ADRIANO MACHADO / REUTERS
- The Amazon is burning at an extreme rate. There have already been 74,000 fires this year, nearly double last year’s total of 40,000.
- Brazil environment minister Ricardo Salles told the Financial Times that the solution was to "monetize" the rain forest.
- "The fact is that laws and regulations that were enacted and used for the past 10 or 20 years were too restrictive to the development of Amazon areas," he says.
- Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.
The Amazon is in flames.
São Paulo, Brazil’s financial capital and the largest city in the Western Hemisphere, went dark midday Monday due to fires from the rainforest, some 2,000 miles away.
Meanwhile, when the Financial Times spoke with the country’s environment minister, Ricardo Salles said that the solution was to "monetize" the rainforest.
"The fact is that laws and regulations that were enacted and used for the past 10 or 20 years were too restrictive to the development of Amazon areas," Salles added. "That is why people go over to the illegal activities, to the criminal activities, because they don’t have a space to do something within the law.”
NACHO DOCE / REUTERS
Salles serves as the environment minister for Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil’s populist president, who recently suggested that nonprofit groups could be behind the fires.
ADRIANO MACHADO / REUTERS
Bolsonaro made the assertion without evidence.
Meanwhile, smoke is filling the rainforest, which is frequently called "the lungs of the world."
Ueslei Marcelino/Reuters
See the rest of the story at Business Insider
See Also:
- I went back to college as a 50-year-old. These were the most surprising things I had to adjust to.
- Here’s how much every US state pays its teachers and spends on a single student
- These are the highest-paying jobs in Hawaii, which joined the Union 60 years ago today
Source: Business Insider – dbaer@businessinsider.com (Drake Baer)