While Rome Burns
Back in 1989 I went to the Amazon on a side-trip connected to a business trip to Brazil. In the prior five years, I had been back and forth to Latin America dozens of times as I ran first the Latin debt crisis team and then built from the ashes the Emerging Markets Department of Bankers Trust. During that time Brazil was our biggest debtor at over $1 billion and one of our most active places to do business. We had a Brazilian Bank JV partner, Banco Iochpe, based in Porto Alegre in southern Brazil and Brazil was actively engaged in the swapping of debt for equity, an activity we were an active leader in for our own book and as a merchant bank on behalf of others. We were one of the movers and shakers in Latin American finance in those days and I was the leader of our pack.
It was an interesting time in global banking and a very busy time in the region. And Brazil was the big kahuna in the region. Chile was more financially advanced (General Pinochet having installed a group of “Chicago Boys” in the Ministry of Finance), but Chile was a fraction of Brazil’s size. Argentina was big and heavily banked by the Europeans, who thought of it as their private vacation spot, but it was so corrupt and prone to white-collar capital flight, that it was a treacherous place (financially speaking) to do business. Brazil had it all, including a consumer base that was burgeoning. Remember the BRIC countries? Well, B didn’t stand for Bolivia.
So, after a bunch of meetings in São Paulo, the business hub of the country, we headed for Rio for a few government make-nice meetings and to prepare ourselves for the long weekend up to Manaus, the Amazonian city of fame where the black waters of the Rio Negro meet the red earthen waters of the Amazonia. Manaus was considered the headwaters of the Amazon even though the rivers that formed it began way West in the Andes Mountains. Manaus is particularly famous for being the center of the Portuguese rubber baron boom that ran from 1879 to 1912. Charles Goodyear had stumbled on the rubber vulcanization process in 1844 and secured a patent that spurred the demand for the sticky white gum of the rubber tree, found abundantly in the tropics of the Amazon basin. My favorite stories of Manaus revolve around the seemingly out-of-place opera house, the Renaissance Revival structure built during the rubber boom which looked like it should have been in Lisbon. It was from the days when the rubber barons supposedly sent their fancy shirts to Lisbon to be properly laundered. Those were the days.
So, off to Manaus we flew on Varig Airlines, the national carrier of Brazil. It was Wednesday, so Varig was serving the national dish of pork and black bean Feijoada. We were feeling in tune with the country. The flight from Rio to Manaus is 4-5 hours long and here’s the thing; after you pass over the capital city of Brasilia, which was itself hacked out of the jungle against the will of nature, the remaining three-plus hours was spent flying over dense and uninterrupted jungle. Until you have flown for more than three hours on a clear day over the Amazon jungle, you really have no idea just how big the Amazon is. It becomes obvious why the Amazon is the great and critically important eco-balancing, carbon-absorbing center of planet earth. It represents 25% of the earth’s GHG absorbing capacity, so it’s vitally important to human life on earth.
We stayed at the Varig-subsidized grand Amazon resort, the Tropical, set on the shores of the Amazon River and surrounded by twelve-foot-high fences topped with razor wire. The setting made you think that someone or something was desperately trying to keep something else very dangerous and deadly away from guests. I can’t swear to it, but I felt like in the three days we were there, the jungle was, as we slept, growing in around us. When I mentioned that feeling to the Cornell Hotel School-trained manager, he said it was not my imagination. He said they had to aggressively cut the jungle back from the fence every week because it only took a few days for it to literally overcome and topple the fence. Such is the power of nature in the tropical jungle environment.
The first day we went out on a large paddle-wheel boat to see the merging of the waters and the small villages along the major tributaries of the great river. We saw every manner of jungle wildlife from Piranha to giant sloths. We swam (quite tentatively I must say) in a lagoon that felt protected, but which certainly was accessible to all the river life including Piranha (we were told they only hung out by the shore…and I certainly hoped they all had read that memo). That left the Candiru fish, which has a penchant for human urine and likes embedding itself inside the penis and various other orifices. Not a fun event I am certain. The second day we went out in small powered canoes (to be closer to the Piranha and Candiru???), so we were very close to the river and all that it held. Even the giant water lilies (twelve feet across) were somewhat intimidating. I swear I saw one of them lick its lips when we passed. The point is, a visit to the Amazon gives you a first-hand appreciation of the power of nature and the insignificance of biological man.
That Amazon’s standing as a center of biodiversity and climate-balancing is why wildfires in the Amazon, which this year have exceeded 75,000 so far (an 85% increase) are getting so much attention. It seems the Trump-sound-alike and President of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, is under attack for refusing to act in defense of the rainforest. Bolsonaro favors industries that want to clear-cut Amazonian lands, and it is strongly suspected that many of the fires were set by farmers and loggers. Natuurally, nationalist handbook’s #1 defense is deflection and Bolsonaro immediately accused NGO’s (who are obvious opponents of Bolsonaro). I served on the CARE board for nine years and I can say unequivocally that no major NGO would have any part of such an outrageous strategy of counter-intuitive deception. Bolsonaro and Trump and the gang of say-anything specialists would clearly NOT be above such dastardly actions. Brazil’s strict environmental laws are openly violated by this current government with complete impunity.
Meanwhile, Trump lets California forests burn and Alaskan forests suffer heat stroke and aberrant rainfall patterns. He and his pal Bolsonaro are getting what they want in short-term economic gain from expanded arable land and mining rights at the expense of the human race. Bolsonaro says Brazil can’t afford to fight the devastating fires. Sound familiar? Bolsonaro and Trump are the new-age Nero’s, watching and fiddling as Rome burns. The grandchildren of America, Brazil and the rest of the world will pay the price. Someone is already likening Trump and Bolsonaro to the craziness of King George III. Great Hamiltonian theater will be spawned, and we will all wonder why the world allowed the permanent damage to occur. There will be no acceptable answers.
I know that nationalists will cringe at the thought, but if some resource is critical for the species, shouldn’t we put it into a special category that we all get to have a say about and must pay collectively to protect and maintain? Shouldn’t it be impossible for a short-term “custodian” like Trump or Bolsonaro to have unlimited ability to despoil our environment? Emmanuel Macron sees this as an international crisis and isn’t afraid to say so. We managed globalism in Antarctica didn’t we? Maybe we should start with Greenland since it’s so much in the news anyway. Maybe it’s better that Rome burns and the empire comes to an end as it has clearly past its useful prime. Sometimes the world needs to refresh itself. The good news is that nature will reclaim its territory in days after Trump and Bolsonaro stop fiddling and flee Rome for good, which is bound to happen once they realize they have burned themselves into a corner.