It will take a lifetime (at least) for the Amazon to recover

There have been a huge number of fires across Brazil this year—about 76 percent more than the same period last year. And just 48 hours after the government issued a 60-day blanket ban on all burning and land clearing, satellite data found that 2,000 more fires started in the Amazon alone. The 2019 fires will have a big and long-lasting impact on the forest itself, and the wider world.

The Amazon is the largest rainforest in the world, and might be home to a quarter of the Earth’s land-bound species. If it continues to burn, it’s likely to turn into a completely different ecosystem, with fewer trees and different species of flora and fauna. Many plants will die, and animals will lose their habitats. Some species might disappear from the area entirely.

While the Amazon fires aren’t going to deplete the Earth’s supply of oxygen, they will release large amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. For example, when just 0.2 percent of the Amazon burned in 2016, it released 30 million tons of CO₂—that’s almost as much as Denmark emitted in 2018.

This is bad news, as CO₂ is a greenhouse-effect gas that contributes to global warming and climate change—and humans are already creating dangerous amounts of it through energy use, transport and industry.

A changing Amazon

Even...