The rescue of Caramelo by firefighters from São Paulo who are helping with the tragedy in Rio Grande do Sul – after one of the biggest extreme events Brazil has ever seen – is an emotional moment for the country that we will not forget.
In fact, this reveals a lot about Brazilians. Brazilians are capable, in moments of deep pain in the face of a tragedy, of showing their solidarity with others.
Seeing my friends Leilane Neubarth and Camila Bomfim getting emotional live, on GloboNews, with the coverage of the rescue of the animal that was stranded on a roof for days, standing, without understanding exactly why it was there, moved me even more.
But, why the animal was exposed there by us, human beings and Brazilians, is an answer we owe to Caramelo.
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It concerns negligence.
We have ignored all the warnings made by science in recent years. We neglect our own climatologists, like the brilliant Carlos Nobre, who created Cemaden, the National Center for Natural Disaster Monitoring and Alerts, an organization that saves lives throughout Brazil.
Caramelo must not have understood anything when he was sedated before being placed in that boat. Seconds before it went out, I must have been very scared. And with the certainty that I would never wake up again because we, human beings, have done a lot of harm to nature, biomes and animals. Horses cannot lie down for too long.
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In fact, the explanation for the equine must involve the way in which Brazilian society also has a culture of being merely reactive.
Was it really necessary for Brazil to see the horror happening in Rio Grande do Sul in order to finally understand that we are going through a very serious and unprecedented climate crisis? And that all biomes, super interconnected, including the Amazon, have been deforested in a cowardly way for decades?
No, it was not.
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Scientists like Carlos Nobre himself have warned about the suffering we are imposing on the planet. In fact, his colleagues around the world have been saying that global warming – and, especially, what happened last year, with a 1.5 degree increase in the planet’s temperature – will have consequences for the planet.
There are more catastrophes happening around the world, if we take our eyes off Brazil and look at other countries with them.
Environmentalists and political leaders like Marina Silva have been saying for decades that events like the one in Rio Grande do Sul would happen. On her Instagram, the Minister of the Environment published an interview from years ago, in which she spoke exactly about the risk of what is happening today.
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Marina tried several times to warn Brazilian society that it was necessary to look in a different way at everything that has been cruel to our forests.
Today, Brazil showed solidarity and unity around Caramelo, who was apparently well taken care of before being placed in such a terrible situation. For us, remember. These same people now show the ability to sympathize with the animal’s pain.
I have an uncle called Cláudio Leitão, my mother’s brother, who always said the following: the way man treats animals – defenseless in front of us – shows a lot, in fact it talks about the divine.
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Well, today we show the most beautiful face of the human being and, why not say, of the divine, which everyone believes in their own way. But what about tomorrow? Will we forget everything that happened and continue to neglect, not listen to the cries for warning and help?
Will we really look at the pain of what has been imposed on us now? Or are we, once again, going to wait for a tragedy with the death of hundreds of Brazilians, and a desperate mare on an asbestos roof, to change our way of dealing with nature?
The question remains in the air, while Caramelo tries, in his own way, to point out a new and much better path.
