If you’re active on social media platforms like Instagram and Facebook, you already have an idea of what’s happening in the Amazon Rainforest. To be exact, what has been happening from the past few weeks. The hashtag Save the Amazonia has been trending.

Although sharing the news with people is one of the steps you can take in helping the situation by spreading awareness, don’t stop at this. Losing almost half of Amazonia is a huge setback for us as humanity. Now more than ever, we need to take steps as an individual.

The ability to take huge steps lies with the people at the top, the rich and the powerful. We, the inhabitants of the plant can help our dying planet one small step at a time. I’ll jot down what we can do to help later in this blogpost. Stay tuned.

We are definitely affected by it and even scared to see where our future is headed to. We’ll have to face the consequences of such accidents. And this one is a pretty big one. Not sure if this was an accident, or intentional.

Scarring visuals of the Amazonia on fire

Amazonia is responsible for producing 20% of the oxygen available on our planet Earth. Basically they are Earth’s lungs and they have been burning for weeks. It is one of the most biologically diverse regions on Earth.

There are 2,500 species of animals and about 16,000 known species of trees.

Due to the recent increase in deforestation activities, the world’s largest rainforest has seen more fires than it has ever before. The numbers are astonishing and terrifying to say the least.

Since January 2019, there have 74,155 fires according to the data from Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research (INPE). The number of fires occurring has increased by a massive 85 percent.

São Paulo turns dark at 3 pm with the smoke from the burning Amazonia

DIA VIROU NOITE? São 16h30 em São Paulo, mas a cidade já está escura! O que está rolando? Mande suas melhores fotos desta tarde/noite com cara de ‘filme de terror’ para a gente 😨 (Foto: Alex Silva/Estadão) pic.twitter.com/HqXs99lujw

— Estadão (@Estadao) August 19, 2019

🌎Just a little alert to the world: the sky randomly turned dark today in São Paulo, and meteorologists believe it’s smoke from the fires burning *thousands* of kilometers away, in Rondônia or Paraguay. Imagine how much has to be burning to create that much smoke(!). SOS🌎 pic.twitter.com/P1DrCzQO6x

— Shannon Sims (@shannongsims) August 20, 2019

To get an idea of the size of the Amazon Fire, the city of Sao Paulo went into darkness at 3 pm in the afternoon due to the smoke generated from the fire.

Sa Paulo is the biggest city in the Western Hemisphere.

I guess I don’t have to break it down for you. You can imagine how much of the rainforest has to be burning to produce smoke to cover an entire city covering 1,521 km².

The smoke traveled 2,000 miles to the southeast from the Amazonia to the city.

Also Read: How Can You Reduce Plastic Usage And Save The Environment

“People stored black water from the rainfall after the massive smoke cloud reached São Paulo,” says Vitor Gomes, an environmental scientist at the Federal University of Pará in Brazil, via email.

According to the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service, the fires have led to a clear spike in carbon monoxide emissions as well as planet-warming carbon dioxide emissions, posing a threat to human health and aggravating global warming.

Brazillian President suggests people to poop every other day to save Earth

Advocates have been fearing that Jair Bolsonaro’s Presidency would commit ecological genocide in the Amazon and now those fears are turning into reality.

Bolsonaro began his office this year and from that day onward he has been eviscerating the country’s environmental policies and regulations.

He recently suggested humans can slow their destruction of Earth’s biosphere by only taking a “poop every other day.” Shocking. Going by this, destructing the lungs of the earth is cool but hey! poop less, will you?

The President has gone as far as blaming the NGOs for setting up fires in the forest. He’s suggesting that the situation is being staged to make him look bad. Going by the poop comment, how can someone look worse.

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“The fire was started, it seemed, in strategic locations,” he said. “There are images of the entire Amazon. How can that be? Everything indicates that people went there to film and then to set fires. That is my feeling.”

This comes weeks after he accused the director of a government agency that monitors the Amazon of lying about rising deforestation — and fired him.

He’s also had conflicts in a public spat with Germany and Norway, who have cut aid to the Amazon over his policies.

Why is Amazonia so important

• It is the world’s largest tropical rainforest and provides water to thousands of rivers, including the powerful Amazon. 
• According to a study which was published in Global Change Biology, if we were to lose the Amazon, the effects of global warming would very quickly become an immediate global problem.
• Half the world’s tropical rain forests are found in Amazonia.
• The Amazon contains over 400 billion trees, which all absorb humongous amounts of CO2 from the atmosphere.
• The soil of Amazon and the vegetation hold roughly a fourth of all the world’s carbon that’s stored on land.
• It is home to around 30% of the world’s species, and 10% of the world’s biodiversity.

How can you help save the Amazonia and our planet

• If the demand decreases, supply will decrease too. Be a mindful consumer and reduce your meat consumption. The Environmental Working Group found that red meat is responsible for 10 to 40 times as many greenhouse emissions as common vegetables and grains. And if you decide to turn vegetarian or vegan, you are my favorite!
• Use less paper and single-use plastics. Carry a water bottle with you as you step outside. Better than buying a new water bottle every time. Saves money too.
• Ecosia.org is a search engine that plants a tree for every 45 searches you run. Use it.
• Sign the Change.org petitions. A lawyer in Rio Branco has accumulated over 77,000 of his 150,000 signature goal to mobilize an investigation into the Amazonian fires. 
• Sign Greenpeace’s petition telling the Brazilian government to save the Amazon rainforest and protect the lands of indigenous and traditional communities. 
• The most basic advice, do not litter with your trash. Take it with you and put it in a nearby dustbin.
• Wrap gifts in fabric and tie with ribbon; both are reusable and prettier than paper and sticky-tape.

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