French President Emmanuel Macron says the fires raging in the Amazon rainforest are an international crisis—but his Brazilian counterpart thinks Macron, and the rest of the world, should butt out. President Jair Bolsonaro said Thursday that foreign powers should not interfere, even though he admitted that Brazil did not have the resources to fight the fires by itself, Reuters reports. He said Macron's suggestion that the crisis be discussed as a matter of urgency at the G7 meeting this weekend was evidence of a "misplaced colonialist mindset." Earlier Thursday, Macron tweeted: "Our house is burning. Literally. The Amazon rain forest—the lungs which produces 20% of our planet's oxygen—is on fire." More:
- "A new level." Thousands of fires were deliberately set by farmers to clear land, but Bolsonaro has claimed, without evidence, that non-governmental organizations started the fires to discredit him. BBC analyst Daniel Gallas sees a "new level" of dismissal of international concerns. "Others before Mr. Bolsonaro have dismissed international NGOs and European leaders as foreign meddlers into national affairs," he writes. "But Mr. Bolsonaro has taken this to a new level by suggesting NGOs may be responsible for encouraging wildfires to sabotage him."