared by humans. The Verve has written a decent overview of the situation.

While this is hot news today, the most important take away from the whole situation is this:

A growing global population will take more resources from the Earth to meet it needs and there is a limit to those resources. The economic stability of countries, like Brazil, require that exploitation to fuel growth. There is no way to stop it unless we change the growth mindset.

It is not just small countries like Brazil. The news from Amazon ties closely with Donald Trump’s statement at the G7 that he won’t “jeopardize US wealth on dreams and windmills.”

What Trump is really saying is we must continuously consume the resources of the world to maintain growth. Solar and wind may be “dream and windmills”, but eventually the Amazon will be gone and so will all the oil and gas.

It is interesting that we will only focus on the story if it seems urgent, so those who want to protect the environment have an incentive to build each negative event into a pending crisis. Then those who are focused on the economy try to make environmentalist seem alarmist.

Whichever side is more right, one undeniable fact remains. Resources are limited and unless we change from our current focus on growth those resources will eventually be no more.