Last week we learned that the world lost more forest cover than in any other year on record, or the equivalent of 18 soccer fields of forested land every minute, according to researchers.
The world also lost Sebastião Salgado, a legendary photographer, champion of the environment and chronicler of his native Brazil’s forests, who died last week at 81. (You can see a collection of his photos here.)
Drawing on nearly 50 visits to the Amazon rainforest, in 2021 Salgado published Amazônia, a book of characteristically dramatic black-and-white photographs of the region’s awe-inspiring vastness, its threatened Indigenous people and the sheer force of nature to create weather and carve landscapes.
“My wish, with all my heart, with all my energy, with all the passion I possess, is that in 50 years’ time, this book will not resemble a record of a lost world,” he wrote in the book’s introduction. “Amazônia must live on.”
Despite international agreements to curtail deforestation, the loss of tropical forests has largely increased over the past few decades.
Data from last year compiled by the University of Maryland and the World Resources Institute shows a worrying trend: for the first time, fires, rather than land clearing for agriculture, accounted for more than half of tropical primary forest losses. Droughts, and the fires made both more likely and more powerful by dry conditions, have been increasingly common in the Amazon.
Brazilian officials are predicting another devastating cycle of drought and fire in the rainforest this year. Studies generally agree that forests capture about a quarter of global carbon emissions. With fewer forests, fewer emissions are captured, and global warming accelerates. Rainforests in South America and Central Africa are shrinking the most rapidly.
“If this trend continues, it could permanently transform critical natural areas and unleash large amounts of carbon, intensifying climate change and fueling even more extreme fires,” Peter Potapov, the co-director of the Global Land Analysis and Discovery Lab at the University of Maryland, said in a statement.
Reflecting on Salgado’s work, Victor Moriyama, a Brazilian photographer and longtime contributor to The Times, said that like many of his peers, he deeply respected Salgado but struggled with his legacy.
“He offered a vision of an untouchable Amazon, one without all the problems — and as you know, there are many,” Moriyama said. “I understand the focus on the beauty and the purity and I respect that he wanted to keep the Amazon alive. But it is complicated to document the place without showing what is really going on.”
Salgado devoted much of his private life to conservation, and together with his wife, Lélia Wanick Salgado, spent the last quarter-century of his life running Instituto Terra, which aimed to reforest his family’s farm in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais, where he was born. The Institute has planted more than 3 million trees over 20 years.
Climate science
Facing Trump’s cuts, scientists and meteorologists to host marathon livestream
On Wednesday, a group of climate scientists and meteorologists from across the United States will hold a marathon live broadcast on YouTube to discuss their work and the effects of cuts imposed by the Trump administration.
The stream will run continuously through June 1, which marks the start of the Atlantic hurricane season. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has forecast the 2025 season to be above average. The goal is to have speakers nonstop for the duration of the event.
Billed on the group’s website as “100 hours to save America’s forecasts,” the stream will begin broadcasting from a climate facility at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies. Wednesday is the day researchers have been told to vacate the organization’s New York City office after its lease was terminated.
Since January, the Trump administration has instituted sweeping cuts to climate and weather research. This has included firing hundreds of scientists at NOAA and the National Weather Service, ending federal monitoring of greenhouse gas emissions and dismissing authors on the United States’ flagship climate report, the National Climate Assessment.
Margaret Duffy, a California-based climate scientist and an organizer of the livestream, said more than 150 scientists have registered to speak about their work and take questions from viewers.
“Having reliable weather forecasts and climate projections is something that I think the American public has been able to take for granted for a very long time,” she said. “These funding cuts directly affect the research that underlies those forecasts.” — Christina Kelso
In Case You Missed It
E.P.A. wants to erase greenhouse gas limits on power plants, documents show
The Environmental Protection Agency has drafted a plan to eliminate all limits on greenhouse gases from coal and gas-fired power plants in the United States, according to internal agency documents reviewed by The New York Times.
In its proposed regulation, the agency argued that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases from power plants that burn fossil fuels “do not contribute significantly to dangerous pollution” or to climate change because they are a small and declining share of global emissions. Eliminating those emissions would have no meaningful effect on public health and welfare, the agency said.
But in the United States, the power sector was the second biggest source of greenhouse gases, behind transportation, according to the most recent data available on the E.P.A. website.
Scientists have overwhelmingly concluded that carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases from the burning of oil, gas and coal are dangerously heating the planet. — Lisa Friedman
More climate news from around the web:
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For the first time, China has invested more in overseas development of renewable energy than in fossil fuels, Inside Climate News reports, citing data from 2022 to 2023.
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“As temperatures rose in Middle Eastern and North African countries over the last two decades, cancer mortality among women did too,” The Washington Post writes about a study published last week.
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Heatmap News explores how the congressional politics of the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act broke down.
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Max Bearak is a Times reporter who writes about global energy and climate policies and new approaches to reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
The post The Amazon Loses One of Its Most Celebrated Chroniclers appeared first on New York Times.
