October 22, 2018--1.5 Degrees Centigrade

Though barely noticed, the climate last week was prominently in the news.

First, there was a landmark report from the United Nations’ scientific panel on climate change, "Global Warming of 1.5 Degrees Centigrade," paints a far more disturbing picture of the immediate consequences of climate change than previously thought and says that avoiding the damage requires transforming the world economy at a speed and scale that has “no documented historic precedent.”

The report describes a world of worsening food shortages and wildfires, and a mass die-off of coral reefs as soon as 2040--a period well within the lifetime of much of the world's population.

One good thing about getting to be my age--by then I should be long gone.

This report landed with a thud on Donald Trump's otherwise empty desk where it lay, undoubtedly unread. When he was asked about it, in effect, to his base, he said, "Who knows. We'll see."

Also pandering to his political base was the frontrunner in Brazil's upcoming presidential election, Jan Bolsonaro, a far right congressman who says that Brazil's environmental policy is "suffocating" the country's economy. Thus he plans to unfetter the country's agribusiness sector and allow it to accelerate the massive deforestation of the Amazon Rain Forest, often referred to as the "lungs of the Earth."

Stretching across two million square miles, most of it in Brazil, the forest acts as a giant filter for the carbon dioxide emissions that humankind as a whole generates.

Bolsonaro's proposed deregulatory policy is designed to create more farm and ranch land to capitalize on the increasing global demand for soy beans and beef. Some of this demand the result of Trump's regressive trade policies.

Thus, this presidential contest is by far the most consequential one underway anywhere in the world, including our midterms, as every inhabitant of Earth will be negatively affected.

Bolsonaro's opponent, Fernando Haddad of the Workers Party, is far behind in the polls. In the first round of voting last month, he received just 29 percent of the vote while Bolsonaro received 46 percent.

The Amazon is home to more native people than any other place on Earth and for decades millions of acres of land have been set aside for them. But Bolsonaro has a different plan. He has said that if elected "there won't be a square centimeter demarcated as an indigenous preserve . . . Where there is indigenous land there is wealth underneath."

None of this is good news for the planet.