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EPIB Trail
Volume 12, Issue 1
If the Amazon Burns and No One Is Around to Hear It, Does It Make a Sound? By Ana Leah Long The Amazon rainforest plays a major role in regulating our global temperatures, as it absorbs about 5% of all global carbon emissions. This vast rainforest is often referred to as the “lungs of planet Earth.” With such a significant role in atmospheric regulation, it is imperative that we continue to nurture this land as well as the ecosystems and people it inhabits. More than 70,000 fires have emerged in Brazil's Amazon rainforest since January and continue to burn to this day.
A crisis this catastrophic demands immediate government attention and action, yet the Amazon had been ablaze for nearly three weeks in August before the story received any mainstream media coverage. It was not until images of smoke darkening the skies over Brazilian cities surfaced that the fires in the Amazon gained global attention and sparked
international outcry. When the Notre Dame Cathedral was on fire in April of 2019, international fundraising drew in more than $1 billion USD for its reconstruction. As one of the most famous Gothic cathedrals of the Middle Ages, the Notre Dame Cathedral is unequivocally a monumental building with historic roots. However, when comparing the media coverage and public outcry from Notre Dame to that of the Amazon fires, it is disheartening to see how little coverage the Amazon fires received and how little of a priority world leaders have made to salvage one of the most important ecosystems on the planet. The causes of these fires have long remained undetermined, while many have disputed the evident urgency as nothing more than a “natural occurrence.” According to BBC News, data from The National Institute for Space Research reveals how the number of forest fires in the Brazilian Amazon between January and August have increased by 84% from the same period in 2018. If the fires are just a natural occurrence as many say, an 84% increase suggests that nature’s equilibrium has been negatively impacted over time and these fires require immediate action. Independent sources, on the other
