Paradise lost

A year spent bearing witness to the destruction of the Amazon forest

- Jonathan Watts

I thought it was a blood moon at first. The dark orange glow appeared at dusk on the far side of the shimmering silver band that is the Xingu River. It was just before 8pm, after the parrots had squawked back to their nests and the insects and frogs were noisily starting the forest nightshift. There was a flash of lightning but the rest of the sky was clear. How could there be a storm? Ipeered more intently and took a photograph that I could magnify. And there was the answer - a fire, which grew fiercer as I watched, the flames spreading sideways and upwards, flickering red and yellow, billowing smoke into the sky, sparking flashes of lightning every couple of minutes.

I felt sick. The Amazon rainforest was being destroyed in front of my eyes. I have been writing about the climate crisis for 16 years, always with a sense of horror but mostly with a sense of distance. This was the first time I had seen it from my home, and it was stranger than I expected. I had not realised until that moment that fire can create its own lightning storms, by creating pyrocumulonimbus, which scientists describe as "the fire-breathing dragon of clouds".

There was no immediate danger the fire was several kilometres away on the other side of a big river - but it felt personal. More than 90% of fires in the Amazon are started deliberately to clear trees so the land can be used for cattle ranching or crop cultivation.

That meant this arson attack against nature was almost certainly carried out by one of my neighbours. I knew it was probably illegal and that, according to climate science, it would nudge the world's biggest rainforest that much closer to an irreversible tipping point. But there was nothing I could do except watch. The chances of anyone else lifting a finger while Jair Bolsonaro was Brazil's president were next to zero.