Thousands of fires continue ravaging Amazon rainforest in Brazil for the third week     

The Amazon, which provides around 20 per cent of the total clean air to Earth, has been on fire for three weeks now. It is purportedly caused by the President of Brazil President Jair Bolsonaro who wanted to evict indigenous people out of the forests. Environmentalists opine that the fire was caused by the cattle ranchers and loggers who want to clear and utilize the land, emboldened by Brazil's pro-business president. The Amazon is the greatest rainforest on Earth, which acts like a buffer against the increasing pace of global heat and pollution.

In the months of July to October, i.e. the dry season, forest fires are prevalent due to frequent lightning strikes, farming accidents etc.

According to BBC, activists say the anti-environmentalist attitude of Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro has normalised and emboldened people who practise such tree-clearing activities. In retort, Mr Bolsonaro, the holder of a rhetoric that does not believe in climate change, accused non-governmental organisations of starting the wildfires themselves to damage his government's image.

According to the European Union's Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (Cams), the smoke has been travelling as far as the Atlantic coast. It has even caused skies to darken in São Paulo - more than 2,000 miles (3,200km) away. The states of Roraima, Acre, Rondônia and Amazonas have been affected the worst, they have been experiencing several pollution problems, darkened skies and unhealthy side effects of the smoke.

Twitter users censured media for paying more heed, giving more coverage to the fire at Notre Dame and other news items than to the rainforest fires. Social media users also called out billionaires for lack of donations. Very few people are talking about a global climate crisis. The earth’s lungs as the rainforest is called, is in utter danger, and the netizens called out the hypocrisy of people for not paying enough attention to Amazon.

Some celebrities and organisations talked about the issue at hand on Social Media in order to increase awareness: