Fast approaching
The Amazon rainforest experienced its worst drought on record in 2023. Many villages became unreachable by river, wildfires raged and wildlife died. Some scientists worry events like these are a sign that the world’s biggest forest is fast approaching a point of no return.
And no doubt other scientists worry that events like these are a sign that the world’s biggest forest is slowly but not all that slowly approaching a point of no return. In short, droughts in the Amazon rainforest are a very bad sign as well as a very bad thing.
Bom Jesus de Igapo Grande is a community of 40 families in the middle of the forest and has been badly affected by the worst drought recorded in the region.
There was no water to shower. Bananas, cassava, chestnuts and acai crops spoiled because they can’t get to the city fast enough.
In the rain forest. Imagine what it’s like elsewhere.
As well as being home to a stunning array of biodiversity, the Amazon is estimated to store around 150bn tonnes of carbon. Many scientists fear the forest is racing towards a theoretical tipping point – a point where it dries, breaks apart and becomes a savannah.
As it stands, the Amazon creates a weather system of its own. In the vast rainforest, water evaporates from the trees to form rain clouds which travel over the tree canopy, recycling this moisture five or six times. This keeps the forest cool and hydrated, feeding it the water it needs to sustain life.
But if swathes of the forest die, that mechanism could be broken. And once this happens there may be no going back.
Aka a tipping point.
It doesn’t bear thinking about, does it? Although one has to, and does. A terrible lesson of age is how powerless we are, especially in view of the power of large corporations, governments and many of the wealthy, and their refusal to recognise the imminence of what faces us, and the cries of the climate-deniers who suppose that owning the libs and the woke is the only important thing in their lives.