BANGOR DAILY NEWS • November 7, 2022
This year’s United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP27) opened in Cairo on Sunday and continues for two weeks, but all that hot air is less important than the single fact that Lula da Silva narrowly won the Brazilian presidency last Sunday. He may be able to save the Amazon; they can’t move fast enough to do that. These massive global meetings, with more than a hundred governments in attendance together with many NGOs, fossil fuel lobbyists in thin disguise and various odds and sods, move very slowly and require huge compromises. The best news this year on the climate front is that the Amazon, which may have been on the brink of irreversible collapse, has got a reprieve. There is reason to fear that the Amazon might actually flip from rainforest to savannah. That wouldn’t just harm people in the Amazon; it’s a global concern. The Amazon is one of the key ecosystems that regulate the global climate. ~ Gwynne Dyer