‘It’s F**king Over!’ Lula da Silva’s Victory In Brazil Injects Hope Into Global Climate Fight
SÃO PAULO ― Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s victory in Brazil’s presidential election last Sunday has energized world leaders, climate activists and environmentalists ahead of this year’s United Nations climate change summit, which kicks off Sunday in Egypt.
In an election many saw as crucial to the future of the Amazon rainforest and staving off catastrophic planetary warming, the leftist da Silva, known affectionately as “Lula,” narrowly ousted far-right President Jair Bolsonaro, a staunch climate change denier who has presided over skyrocketing deforestation in the Amazon rainforest that turned him into a global pariah.
Da Silva, who oversaw drastic reductions in deforestation rates and carbon emissions during his presidency from 2003 to 2010, seized on climate issues during the race to paint Bolsonaro as a global outlier who had isolated Brazil on the world stage. In his first speech as president-elect, he pledged to “fight for zero deforestation” and combat the illegal logging, mining and ranching that has ballooned under Bolsonaro’s watch.
“Brazil and the planet need the Amazon alive,” da Silva, who will travel to Egypt next week as an early sign of his intention to reassume a leading role in the climate fight, said Sunday night. “We will prove once again that it is possible to generate wealth without destroying the environment.”
Brazil controls the vast majority of the Amazon rainforest and is also home to other sensitive environmental regions that scientists see as crucial to the global battle against climate change. There and abroad, climate advocates did not mince words when the election results were clear.
“It’s fucking over!” the Brazilian Climate Observatory, a São Paulo-based think tank, said in a release Sunday night. “The nightmare is due to end at last.”
Christian Poirier, program director at the environmental nonprofit Amazon Watch, told HuffPost that a Bolsonaro victory “would have meant the end of the Amazon.” Indeed, scientists have sounded the alarm that the rainforest is nearing a tipping point beyond which it will be unable to recover.
“Lula winning it, particularly on a platform of environmental preservation and respect for human rights, particularly the rights of forest peoples and Indigenous peoples, was a great victory in the face of the extreme threat posed by another four years of Bolsonaro — the existential threat,” Poirier said. “Given the importance of the Amazon, the importance of this biome to world climate stability, this was the most consequential election on the planet.”