Pledges to fight Amazon fires vague. Then Canada stepped up.



Canada will send a firefighting aircraft and $15M

With a year-to-date total of more than 3,717 wildfires the country has been fighting, Canada has established a globally connected partnership arrangement wherein according to Prime Minister Trudeau, “we all help each other”.

Canada, notes Trudeau, has considerable experience fighting forest fires. BC and Alberta foresters, however, say those fires are of a different type. What’s happening in Brazil, is man-made. Canada’s forests mostly suffer lightning strikes or accidents during dry seasons.

America, Britain, Canada, France, individually, and the collective G7 group have pledged amounts approaching $15-20 million each to help fight fires in the Amazon. Thus far there are no boots on the ground.

The G7 pledged to support a reforestation plan to be unveiled in September at a UN conference in New York City, the leaders said during press conferences. Brazil has not yet agreed. Nothing concrete has happened. Would this be a good item to bring up during electioneering in North America?


by Melissa Hemingway


Canada's extensive experience fighting forest fires has led to a leading capability in aircraft manufacturing. The newest Canadian 515 “water bomber”. Canada’s extensive experience fighting forest fires has led to a leading capability in firefighting aircraft manufacturing say industrialists.
Photo Credit: Company Supplied. Photo Art/Cropping/Enhancement: Rosa Yamamoto FPM.news

“Canada is at preparedness level 1, indicating that weather conditions in most of the country are such that significant fire activity is unlikely. Nationally, fire activity is below average for this time of year,” reports Natural Resources Canada, today..

The Amazon fires, thousands of them, are a political football.

One G7 country says there is no such thing as climate change. US President Trump says he is the expert on the environment and that the environment is less important than making money and enjoying wealth in the moment.

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro is also a climate change skeptic.

Meanwhile, the LATimes is reporting that scientists speaking to Julia Rosen  and others say that the biggest fear represented in Brazil is the apparent willingness to deforest the Rainforest killing indigenous species and putting at risk the ecological balance across the globe.

Flames are spreading across the Amazon rainforest this summer, spewing millions of tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each day. But scientists say that’s not their biggest concern. They’re far more worried about what the fires represent: a dramatic increase in illegal deforestation that could deprive the world of a critical buffer against climate change. … from the Los Angeles Times

Julia Rosen reports that every minute more than a soccer field’s worth of Amazon forest is falling in fires. This information comes from Brazil’s own National Institute for Space Research.

NOAA/NASA's Suomi NPP satellite collected this natural-color image using the VIIRS (Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite) instrument on August 21, 2019. Smoke from the fires raging in in the Amazon basin has created a shroud that is clearly visible across much of the center of South America.

Meanwhile, NOAA/NASA’s Suomi NPP satellite collected this (above) natural-color image using the VIIRS (Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite) instrument on August 21, 2019. Smoke from the fires raging in in the Amazon basin has created a shroud that is clearly visible across much of the center of South America.

The more worrisome fact is that preliminary estimates from satellite data revealed that deforestation in June rose almost 90% compared with the same month in 2018, and by 280% in July.

This follows Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro’s pledge to monetize the Rainforest with fire-clearing and beef ranching.

“It’s as if this pal of Donald Trump wants to put a stick in the eye of Emmanuel Macron,” says Katie Alsop from Paris.

The leader of France and this year’s host of the G7 Group is a global leader in fighting Climate Change.

“Fighting man-made fires in the Amazon could be a testimony to the haphazard manner in which the patriarch behaves and treats its natural resources in the context of security for future generations,” notes Michele Francis of  The RINJ Foundation, a civil society women’s group devoted to the safety of women and children. She leads a medical team in the Amazon basin dealing with medical shortages in Venezuela.

Feminine-Perspective Magazine

The ubiquitous high wing twin turboprop Canadian firefighter runs around $35 million to buy. Canada is apparently sending one aircraft from some of the units the federal government operates while it continues to fight thousands of fires in Canada.