Good Enough for You, But Not Me

As is typical for the humorless and joyless left, jokes fly way over their head.

"It’s enough to eat a little less. You talk about environmental pollution. It’s enough to poop every other day. That will be better for the whole world."

Jair Bolsonaro, President of Brazil, in a spectacular Brazilian jiujitsu turnaround, threw back the onus to the leftist environmental scare-mongers by offering some advice to those who would put the health of trees over the raising of a large proportion of his country out of poverty, a problem which has historically plagued Brazil. Roughly 26.5% of the population was living under the poverty line in 2017, according to the World Bank.

Sure, it is perfectly reasonable to be concerned over rapid deforestation of this precious natural resource, most of which has occurred long before Bolsonaro had been in power, but for Western European powers to lecture the Brazilian President while at the same time feeding their ravenous appetite for Amazonian hardwoods, palm oil and soy bean products, which account for the necessity of a large proportion of clear-cut lands, is hypocritical to say the least.

Bolsonaro has been under pressure after figures from the Brazilian National Institute for Space Research (INPE) revealed the cutting down of the Amazonian rainforest skyrocketed by nearly 300 per cent in the past year.

And what exactly does that mean in hectares of forest? Were these necessary projects for infrastructure and other legitimate uses to improve the lives of those living destitute existences? A 300% increase from what?

Bolsonaro sacked the INPE’s head said the data was misleadingly framed to look sensationalist.

The fact is that these governmental organizations are often partisan and elitist. They presumably care more about nature than people, but do they actually do the work of protecting the natural world themselves, living lavish lifestyles of swimming pools and imported automobiles? What will they give up? Perhaps one out of two trips to the toilet?

As Bolsonaro made it clear in a statement recently given, it is the duty of the Brazilian government to explore the Amazon and provide its rich and incalculable benefits to the Brazilian people, not to simply preserve it for export.

Brazilians have the primary claim over their own national resources, not Europe or China. Though it must be top priority to maintain the biodiversity, animal habitat and landscape for future generations, that does not mean that Brazil should bow down to international interests who grandstand and pretend to care only about the environment, when their own habits contradict their high-minded, outward-facing ideals.

What's good enough for the poor of Brazil, the elites chide, is not good enough for them.

UPDATE:

Looks like the international leftist cabal is no more interested in taking the point Presidente Bolsonaro was making than they are in actually curbing their own contribution to our impending environmental ruin; Newsweek going as far as to quote the field of gastroenterology to prove how spectacularly lacking in a sense of humor they are.

As for his strategy of fewer trips to the bathroom, a 2018 study in the American Journal of Gastroenterology found that the normal "healthy" range for defecation varied widely, from three times a day to three times a week.

You may not get it, but we do.