The Big Picture – 
By Glynn Wilson – 

WASHINGTON, D.C. — With the nation’s capital in reprieve this weekend from the summer heat waves, heat domes and thunderstorms pounding in from the southwest, what locals like to think of as a harbinger of fall, turning away from the news it might be easy to forget that the Amazon rain forests in South America are still on fire.

This is no accidental natural disaster, either. The fires were set by farmers, loggers and miners urged on by right-wing Trump clone Jair Bolsonaro, the president of Brazil.

His plan, like Trump’s plan in the U.S. to curb environmental laws and regulations to open more public and private land to oil and gas development, is to open up the massive forests to more mining, logging and farming, mostly to grow more beef for the world market. This is exactly the opposite of what the world needs at this critical moment in time, as the drastic effects of climate change due to global warming from the burning of fossil fuels become more evident by the day.

Known as the “lungs of the earth” for all the oxygen the forests create and the carbon dioxide they absorb, the loss and collapse of the Amazon rain forests would certainly be a harbinger of the end for human life on earth — in this century. Average global surface and ocean temperatures are projected to rise 4 degrees by 2100, according to the National Climate Assessment, which projects not only massive environmental disasters, but widespread economic devastation as well.

“Trump’s climate policy may literally be a virtual death knell for the species,” intellectual scholar Noam Chomsky recently pointed out in an interview.

“We’ve got a couple of years to try to deal somehow with the environmental crisis,” he says, not without all hope.

“It can be controlled,” he advises. “It’s not easy, but it can be done. If you waste a couple of years by trying to escalate the crisis, you might just push us over the edge.”

Which seems to be happening, although as the New York Times and others point out this week, Bolsonaro backed down a bit when pressured by leaders from France and Germany at the G7 summit with an immediate economic backlash against his country.

But it may be too late to save much, as the conflagration overtakes the continent.

In the state of Rondônia, firefighters said they were in triage mode, according to the Times, trying to figure out what little could be saved.

“It’s impossible to be everywhere at the same time,” said Coronel Demargli Farias, the state’s chief of firefighters. “Even if we had 50,000 men.”

Many of Brazil’s embassies around the world were mobbed by protesters as well, putting more pressure on Bolsonaro to act. In Buenos Aires, hundreds of demonstrators chanted “out Bolsonaro!” to the beat of drums.

“I feel a lot of pain and anguish with everything that is going on,” said one of the protesters, Magalí Moglia, a 22-year-old college student, who expressed a sense of existential urgency, “realizing that I am part of the species that is killing the other species.”

It’s nice to know that someone is beginning to realize that, since protests by Democrats in the United States seem non-existent. There seems to be a major burnout of activism going on here, where nearly three years of the daily distracting Trump twitter storms seems to have taken their toll.

The one presidential candidate to make taking on climate change the centerpiece of his campaign left the race for the White House this week, citing low poll numbers.

Washington state Governor Jay Inslee, who made the fight against climate change the focus of his campaign, said on Wednesday he was withdrawing from contention for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination.

Democratic presidential candidate and independent Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders praised Inslee’s efforts, saying, “There is no more important issue facing humanity.”

Sanders then announced that he would lay out an ambitious 10-year, $16.3 trillion national mobilization plan to avert a climate catastrophe, warning that the U.S. risks losing $34.5 trillion in economic productivity by the end of the century if it does not respond with the urgency the threat demands.

Sanders has long spoken of the climate crisis as an existential danger to the U.S. and the world, and has previously endorsed a Green New Deal, which he put forward with the New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. He will formally unveil his latest proposal on Thursday during a campaign visit to Paradise, California, a town that was destroyed in 2018 by one of the deadliest wildfires in the state’s history. After the tour, the senator will hold a climate change town hall in Chico, California.

But of course he is already being attacked by other Democrats for the cost of the plan, especially Hillary Clinton supporters from 2016.

“We have a deficit rapidly approaching 1 trillion dollars,” one commenter wrote on Facebook. “How the heck does he plan to fund all his proposals? It’s idiocy!”

Even before he announces the plan, the Washington Post already has a column out attacking it as so expensive as to be considered child’s play next to Trump’s wall on the U.S. border with Mexico.

What? Speaking of stepping in cow patties and getting it all over your shoes. This David Von Drehle guy is totally full of shit. Why again is the “liberal” Washington Post running his stuff? To appear to be fair and balanced and to make more money from Republican readers and corporate advertisers, I guess.

If the other Democrats and their supporters are just going to remain too afraid to take on this issue, Trump is liable to waltz back into the White House with 46.1 percent of the popular vote again, and this time destroy Social Security and Medicare too.

Wake up people.

We’re heading back to the mountains again this week as the heat and humidity in the city are expected to gradually return.

If the people won’t do their part to save themselves, we’ll just keep finding ways to escape the heat and find some comfort in a nice camp chair and watch the world come to a fiery end. It doesn’t necessarily have to be this way, but it appears now to be inevitable.

Let me know when y’all get ready to get off the couch in the air conditioning and I’ll be there to cover it. Maybe when the power grid goes down and your AC stops working, perhaps then you will be motivated to act. I truly hope it’s not too late.