Johann Hari

It is now forty years since the start of a riot for freedom in a small tavern in New York City – and the riot has never stopped. It is spreading slowly across the world, to every continent, to Mumbai and Shanghai and Dubai. Everywhere it goes, it wins, in time. Yet on June 28th 1969, it seemed only like another sixties ruck in the muck against corrupt cops.

The Stonewall Tavern was a bar in Greenwich Village where gay people huddled together to find friends and lovers in a hostile country on a hostile planet. It was a hang-out for everyone from macho bikers to drag queens making the pilgrimage from Ohio and Iowa and Kansas. One of the regulars said that until he discovered the bar, “I felt like I was the only one… I only knew enough to hide.” The regulars were harming nobody; they were only enjoying themselves. But the local police force was fond of busting the bar, and beating and imprisoning the clientele. They only allowed the bar to stay open at all because they were being bribed by local gay gangsters.

But one day, gay people decided they had had enough of cowering and hiding and being told they were sick. On the day of Judy Garland’s funeral, the police smashed their way into the Stonewall. The historian Martin Duberman distils what happened next into a single image: “A leg, poured into nylons and sporting a high heel, shot out of a paddy wagon into the chest of a cop, throwing him backwards.” The drag queen yelled: “Nobody’s gonna fuck with me no more!” And the global riot began.

It was the turning point in the fight for equality for gay people. Within four decades, goals that would have seemed impossible to those fighters that night were achieved: openly gay Prime Ministers, gay marriage in Europe and parts of the US, legal bans on discrimination. The gay rights movement was a cry for the right to love in the darkness. It is a model of democratic pressure: a minority peacefully appealing to the decency of the majority, and prevailing. It’s the strongest antidote to cynicism that I know.

The conversation about gay people has been so soaked in theology for so long that it’s important to state some hard empirical facts. Homosexuality is a naturally occurring phenomenon that happens in every human society. Everywhere, around 2-5 percent of human beings prefer to have sex with their own gender. It occurs at the heart of nature: only last week, a major study by Professors Nathan Bailey and Marlene Zuk of the University of California found: “The variety and ubiquity of same-sex sexual behaviour in animals is impressive - many thousands of instances of same-sex courtship, pair bonding and copulation have been observed in a wide range of species, including mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, insects, molluscs and nematodes.”

Birds do it, bees do it, even educated fleas do it. It doesn’t mean anything. It is a harmless genetic quirk. It has always happened, and it always will. The only question is: do you want to be spiteful to gay people, or let them express their most natural urges peacefully?

In the US and Europe, steadily and remarkably quickly, the civilising voices are winning. There is still a lot to do – gay teenagers are six times more likely to commit suicide than their straight siblings – but the trajectory is ever-upwards. In much of the developing world, gay equality is inching forward too. After extraordinarily brave men and women fought back, India is poised to decriminalize homosexuality this year, and China has just seen its first ever Gay Pride parade.

But there are three great swathes of humanity still untouched by the spirit of Stonewall – and terrified, terrorized gay people there are screaming for help. In the Caribbean, majority-Muslim countries, and most of Africa, being gay is a death sentence – yet many people who should be showing solidarity choose not to see it.

Jamaica is Taliban Afghanistan for gay people. If caught, gays and lesbians face ten years’ hard labour – but they are more likely to be lynched. The cases documented by Dr Robert Carr of the University of the West Indies fill whole books. Here’s two from a single week. A father found a picture of a naked man in his 16 year old son’s rucksack, so he produced it in the playground and called on his classmates to encouraged them to beat him to death – which they promptly did. Nobody was ever charged. In Montego Bay, a man was caught checking out another man – so the crowd lynched him. When the police arrived, they joined in. Hospitals routinely refuse to treat the victims of gay bashings, leaving them to die.

There is a Matthew Sheppard there every day, but people who wouldn’t have dreamed of holidaying in Apartheid South Africa flock to Jamaica’s beaches. A heroic Jamaican called Brian Williamson set up an organization called J-FLAG to campaign for the rights of gay Jamaicans. His body was found stabbed and slashed over seventy times. The police did nothing. The most popular song in Jamaica in recent years – by Beenie Man – choruses: “I’m dreaming of a new Jamaica, come to execute all the gays… Take dem by surprise/ Get dem in the head.”

Throughout Muslim countries, gay people are routinely jailed, tortured and hanged. Mahmoud Ahmadinejadh denies there are any gay people in Iran, but is happy to have them executed in public squares. In post-invasion Iraq, there has been a homo-cidal pogrom of gay people being led by private Islamist “morality squads”. In the past two months, over 25 corpses of gay men have been found in one slum, Sadr City, alone, mutilated, with notes saying “pervert” pinned to their chests. Ayatollah Ali-Al Sistani, the country’s leading religious cleric, says gays should be killed “in the worst way possible” – and they are obeying. Men are now being killed by having their anuses glued shut.

In Africa, one country has been a beacon for gay rights: post-Apartheid South Africa even gay equality written into its constitution. Yet even it is now headed by a man, Jacob Zuma, who brags about beating up gay men in his youth.

The gay people cowering in these countries are asking for our support – by funding their underground organizations, by putting gay rights on the diplomatic agenda, and by consistently granting asylum to the victims of homophobic persecution. Today, some gay people seeking safety are given the right to remain, while others are told to go back and hide their sexuality.

But too many people avert their gaze from the murderous homophobic persecution happening now – and, even more shockingly, some condemn the people who are trying to stop it. Peter Tatchell, one of the great figures of the fight for gay equality, has for years been organizing practical support for gay Jamaicans, Muslims, and Africans. They have been incredibly grateful – but he has been pilloried by people who pretend to be left-wingers here as “racist” and “imperialist”.

How is it “racist” to side with black and Muslim people who are being hunted down and murdered by other black and Muslim people? How is it “imperialist” to peacefully support their struggle, as they are begging us to? Should we say to the successors of Brian Williamson – sorry, but we can’t help you today, because the descendants of your torturers and murderers were subject to British imperial rape a century ago?

That would be real racism: to cheer a Stonewall for white people on the streets of New York City, but to ignore it on the streets of Kingston or Cairo or Kinshasa, just because the homophobic cops there happen to be black or Arab.

Homosexuality happens everywhere, so gay people fight for the freedom to be themselves everywhere. The Stonewall riot – and its high-heeled kick – isn’t over. In many places, it’s only just begun.

Johann Hari is a writer for the Independent. To read more of his articles, click here . You can email him at johann -at- johannhari.com

Another David Cameron policy has been proved to be based on false right-wing myths in the past month – but who has told you about it? Who knows that his set-piece proposal for fixing Britain has just been shown to make things worse?

You know the script. David Cameron says “the only way to mend Britain’s broken society” is to “mend the institution of marriage” by handing £40 a week to married couples. This Married Couple’s Allowance would, he says, discourage them from splitting up.

Set aside the question of whether any couple would actually take a £40-a-week bribe to stay together. The logic behind the policy itself is based on a plausible-sounding reading of the facts.

At first glance, the sociological evidence shows that the kids of broken homes or single parents are more likely to drop out of school, slip into crime, and become drug addicts than children whose parents stay together. So the solution is, to Cameron, obvious: keep parents together using the tax code and these problems will slowly be reduced. Stop Jimmy’s mum and dad splitting, and Jimmy will be more likely to stay in school, on the right side of the law, and off drugs. Isn’t that what the stats show?

A major study has just shown that this is based on a simple misunderstanding of the evidence. Professor Kelly Musick and Dr Ann Meier of Cornell University have carried out a study of children whose parents stay together for the sake of the kids. We all know some: parents who can’t stand each other, but have made a hard-headed decision to stay together nonetheless. They are exactly the kind of people who would be glued back together by Cameron’s policies if they succeeded in their goal.

It turns out their children do worse than any other group – including those of divorcees or single mums. If you are raised by arguing parents who stayed together only for you, then you are 33 percent more likely to become a binge-drinking teen than if you have a single parent, for example.

Having parents locked in live-in combat damages children more than having separated parents, or just one single parent – and the damage lasts well into adulthood. The offspring are more likely to have bad marriages themselves, and more likely to have children at a very young age.

It makes sense. Would Jimmy rather have a happy mum and dad who live apart, or depressed, stressed, angry parents sharing a bed?

So Cameron’s first glance at the figures turns out, then, to be wrong. He was comparing divorcees and single parents to happy two-parent families who want to stick together. But happy two parent families who want to stick together are not what his policy would create. If he had an effect at all, he would be tying together miserable couples who would otherwise have split. To assume you would get the same sociological outcomes from them is an Enron-style accounting error.

In fact, this new study shows that Cameron’s policy would actually unwittingly harm children. It’s not his intention, but we would have more children in the worst-performing category of all, and so in the long-term increase the very social dysfunctions – like drug addiction and crime – that the policy was designed to erode.

David Cameron’s solution to a “broken Britain” would break us more. Yet that sound-bite itself reveals a deep conservatism at the core of Cameronism. If Britain is “broken” today, when was it fixed? In the 1950s, when women were beaten with impunity and gays were jailed? The 1890s, when rickets ravaged the land? When? Of course Britain can be improved – it always can, like every country – but to imply we have degenerated from a lost golden age is regressive dog-whistle politics.

In the real past – as opposed to the phantasm of Tory creation – divorce was low not because every couple was living in a happy wholesome hearth, but because the door of divorce was barred shut. You don’t have to read much Victorian fiction to see that no matter how much a couple detested each other, they were trapped behind binding vows. Women, of course, suffered worst, since they were largely trapped in the home, and if in desperation they tried to flee, they lost their children, their homes, and their reputations.

Far from being a time we should pine for and try inexpertly to rebuild, we should be proud we have left this behind for a more civilised and compassionate world. Isn’t it a strength that we accept marriages fail, not because of wickedness or moral laxity, but because of ordinary human incompatibility? Yes, it brings some problems – but this study underlines that they are far less than the problems of imprisoning people in dead marriages, and lecturing them it’s for their own moral health.

Cameron’s plans for married couples create a false “pro-family” sheen that prevents us from seeing how he will actually make life more stressful for parents in very tangible ways.

The one thing every mum and dad I know wants is more time to spend with their children. But Cameron is committed to pulling Britain out of the European Social Chapter as a “top priority”. Britain’s ten million part-time workers only have the right to paid holidays and other basic rights because of the Chapter. When it goes, so do the rights – and lots of stressed parents will suddenly have less time to spend with their kids. The Tories’ market fundamentalism and anti-Europeanism trumps their warm rhetorical commitments to the family every time.

For all his upbeat let-the-sunshine-win flim-flam, Cameron’s policies would simply shift more power and money towards those who already have it. The Married Couples Allowance would be a big redistribution of wealth to people who don’t need it, paid for by slashing help to the poorest people who really do – from Tax Credits to SureStart to the Educational Maintenance Allowance. And all for a dysfunctional outcome.

That’s the Britain we are sleep-walking towards, while we inanely discuss Gordon Brown’s smile and David Cameron’s bike. Isn’t it time we started to scrutinize his policies, before Cameron has the power to start imposing his right-wing regression on our country?

Terwijl de wereld met ingehouden adem de opstand in Iran gadeslaat, vond elders een nog belangrijkere opstand plaats. 'Niemand had er oog voor', zegt Johann Hari, 'maar hij zal uw lot, en dat van mij, bepalen'.

Diep in het Amazoneregenwoud namen de armste mensen ter wereld het op tegen de rijkste mensen ter wereld om een deel van het ecosysteem te redden dat vitaal is voor ons allemaal. Ze hadden alleen houten speren en morele argumenten om de oliebedrijven te verslaan. Voorlopig hebben ze gewonnen.

Dit is het verhaal van wat er precies gebeurde, en het vertelt waarom we allemaal hun strijd moeten leveren. Begin dit jaar verkocht de rechtse president van Peru, Alan García, de rechten voor de exploratie en exploitatie van 70 procent van het Amazonegebied in zijn land aan een paar internationale oliemaatschappijen. García lijkt het regenwoud te beschouwen als een verspilling van waardevolle grondstoffen, en zegt over de Amazonebomen: "Miljoenen hectaren hout staan er onontgonnen bij". Zijn plan had wel één hinderlijk minpuntje: de inheemse volkeren van het Amazonegebied. Zij zijn de eerste bewoners van de Amerika's, en de slachtoffers van genocide na genocide sinds de komst van de conquistadors. Ze zijn zwak. Ze hebben geen geweren. Ze hebben amper elektriciteit. De overheid nam niet de moeite om hen iets te vragen: wat kunnen een paar indianen tenslotte in de weg leggen?

Maar de inheemse volkeren hebben gezien wat elders in het Amazonegebied is gebeurd toen de oliemaatschappijen arriveerden. Occidental Petroleum is aangeklaagd voor Amerikaanse rechtbanken omdat het naar schatting 9 miljard vaten giftig afval heeft achtergelaten in de hoeken van het Amazonewoud waar het actief was tussen 1972 en 2000. Het bedrijf ontkent dat het verantwoordelijk is en zegt dat het "niet beschikt over betrouwbare gegevens over een negatieve impact op de gezondheid van de plaatselijke bevolking".

Een onafhankelijk rapport stelt dat in het Amazonewoud in Ecuador giftig afval dat werd gedumpt na boringen door Chevron-Texaco verantwoordelijk is voor 1.401 sterfgevallen, vooral bij kinderen, door kanker. Toen BBC-onderzoeker Greg Palast die aantijgingen voorlegde aan een advocaat van Chevron, antwoordde die: "En is dat het enige geval van kanker in de wereld? Hoeveel gevallen van kanker bij kinderen heb je in de Verenigde Staten? Ze moeten bewijzen dat het onze ruwe olie is, en dat is onmogelijk."

De kachel van de planeet

Het regenwoud ademt gigantische hoeveelheden opwarmingsgassen in en houdt die vast zodat ze de atmosfeer niet kunnen bezoedelen. We hakken het nu al zo snel omver dat er elk jaar 25 procent van de door mensen geproduceerde koolstofuitstoot door vrijkomt - meer dan vliegtuigen, treinen en auto's samen. Maar het wordt nog dubbel zo destructief doordat het wordt omgehakt om fossiele brandstoffen boven te halen, die de planeet nog wat verder opstoken. Het was García's plan om van het Amazonegebied de kachel in plaats van de airco van de planeet te maken.

Waarom doet hij dat? In Peru wordt beweerd dat de regerende partij, APRA, omgekocht is door de olie-industrie. Er bestaan bandjes waarop medewerkers van García zeggen dat ze het Amazonegebied willen verkopen aan hun handlangers. Het hoofd van de parlementscommissie die de zaak onderzoekt, Daniel Abugattas, zegt: "De regering heeft onze natuurlijke bronnen weggegeven aan de laagste bieders. Dat is Peru niet ten goede gekomen, wel de vriendjes van de regering."

En dus handelden de inheemse volkeren in hun belang, en in dat van ons. Ze zetten hun eigen lijf en leden en houten wapens in om rivieren en wegen te blokkeren, zodat de oliemaatschappijen niets binnen of buiten konden krijgen. Ze maakten zich meester van twee sluizen van de enige pijplijn tussen de gasvelden in het binnenland en de kust. Hun leiders legden een verklaring af: "We zullen samen met onze ouders en kinderen vechten om het woud te beschermen, om het leven in het evenaarsgebied en in de hele wereld te redden."

García reageerde door het leger te sturen. Hij riep de staat van beleg uit in het Amazonegebied en schortte zowat alle grondwettelijke rechten op. Legerhelikopters openden het vuur op demonstranten met echte kogels en granaten. Meer dan tien mensen werden gedood.

Toen gebeurde er iets buitengewoons. De autochtonen wonnen. Het Peruaanse congres trok de wetten in die de oliemaatschappijen de toelating gaven om te boren, met een meerderheid van 82 tegen 12. García was verplicht zich te verontschuldigen voor "ernstige fouten en overdrijvingen". De demonstranten vierden en keerden terug naar hun huis in het Amazonewoud.

Uiteraard zullen de oliemaatschappijen zich hergroeperen en terugkeren. Maar het was een inspirerende overwinning voor de macht van het gezond verstand, die je niet zomaar terugdraait.
Mensen moeten veel meer van dit soort beslissingen nemen: om fossiele brandstoffen in de grond te laten en om het regenwoud intact te laten. De oproer in de jungle is eigenlijk in het klein de strijd die we allemaal moeten leveren. Laten we het zomaar gebeuren dat een kleine groep rijke mensen kortetermijnwinst maakt door de natuurlijke bronnen te grijpen en op te branden, ten koste van onze collectieve overlevingskansen?

Als dat overdreven lijkt, luister dan naar professor Jim Hansen, de belangrijkste klimatoloog ter wereld, wiens voorspellingen altijd correct zijn gebleken. Hij zegt: "Het is duidelijk dat als we alle fossiele brandstoffen opbranden, we de planeet vernietigen die we kennen. We zouden haar op weg zetten naar een ijsvrije toestand, met een zeeniveau dat 75 meter hoger ligt. Aan de kust zouden er voortdurend rampen gebeuren. De enige onzekerheid is hoe lang het zal duren voor de ijskap verdwenen is."

Natuurlijk zullen de fossiele gekken nu beweren dat het enige alternatief voor het opbranden van de resterende olie en gas is dat we allemaal gaan leven zoals de mensen in het Amazonegebied. Maar vlak naast Peru zie je een heel ander, ecologisch steekhoudend model opkomen dat de armen ten goede komt.
Ecuador is een arm land met grote oliereservoirs onder het regenwoud. Maar de president daar, Rafael Correa, doet precies het tegenovergestelde van García's plan. Hij heeft verklaard dat hij bereid is de grootste olievoorraad van zijn land ondergronds te laten, als de wereld bereid is de 9,2 miljard dollar aan inkomsten te leveren die die vertegenwoordigt.

Als we niet beginnen te werken aan dit soort alternatieven, dan maken we de overwinning van deze maand in het Amazonegebied betekenisloos.

Het Hadley Centre in Exeter, een van de meest geavanceerde wetenschapscentra voor het onderzoek naar de effecten van de opwarming van de aarde, waarschuwt dat als we tegen dit tempo broeikasgassen blijven uitstoten het vochtige Amazonegebied zal opdrogen en afbranden. Heel weldra.

Hun studie van begin dit jaar legt uit: "Het Amazoneregenwoud zal rampzalige schade oplopen, zelfs als we rekening houden met de laagste voorspellingen over de temperatuurverhoging als gevolg van de klimaatsverandering."

Gigatonnen koolstof zouden de atmosfeer in gejaagd worden, en de wereld zou nog minder bewoonbaar worden.
Er is iets opwindends aan de strijd in het Amazonegebied, maar ook iets beschamends. Die mensen hadden niets, maar ze namen het op tegen de oliemaatschappijen. Wij hebben alles, maar te velen onder ons geven geen krimp en vullen hun benzinetank met gestolen olie zonder één gedachte aan morgen te besteden. De mensen in het regenwoud hebben getoond dat ze willen vechten om ons ecosysteem te redden. En wij?

While the world nervously watches the uprising in Iran, an even more important uprising has been passing unnoticed - yet its outcome will shape your fate, and mine.

In the depths of the Amazon rainforest, the poorest people in the world have taken on the richest people in the world to defend a part of the ecosystem none of us can live without. They had nothing but wooden spears and moral force to defeat the oil companies - and, for today, they have won.

Here's the story of how it happened - and how we all need to pick up this fight.

Earlier this year, Peru's President, Alan Garcia, sold the rights to explore, log and drill 70 percent of his country's swathe of the Amazon to a slew of international oil companies. Garcia seems to see rainforest as a waste of good resources, saying of the Amazon's trees: "There are millions of hectares of timber there lying idle."

There was only one pesky flaw in Garcia's plan: the indigenous people who live in the Amazon. They are the first people of the Americas, subject to wave after wave of genocide since the arrival of the Conquistadors. They are weak. They have no guns. They barely have electricity. The government didn't bother to consult them: what are a bunch of Indians going to do anyway?

But the indigenous people have seen what has happened elsewhere in the Amazon when the oil companies arrive. Occidental Petroleum are currently facing charges in US courts of dumping an estimated nine billion barrels of toxic waste in the regions of the Amazon where they operated from 1972 to 2000. Andres Sandi Mucushua, the spiritual leader of the area known to the oil companies as Block 1AB, said in 2007: "My people are sick and dying because of Oxy. The water in our streams is not fit to drink and we can no longer eat the fish in our rivers or the animals in our forests." The company denies liability, saying they are "aware of no credible data of negative community health impacts".

In the Ecuadorian Amazon, according to an independent report, toxic waste allegedly dumped after Chevron-Texaco's drilling has been blamed by an independent scientific investigation for 1,401 deaths, mostly of children from cancer. When the BBC investigator Greg Palast put these charges to Chevron's lawyer, he replied: "And it's the only case of cancer in the world? How many cases of children with cancer do you have in the States?... They have to prove it's our crude, [which] is absolutely impossible."

The people of the Amazon do not want to see their forests felled and their lands poisoned. And here, the need of the indigenous peoples to preserve their habitat has collided with your need to preserve your habitat. The rainforests inhale massive amounts of warming gases and keep them stored away from the atmosphere. Already, we are chopping them down so fast that it is causing 25 percent of man-made carbon emissions every year - more than planes, trains and automobiles combined. But it is doubly destructive to cut them down to get to fossil fuels, which then cook the planet yet more. Garcia's plan was to turn the Amazon from the planet's air con into its fireplace.

Why is he doing this? He was responding to intense pressure from the US, whose new Free Trade Pact requires this "opening up", and from the International Monetary Fund, paid for by our taxes. In Peru, it has also been alleged that the ruling party, APRA, is motivated by oil-bribes. Some of Garcia's associates have been caught on tape talking about how to sell off the Amazon to their cronies. The head of the parliamentary committee investigating the affair, Rep. Daniel Abugattas, says: "The government has been giving away our natural resources to the lowest bidders. This has not benefited Peru, but the administration's friends."

So the indigenous peoples acted in their own self-defence, and ours. Using their own bodies and weapons made from wood, they blockaded the rivers and roads to stop the oil companies getting anything in or out. They captured two valves of Peru's sole pipeline between the country's gas field and the coast, which could have led to fuel rationing. Their leaders issued a statement explaining: "We will fight together with our parents and children to take care of the forest, to save the life of the equator and the entire world."

Garcia responded by sending in the military. He declared a "state of emergency" in the Amazon, suspending almost all constitutional rights. Army helicopters opened fire on the protesters with live ammunition and stun-grenades. Over a dozen protesters were killed. But the indigenous peoples did not run away. Even though they were risking their lives, they stood their ground. One of their leaders, Davi Yanomami, said simply: "The earth has no price. It cannot be bought, or sold or exchanged. It is very important that white people, black people and indigenous peoples fight together to save the life of the forest and the earth. If we don't fight together what will our future be?"

And then something extraordinary happened. The indigenous peoples won. The Peruvian Congress repealed the laws that allowed oil company drilling, by a margin of 82 votes to 12. Garcia was forced to apologize for his "serious errors and exaggerations". The protesters have celebrated and returned to their homes deep in the Amazon.

Of course, the oil companies will regroup and return - but this is an inspirational victory for the forces of sanity that will be hard to reverse.

Human beings need to make far more decisions like this: to leave fossil fuels in the ground, and to leave rainforests standing. In microcosm, this rumble in the jungle is the fight we all face now. Will we allow a small number of rich people to make a short-term profit from seizing and burning resources, at the expense of our collective ability to survive?

If this sounds like hyperbole, listen to Professor Jim Hansen, the world's leading climatologist, whose predictions have consistently turned out to be correct. He says: "Clearly, if we burn all fossil fuels, we will destroy the planet we know. We would set the planet on a course to the ice-free state, with a sea level 75 metres higher. Coastal disasters would occur continually. The only uncertainty is the time it would take for complete ice sheet disintegration."

Of course, fossil fools will argue that the only alternative to burning up our remaining oil and gas supplies is for us all to live like the indigenous peoples in the Amazon. But next door to Peru, you can see a very different, environmentally sane model to lift up the poor emerging - if only we will grasp it.

Ecuador is a poor country with large oil resources underneath its rainforests - but its president, Rafael Correa, is offering us the opposite of Garcia's plan. He has announced he is willing to leave his country's largest oil reserve, the Ishpingo Tmabococha Tiputini field, under the soil, if the rest of the world will match the $9.2bn in revenues it would provide.

If we don't start reaching for these alternatives, we will render this month's victory in the Amazon meaningless. The Hadley Center in Britain, one of the most sophisticated scientific centers for studying the impacts of global warming, has warned that if we carry on belching out greenhouse gases at the current rate, the humid Amazon will dry up and burn down - and soon.

Their study earlier this year explained: "The Amazonian rainforest is likely to suffer catastrophic damage even with the lowest temperature rises forecast under climate change. Up to 40 percent of the rainforest will be lost if temperature rises are restricted to 2C, which most climatologists regard as the least that can be expected by 2050. A 3C rise is likely to result in 75 percent of the forest disappearing while a 4C rise, regarded as the most likely increase this century unless greenhouse gas emissions are slashed, will kill off 85 perfect of the forest." That would send gigatons of carbon into the atmosphere - making the world even more inhabitable.

There is something thrilling about the fight in the Amazon, yet also something shaming. These people had nothing, but they stood up to the oil companies. We have everything, yet too many of us sit limp and passive, filling up our tanks with stolen oil without a thought for tomorrow. The people of the Amazon have shown they are up for the fight to save our ecosystem. Are we?

Johann Hari is a writer for the Independent. To read more of his articles, click here or for an archive of his writings about environmental issues, click here.

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