Target: Cindy McCain, Executive Director of United Nations World Food Programme
Goal: Prevent devastating droughts from inflicting more destruction on the Amazon’s iconic forests.
The Amazon rainforest experienced a devastating drought that lasted for over a year. Wildfires dramatically increased while biodiversity dramatically decreased, with events like the sudden die-off of over 150 endangered dolphins. Researchers have indicted human-caused climate change as the main culprit in this drought, and they forecast that such droughts could now occur roughly once every dozen years. Such consistent havoc will kill more trees. Since the Amazon is the planet’s largest storage facility for planet-heating carbon, the death of the forest’s trees will flood the atmosphere with carbon and drive global temperatures even higher. The drought has caused another globally catastrophic side effect: a diminished food supply.
The regions around the Amazon are some of the planet’s biggest food exporters. For example, the South American countries of Brazil, Peru, and Colombia are massive exporters of fruit. Farms around the Amazon have experienced the same disastrous drought as the forest itself, and the result has been dramatically reduced or destroyed crops. Such conditions fuel the lacking supplies and inflationary prices that most of the world’s consumers are seeing when they go grocery shopping.
The health of the Amazon is more than just an environmental issue. What happens in this cornerstone region drives so many of the issues advocated for on this site, from conservation to health to consumer protection. Sign the petition below to demand a concerted international effort to save this lynchpin of the world.
PETITION LETTER:
Dear Executive Director McCain,
It begins with a mass die-off of pink dolphins and ends with the mass die-off of trees that will release untold amounts of dangerous carbon into the planet’s atmosphere. In so many respects, the health of the Amazon is the health of the world. The global food supply alone would suffer irreparable harm if the Amazon falls.
Urgent action is not just warranted or desired. It is vital for the survival of this planet. Please advocate for and help implement a plan of action to rescue the Amazon rainforest from more devastating and dangerous droughts.
Sincerely,
[Your Name Here]
Photo Credit: Tom Fisk
98 Signatures