Bicycle cheer
A collection of climate stories mostly
I wanted to start off 2024 with something cheery and uplifting. Having digressed last week, the environment is back on the agenda, but with a distinct lack of woe.
Before I get started, I wanted to thank several readers who offered some suggestions for new topics this year.
The Amazon rainforest was one, a subject I’ll happily come back to later. It’s a big bellwether topic which I’ve been avoiding, largely because of the depressingly lack of good news at the hands of Brazil’s now ex president, Jay Bolsonaro.
That bad news story, for what it’s worth, started in 2019, when Bolsonaro, a far right-wing leader came to power. He presided over record levels of deforestation in the Amazon basin. Laws meant to protect the forest from land-grabbers, miners and loggers were loosened, effectively creating a free for all against the forest and the indigenous people living there.
This ruthless policy of extraction and demolition made Brazil a pariah on the world stage and Bolsonaro, the planet’s most dangerous climate change denier.
But that’s old news, he’s gone, and I no longer have an excuse. There must be good things happening in Brazil now?
The ex-president has since fled the country, becoming a tourist attraction for some Brazilians at…
