CounterPunch Exclusives

CounterPunch Exclusives

The Amazon Forest at Risk

Global temperature, 1950-2025. The temperature of the year 2024, the “warmest year on record,” exceeded the 1.5 degree Celsius. EU Copernicus.

Global climate temperature is a key factor in the survival of the Amazon rainforest, indeed the survival of humans, civilization and the Earth. According to Copernicus, the European Union’s Earth Observation Program,

“Europe and the world are in the warmest decade [2020s] on record…. Heat stress is recognized by the WHO [World Health Organization] as the leading cause of global weather-related deaths. In areas with dry and often windy conditions, high temperatures also contributed to the spread and intensification of exceptional wildfires, which produce carbon, toxic air pollutants like particulate matter, and ozone, which impacts human health. This was the case in parts of Europe – which experienced its highest annual total wildfire emissions – and North America… These emissions significantly degraded air quality and had potentially harmful impacts on human health at both the local and larger scales…. The fact that the last eleven years were the warmest on record provides further evidence of the unmistakable trend towards a hotter climate. The world is rapidly approaching the long-term temperature limit set by the Paris agreement [1.5 o Celsius]. We are bound to pass it; the choice we now have is how to best manage the inevitable overshoot and its consequences on societies and natural systems…. Atmospheric data from 2025 paints a clear picture: human activity remains the dominant driver of the exceptional temperatures we are observing. Atmospheric greenhouse gases have steadily increased over the last 10 years.”

Rising global temperature and deforestation threaten the Amazon rainforest

The Amazon forest, the largest tropical rainforest, supports millions of animals and plants while absorbing about a billion tons of anthropogenic carbon dioxide per year. And yet, despite the immense importance of the Amazon forest, business as usual keeps degrading it: “at least 17 percent........

© CounterPunch