this is footage of the Brazilian Amazon
on fire as of August 20th 2019 there
have been more than 74,000 fires in this
region and that's not normal in fact
according to Brazil's National Institute
for Space Research it's already the
largest number of fires on record for a
single year so what makes this year so
different and what happens if the fires
continue to burn first of all not only
is there an unprecedented number of
fires but there's also a massive amount
of smoke in the air so massive that it's
visible from space scientists estimate
that it stretches 1.2 million square
miles across Brazil and it even briefly
eclipses the Sun above Brazil's largest
city Sao Paulo so how did we get here
the simple answer is people scientists
say that humans ignited as much as 99%
of these fires largely to clear land for
agriculture but that alone isn't
actually unusual there are normally
fires in the dry season from July to
October which is when ranchers and
farmers are more likely to burn where it
gets complicated is when you try to look
at why this year is so much worse
environmental groups say it's largely
because of one man
a year bolson auro the president of
Brazil the government of Jarvis Varnado
has sent a signal both in terms of its
policies and in terms of his rhetoric
that illegal activity arson
deforestation land invasions violence
will be tolerated that's Christian
portiere of the nonprofit Amazon Watch
and he says these fires were started by
ranchers land grabbers and the range of
other actors who were emboldened by bull
saneras rhetoric according to poor iere
they're setting fire to portions of the
rainforest to acquire more land more
property because now there's no risk of
getting caught but it actually gets
worse according to CNN bolson ro has
also slashed the budget of the country's
environmental enforcement agency by as
much as twenty three million dollars if
we look at these moves we see the tape
was sent for the kind of the devastation
we're seeing today bolson ro himself has
offered up an alternative explanation
for the fires he suggested that
nongovernmental organizations NGOs
ignited them as a way to embarrass his
administration though he presented no
proof but here's the thing regardless of
how they started these fires are really
bad and not just for the million or so
indigenous people who live in the Amazon
for one these fires are releasing loads
of harmful gases into the air like
carbon monoxide which Maps like this
show is spreading in the region and they
also drive up deforestation adding to
what has already been a really bad year
for the Amazon and this is where things
get even scarier
you see deforestation in the Amazon
triggers a negative feedback loop the
more trees that fall the drier the
Amazon becomes and a dry Amazon is more
likely to burn now scientists warn that
we may soon reach a point where that
cycle is irreversible we're talking
about is reaching a Clinton tipping
point in the Amazon today where enough
of the forest has been either destroyed
or degraded and it can no longer create
its own environment its own rainfall and
that could trigger what scientists call
a die back so the moment you cross that
threshold that tipping point you're
moving into a place where the Amazon
will turn into a savanna that's right he
says that the Amazon would become a
totally different environment far from
the one we know today which is home to
three million species of plants and
animals which sucks up as much as 600
million tons of carbon each year and
which supplies as much as 20% of the
oxygen that we breathe
you