Dear Greenhouse Gases,
Let me first introduce myself. My name is SARS-CoV-2, but you can call me Coronavirus 2. As my name implies, I am a virus, a strain of SARS-CoV-1, possibly born in a wet animal market in Wuhan, China, in early December 2019. I have gone through my usual mutations and I am now reproducing fast.
In 2014 when I was in São Felix do Xingu, Pará, I remember many farmers I was working with saying: “If the government does not fulfil its promises, we will show them who owns the Amazon. And we will do it by burning it.”
Last October, Jair Messias Bolsonaro, labelled by international social media as ‘the tropical Trump’, was elected in Brazil with 55% of votes. What does this election mean for the world, and why all Brazilian environmentalists are so worried?
We’re all — trees, humans, insects, birds, bacteria — pluralities. Life is embodied network. These living networks are not places of omnibenevolent Oneness. Instead, they are where ecological and evolutionary tensions between cooperation and conflict are negotiated and resolved. These struggles often result not in the evolution of stronger, more disconnected selves but in the dissolution of the self into relationship.