The holocaust of the Amazon puts civilization on alert.

NASA satellite image with smoke from the outbreaks of fires in the Amazon. LAUREN DAUPHIN AFP

When, at three o'clock in the afternoon, the night fell on the city of São Paulo - one of the possible causes was the encounter of a cold front with the smoke of the fires -, many people were frightened by what seemed an announcement of the end of times. It was something similar, if we recover the original meaning of the word, to a holocaust: "all burned", in the sacrifice between Hebrew. With two differences: one, that the holah of Jewish sacrifice had the sense of reparation, sought a general atonement for sins; another, that after Nazism sacrificed millions of Jews, that word acquired a more sinister meaning and was used for any large and systematic destruction - regardless of the cause - until extermination. And that is what happens today: the holocaust of the Amazon.

From a young age I dedicated myself to thinking about the meaning of the jungle, beyond the economy and the material dimensions. On July 15, 2008, when I returned to the Senate as soon as I left the Ministry of Environment, I published an article entitled After a Blue Butterfly, in which I remembered my irreducible identification with the millions of people born and living in the jungle. He said: “Forests are not just statistics. Neither mere objects of negotiations, political dispute, thesis, ambitions, crying. First of all, they are forests, a complex and creative life system. They have culture, spirituality, economy, infrastructure, peoples, laws, science and technology. It is an identity so strong that it remains a kind of radar impregnated in perceptions, in the gaze, in feelings, no matter how far one goes, however much one learns, knows and admires the things of the rest of the world. ” More than a decade has passed, but I keep the same feeling.

Now I see the fire again killing the beauty of the Amazon and destroying the perfection of its nature. I regret the loss of every smell, every color, every root, every animal, every plant, every texture that will ever come back. And, although I do not expect sensitivity from those who do not know the wealth that is lost, I feel that it is necessary to alert everyone and protest against a government that gives way to destruction, which causes uncontrolled devastation and enormous damage to all.

We are living a moment of environmental barbarism in Brazil, promoted by the Bolsonaro Government. As much as it is alerted, no matter how much evidence is shown, no matter how much it is claimed to avoid environmental, economic, political, social chaos, the Government does not show signs of concern, but of complicity with the destruction.

With which, it is necessary to face the environmental emergency in Brazil with the courage and the sense of urgency that the situation imposes on us, to avoid that we arrive at a place with no return, which under no circumstances should we reach: that of the systemic infeasibility of the Amazon rainforest because of the predatory actions that unbalance the conditions of its existence. It is necessary to mobilize all those who do not want to have, in their genealogies, the DNA of barbarism: academy, social and environmental movements, entrepreneurship, state and municipal governments, youth, political leaders. In a plural and supra-partisan way, without politicization, it is necessary to say, it is enough once and for all. The predatory and clandestine extraction of minerals, the illegal appropriation of public lands, theft of wood, logging and burning, violence against indigenous people and local people, economic, political and social damages that we are already suffering, inside and outside Brazil.

The Amazon is burning by a mixture of ignorance and truculent interests. The Government is inaugurating a time of free crime, where one can attack nature and communities without fear of punishment. Let us not ignore the assumption, as in the past, since what threatens to be remade is, both for the result, "all burned", and for the systematic nature of the destruction, the tragedy of tragedies: the Holocaust.

The Brazilian people, their sensitive and conscious nucleus, must respond in the name of ancient peoples and future generations, the Amazon and all of Nature. In response to the legitimate interests of society, the economy and human civilization, declare Brazil in a state of environmental emergency.