August 30, 2019 10:30 a.m.
Congressman Peter DeFazio said he plans to introduce legislation to put pressure on Brazil to combat what he called “record wildfires” burning in the Amazon rainforest.
DeFazio said President Bolsonaro believes he can act with impunity and “accelerate the destruction of the Amazon rainforest”. He said that country’s president needs to know that there are “real-life consequences for his reckless actions”. DeFazio said he is angered but not surprised that President Trump “wholeheartedly supports Bolsonaro’s game of chicken with humanity’s existence”.
DeFazio said if the rainforest is destroyed it will impact rainfall in the United States, dramatically reducing crop yields and food supply and increasing the “extreme conditions for catastrophic wildfires in the Pacific Northwest”.
A release from DeFazio said his legislation, the Act for the Amazon Act, would put strategic initiatives in place until Brazil’s President acts on “an aggressive plan to fight the Amazon wildfires and reduce deforestation and burning practices used by the farming and mining industries”. It includes:
*Banning targeted imports from Brazil, including beef, soybeans, and other commodities contributing to deforestation.
*Freezing targeted aid funding to Brazil.
*Asserting that Congress will oppose a free trade agreement with Brazil.
The release said Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research has recorded roughly 40,000 forest fires this year alone in the world’s largest rain forest, a 77 percent increase from 2018. The release said the Amazon rainforest contains upwards of 100 billion metric tons of sequestered carbon, which helps to stabilize the planet’s climate.