Cyclone: ​​Journalist apologizes to RS and SC – 09/08/2023 – Marcelo Leite

This column presents an apology to the people of Rio Grande do Sul and Santa Catarina. Hit by the third or fourth extratropical cyclone of the year, people from Rio Grande do Sul and Santa Catarina did not deserve the provocation of the text “Climate change punishes Bolsonaro voters in the South”, published on July 15th on the website of Sheet.

There are more than 60 deaths in these extreme weather events, and thousands of people left homeless. It breaks my heart to see poor people on the TV screen, again, crying over their wooden houses that were torn down, all the goods obtained in a life of hard work taken away in the flood.

If it’s any extenuation, that wasn’t the title of the edition printed two days later, “Too Late.” The core of the column was not in attacking southern voters of Brazil’s most insidious president, but in the impatience of those who wait to see Brazilians, of any ideological stripe, awaken to the greatest threat to humanity.

Yes, global warming and the resulting devastating climate change, which we have already witnessed. After 35 years of writing about the subject, only to see it still neglected and denied, we can only hope that successive tragedies will wake up those who do not want to believe — even if it is too late.

However, the unnecessary paragraph was there: “By unfortunate coincidence, the belated overthrow of the climate flat-earther [um obscuro secretário da prefeitura paulistana] It happened in parallel with the cyclone that left more than 1 million residents of the South region without electricity. Yes, that part of Brazil that voted heavily for Jair Bolsonaro, another climate flat-earther, but it’s better to leave that aside.”

If it was better to leave it aside, it should have been left aside. Not only did it not make the cut, it ended up in the title, a clumsy slip to attract attention. And he did, certainly contributing to the offended people not even reading the text, quite the opposite of what a competent journalist seeks.

Here is a request for readers to remember, if they can, that moment of exasperation. The same exasperation as colleague André Trigueiro, but with more elegance, in an interview with the governor of Rio Grande do Sul, Eduardo Leite (PSDB), who was shocked when confronted with the inaction of public authorities in the face of the obvious.

Several cyclones with victims in the same season, predictable phenomena predicted by climate models in their increased severity and frequency (although not with predictive geographic and temporal resolution), can no longer be treated as fatalities in the face of which nothing can be done.

Saint Peter has no responsibility for this. Eduardo Leite has it.

Not in the sense of guilt, of course, but of responsibility as a leader and administrator. Your obligation — and that of all governors, mayors, prime ministers and presidents on the planet — is to adapt cities and prepare the population to face droughts, heat waves, floods, cyclones, forest fires, disastrous tides and crop losses.

All these disasters are there, for anyone who wants to see. These are not predictions for a distant future, they are here and now, and it is the fault of this generation.

We just don’t take precautions against them because criminals like Bolsonaro, Trump and Caterva shamelessly deny scientific knowledge when it suits them. They do this with 1950s-style developmental leaders as supporting actors, such as oil workers Lula and Dilma, procrastinators of decarbonization set as an international objective back in 1992, at the Rio Summit.

A newspaper text can offend many people; When that happens, you have to apologize. The blunders and omissions of leaders who are in power and do not do what is necessary to protect the population that elected them are inexcusable.

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