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Brazil's pro-rainforest environment minister resigns

Posted at 4:05 PM on 13 May 2008

Brazilian Environment Minister Marina Silva resigned Tuesday after six years in office, leading a Greenpeace campaigner to lament that "Brazil is losing the only voice in the government that spoke out for the environment." Silva's policies prioritized environmental protection, particularly for the Amazon; while her policies landed her a spot as one of Grist's fave green politicians, they made her unpopular with developers, her government peers, and President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. While the environment minister declined to give an official reason for her departure, Greenpeace's Sergio Leitao postulates that "the pressure on her for taking the measures she took against deforestation has become unbearable."

sources: Associated Press, Reuters, Brasilia Tempo Real
see also, in Grist: Silva spoke out against Brazil's legalization of biotech soy

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Comments: (5 comments)

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Another Leftist Anti-Environmentalist

The situation in Brazil, specifically President Lula, is another of the many examples of how the left is just as willing to destroy the Earth as the right. As Douglas Adams tried to point out, trying to make people happy by moving little green pieces of paper around is bound to fail, because it's not the little green pieces of paper that are unhappy.

by Wolverine at 4:42 PM on 13 May 2008

Work with politicians, but realize that

at the end of the day, they are politicians. This is another example of what I have seen locally in Cleveland, in our Senate delegation, and now all the way to Brazil.

In Cleveland, city hall declares itself for the Kyoto Protocols, announces bold new initiatives for sustainability and then buys into a horrific coal power project in SE Ohio. In our Senate delegation, Sherrod Brown, whose first act of activism was to organize Earth Day in his home town as a teenager, has now joined the carbon crowd and has joined environmental criminal George Voinovich in voting against Warner Lieberman. No great bill, but something.

Environmentalists have to stop being a bunch of chumps, suckers and vestal virgins in working with politicians. We need to put down our Audubon field guides, and crack the books on politics and history. Then we have to buy a pair of brass knuckles and learn to play the game, just like the pols do. Power is the ability to reward or punish someone. We need to learn how to use it.

Randy Cunningham

Randy Cunningham

by randino at 7:10 AM on 14 May 2008

Maybe

Maybe ms.Silva just got bought off!

Why not ask why!?

by usandthem at 8:19 PM on 14 May 2008

Bought off?...

...Ha! And the Dali Lama got bought off by China, MLK Jr. got bought off by the KKK, Mother Teresa was bought off by Muslium extremists, and Ghandi got bought off by KBR and the Pentagon.

Ain't happenin', bud.

by Tasermons Partner at 8:42 PM on 14 May 2008

Even ignoring her work record...

If she resigned, obviously she wasn't "bought off." When you buy someone off, you pay them to stay in power, so they can keep doing what you want.

There was no official reason given, which means it could be anything from psychological breakdown to a mildly embarrassing health problem she doesn't want to see in headlines. But if it's anything shady, it's far more likely she was somehow quietly forced to leave office than that she was bribed into it.

by Pathos at 9:08 PM on 14 May 2008

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