It is a cruel but perhaps instructive irony. Many of the municipalities devastated by the biblical floods in southern Brazil this week are fiefdoms of Bolsonarism and denialist ideas regarding climate change.
To date, increases of up to seven meters in the flow of the main rivers in the state of Rio Grande do Sul after rains of an intensity never seen before, have claimed more than 100 lives, with another hundred missing, and 372 injured. 400,000 people have lost their homes and almost 900,000 lack access to drinking water. Much of Porto Alegre, one of the most important cities in Brazil, can only be explored by boat or canoe.
In heavily affected areas of the interior such as Caxias do Sul and Gramado, in the valley of the overflowing das Antas River, Bolsonaro – who considers climate change to be an invention of international socialism – achieved more than 70% of the votes in the 2022 elections .
Nova Pádua, where damage to crops due to torrential rains already amounts to 1.3 million reais, -230,000 euros- according to the city council, is the most Bolsonarist municipality in all of Brazil, with 84% of its electorate favorable to the former president ultraconservative. It is a small part of the damage to agriculture that will amount to hundreds of millions of euros in a state that provides 6% of Brazilian GDP.
Bolsonaro and his acolytes, such as the deputy for Rio Grande do Sul, Onyx Lorenzoni, have repeatedly denied the existence of a climate crisis caused by greenhouse gas emissions.
The disaster, still underway in Rio Grande do Sul, with more rain predicted in the coming days and five dams about to give way, is one of the extreme events that the scientific consensus has been warning about.
But an avalanche of disinformation spread by a denialist extreme right inside and outside Brazil has served to justify the lack of prevention measures both in the regional administration in Porto Alegre and in Brasilia.
Although the cyclical El Niño phenomenon has contributed to the rains, all scientists agree that climate change is the underlying cause. “The behavior of the rains changed,” says Marcelo Dutra da Silva, doctor of science and professor of Ecology at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul in statements to the BBC.
Already at high flow, large rivers such as the Guaíba and the Uruguay have overflowed in recent days, as has the Ducks Lagoon in Porto Alegre. This has flooded hundreds of thousands of hectares of land and large parts of the city and towns in the interior. Concern is growing about the rice harvest, crucial for the region’s economy. It is the fourth time in less than a year that heavy rains have caused flooding.
At the same time, there are fears that five hydroelectric power plant dams could collapse, causing more flooding and an electricity supply crisis. Porto Alegre has already spent four days without electricity, although the power returned on Thursday. 85% of the 1.3 million inhabitants of the most important city in southern Brazil lacked water at the close of this edition.
The scientific community has repeatedly warned that catastrophic floods could devastate the “gaúcho” lands in southern Brazil. In 2015, an official report was prepared on the impact of climate change in Brazil until 2040, which warned: “There is a possibility of an increase in the frequency of flood events in the southern region and drought events in the northern regions.” northeast.” But the then Workers’ Party government, under President Dilma Rousseff, described it as alarmist.
Now, as fears grow that temperature rises in the world are exceeding the most pessimistic forecasts, the floods in southern Brazil show that ‘climate tragedies are happening sooner than expected,’ the prestigious climatologist said Thursday. Brazilian Carlos Nobre.
“Entire cities will have to move. It is necessary to move urban infrastructure away from lower, flat and humid areas, hillside areas, river banks and cities that are within valleys,” says Dutra da Silva.
The government of Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, whose Workers’ Party is more aware of the climate danger now than in previous times, has allocated almost 10 billion euros to the area affected by the floods.
But the reality of climate change is not accepted in the parallel universe of Bolsonarism and the post-rational right in general. Not even the sinking of Porto Alegre has changed Bolsonaro’s conviction that climate change is an invention of a communist conspiracy. The climate crisis “is disinformation”, used in order to “enslave the people (…), raise taxes, create unemployment and more dependence on the state,” the former president stated on social networks on Thursday.
Bolsonaro and his sons, as well as other far-right leaders such as Santiago Abascal in Spain, Javier Milei in Argentina and Donald Trump in the United States, have denied for years the existence of a climate crisis caused by human activity. “So-called ‘climate change’, previously announced as global warming, is a pretext for authoritarian people like Lula to take over your freedom, forcing you and your family to live the way they want,” Eduardo Bolsonaro announced last year.
On another occasion, the former president stated that the “hoax” of climate change was invented by China. Flávio Bolsonaro often talks about “the farce of climate change.”
“We can no longer accept climate denialism. The Brazilian population is not very denialist, but the political class is,” said Nobre.
Proof of this is that 2,000 kilometers north of Porto Alegre, in the capital Brasilia, where Congress was debating on Thursday a legislative agenda to dismantle part of Brazilian environmental protection. In a Congress where Bolsonaro’s party has the largest bloc of deputies, 25 bills are intended to reduce the area of ??the Amazon protected from deforestation, create an amnesty for those responsible for the destruction of the jungle and, in another irony of the darkest, suppressing control over secondary vegetation in areas of alternative land use. “The removal of vegetation in river beds increases erosion, this can cause local flooding,” Márcio Astrini of the Climate Observatory said in an interview with La Vanguardia.
Although the Government of President Lula da Silva has been able to reduce deforestation in the Amazon, the destruction in other areas continues without stopping, and the so-called ruralist caucus – controlled by agricultural lobbies – is very strong in Congress.
Deputies from the flooded south have been close followers of Bolsonaro’s agenda. “The representatives of Rio Grande do Sul usually vote, for the most part, to dismantle environmental legislation,” Suely Araujo, the former president of the IBAMA Environmental Protection Institute, told La Vanguardia.
The arrival of denialism to government power with Bolsonaro was disastrous for strategies to prevent mega climate events such as floods, forest fires and droughts. “Without the four-year pause, we would be in a different situation,” said Environment Minister Marina Silva in statements about the disaster in Rio Grande do Sul.
Deforestation accelerated dramatically and the number of forest fires skyrocketed. This destroyed much of the world’s most important wetland, the Pantanal, in 2020 (and again in 2023 with Lula already in the presidency).
Likewise, as Nobre has warned, deforestation affects the so-called flying rivers, enormous amounts of steam released by the Amazon that discharge rain over the central-west and southeast. A major drought affected São Paulo and the Paraná River a few years ago.
According to a study by the Globo media group, twenty times more has been spent on reconstruction work after disasters than on prevention measures.
Disaster prevention and mitigation of their effects were also not addressed in the campaigns of the current governor of Rio Grande do Sul, Eduardo Leite, a moderate conservative who defeated Bolsonarista Onyx Lorenzoni, nor of the mayor of Porto Alegre, Sebastião Melo.
A congressional report in Rio Grande do Sul warned last year that “more should be invested in prevention and civil protection” due to the risk of flooding. But nothing was done.
