How much does the air we breath cost?

Through movement and mixed-sound media, this piece aims to shed light on the complex web of geopolitics responsible for the massive destruction of the largest, most carbon absorbent tropical land in the world: the Amazon rainforest. What has become Brazil’s hottest political and environmental war zone reveals a long history of power struggle between those who live to protect it and those who live to profit off of it. The Bolsonaro administration, alongside aggressive expansion of agribusiness production, has further threatened the delicate balance of this natural sanctuary of biodiversity and the very air we breath. Beyond natural devastation, the lives, culture, and homes of the Indigenous people who have inhabited this land (long before Brazil ever became a nation) are suffering tremendous violence, displacement, and political extradition.

We are beyond the point of a wake-up call; the environmental crisis, exploitation of natural resources, abuse of power, corruption amongst government officials, violation of Indigenous land rights, cultural and communal genocide of Indigenous peoples, has been ongoing for centuries. How have we let our capitalistic agendas and neoliberal values override the value of human life, the value of clean air, the value of life on earth itself? Will the very air we breath no longer be a human right or automatic physiological process, but become commodified in of itself through rationed, bought, or artificially produced in order to maintain life? 

As the only species that has managed to industrialize, exploit, and commodify our planet to an unsustainable end, it is our duty to rehumanize ourselves, our relationship to nature and each other, reminding ourselves of its essential existence, beauty, and lifeline before it’s too late.