Brazilian President Michel Temer has removed the protected status of a vast tract of the Amazon in order to open it up to mining. The national reserve – known as Renca – in the states of Amapá and Pará, covers 46,000 sq km (about the size of Denmark) and is rich in deposits of copper and gold. With Brazil emerging from a deep recession, the government insists that opening up the Amazon is necessary to attract foreign investment and boost exports – an argument that has cut no ice with environmentalists. “The abolition of Renca will wreak havoc on the forest and indigenous communities in the interests of the small group of economically powerful groups who are keeping Temer in power,” said Christian Poirier of Amazon Watch. (The Week, 1 Sept 2017).

This will also do absolutely nothing for the teeming crowds of poor people, jobless and living in the slums of the big cities, desperate people who, if they are lucky and have the money to do so, are leaving their homeland and trying to find jobs in the US or Europe.  One of the world’s most corrupt political crowd are doing this for the presumed personal and party backhanders.  It was this sort of thing that Epicurus warned us never to get involved with, but he never told us not to protest it.  Not even the last corrupt Brasilian government (as far as I know, although it wouldn’t surprise me) thought of destroying this huge area of the Amazon, and on this specious excuse. What is becoming of the world with so many disagreeable political regimes in power?