Natural destruction in Brazil: Blame are always the environmentalists

Almost two months after the first black oil spills washed ashore on beaches in northeastern Brazil, experts are still puzzling over the causes of the disaster. More than 200 beaches are filthy; to the south of the state of Bahia, the trail of tough black mud runs.

Only so much is known: The oil comes from a ship about 600 kilometers off the coast. But from which? As the oil was swept to the beaches by currents below the sea surface, satellites could not trace their lane to the exact origin. Has a tanker secretly washed out his tanks on the high seas? Soeller sellers without registration sail to dozens across the oceans. At the time of the accident alone, hundreds of ships crossed into the waters.

After the slash-and-burn in the Amazon, the oil spill on the beaches is already the second major environmental disaster in Brazil this year. Less spectacular ecodramas are barely noticed:

• A new gold rush attracts tens of thousands of illegal prospectors to the Amazon. Even the pink river dolphins, a symbol of the Amazon, are now contaminated with mercury, which the gold seekers use to separate the precious metal from the rubble.
• At the huge soybean and corn plantations in the Midwest, pesticides contaminate air and water, some of which have been banned in Europe for decades.

It is not just the government of far-right President Jair Bolsonaro who is responsible for the depletion of nature. It is the result of a development model based largely on the exploitation of natural resources. But Bolsonaro, who has been in office for a year, even encourages the illegal prospectors and lumberjacks to indemnify themselves; He also wants to expand the production of deep-sea oil off the Brazilian coast. The consequences for humans and nature? Play the president down. An emergency plan for the oil spill was only put into effect after more than 40 days. Meanwhile, the government is spreading conspiracy theories.

Propaganda war against Greenpeace

Environment Minister Ricardo Salles believes he knows who is responsible for the disaster: the environmentalists at Greenpeace. It was "a strange coincidence" that a Greenpeace ship had just turned up off the Brazilian coast, as the oil polluted the beaches, he tweeted.

A day earlier, Greenpeace activists had spilled black paint in front of the government palace in Brasilia to protest environmental policy, with 16 demonstrators temporarily arrested.

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In the propaganda war against the environmental organizations, Brazil's government uses a whole arsenal of slander and dirty tricks - always following the motto: Something will get stuck.

Although the analysis of crude lumps revealed that they come from Venezuelan oil fields, announced the state-owned oil company Petrobras. "That does not mean that private or public sectors of Venezuela were responsible at any time," said the Commander in Chief of the Brazilian Navy.

But finding out who is actually the cause of the oil spill does not seem to interest Bolsonaro and his people anyway. They prefer to stage themselves as victims of an international campaign of communists and "eco-terrorists," as Salles calls the Greenpeace people. It's an attempt to distract from your own failure. (Read here a detailed account of the Bolsonaro government)

Horror images reveal the incompetence of the authorities

For the catastrophe on the beaches is far more dangerous to the prestige of the president than the burning rainforest. Unlike the Amazon, the paradisiacal beaches of the northeast are a popular holiday destination for his compatriots. Hundreds of thousands of people are dependent on the income from tourism. Million cities like Recife and Salvador da Bahia are affected.

The horror images of former dream beaches, where desperate residents and fishermen with their bare hands scratch the black mud of sand and stones, reveal the full extent of the authorities' incompetence. In many places there were not even enough rubber gloves for the volunteers. The prosecution now announced that they want to sue the government, because they do not fulfill their obligation to protect the population.

Video: Enigmatic oil spill in Brazil

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REUTERS

In early November, the government wants to auction the rights to exploit several oil fields off the coast of Rio de Janeiro. It involves deposits of six to 15 billion barrels, which are more than 5000 meters deep. Bolsonaro assumes that the oil spill is a work of "saboteurs" who wanted to torpedo this "mega business".

Rather, it is the president himself who becomes a risk factor for economic development: not one cent of the $ 10 billion in royalties that the Brazilian state receives from its oil companies off its coast is spent on precautionary measures. The government is not prepared for a misfortune in the promotion of deep-sea oil off Rio's coast.

This idea should not only give environmentalists nightmares, but hopefully also potential investors.