By Daniel Nepstad, PhD, Executive Director and President, Earth Innovation Institute; Caroline Nóbrega, PhD, Director General, Aliança da Terra

Wildfires are devastating lives and landscapes across the U.S. and around the planet. 

Wildfires are also the biggest threat to the Amazon forest and, therefore, a double blow to humanity’s ability to solve the climate crisis. This vast forest, nearly as large as the lower 48 of the US, is a huge global cooling system, cooling the air by evaporating billions of tonnes of water each day. Add to that the carbon stored in the wood of its trees and out of the atmosphere – equivalent to the carbon emissions of the global economy over the last decade. When the Amazon burns, we lose both this natural cooling system and its carbon storage.