The Guardian view on Brazil’s new president: a global danger | Editorial

The Guardian view on Brazil’s new president: a global danger | Editorial: The EU – and Britain – ought to act to save the planet from Jair Bolsonaro, whose policies will accelerate climate change, not curb it

It is depressing to think that for the first time since the return of democracy in 1985 Brazilians have elected a far-right president of the republic. Jair Bolsonaro, a seven-term lawmaker and former army captain, represents a clear and present danger not only to his country but to the planet. At home he has defended dictatorship and torture and joked about killing his leftwing opponents. He has a history of denigrating women, gay people and minorities. The president-elect promises to bring order by spreading chaos with a relaxation of gun laws. This will cost lives in a country that already records more than 60,000 murders a year. In a familiar but chilling pattern, Mr Bolsonaro successfully pitched himself as the anti-establishment candidate, appealing to voters fed up with political graft and violent crime. There’s every reason to think that Brazilians who voted in haste for Mr Bolsonaro will repent at leisure.

Mr Bolsonaro’s programme, if taken seriously, and his environmental utterances, if taken literally, amount to a threat to humanity. Brazil’s new president takes office in January, in charge of the world’s lungs, the Amazon, and the world’s breadbasket, the Cerrado savannah. He will be able to decide the course of the battle against climate change at a critical point. The signs are not good. It is thought that we have 12 years to prevent the dangerous destabilisation of Earth’s climate because of the way we live. Our patterns of existence have already led to widespread annihilation of wildlife, a disaster so large that it threatens civilisation. Yet Mr Bolsonaro’s key election pledge was to put his presidency behind Brazil’s huge agri-corporations. He favours business over biodiversity and calls for pro-market ways of exploiting Brazil’s natural resources, notably coming out against the policy of reserving the 12% of the country’s land for indigenous tribes. The far-right president-elect has also promised to weaken the enforcement of environmental laws, while criminalising activism. It is a package of measures that will not reform the model of capitalism that is slowly boiling the atmosphere, but turbocharge it.

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