The Grim Ironies of Climate Change
The Belgian empire invaded the Congo rainforest during the late 19th century and swiftly established itself as the cruelest imperial force in Africa. The Congo is the world’s second-largest rainforest behind the Amazon, and King Leopold II treated it like a personal loot box. To strip away and sell its resources, he enslaved the Indigenous population, destroying much of the region’s preexisting culture and politics from the family unit on upward. The penalty for failing to meet his rubber quotas was amputation. Millions died during his extractive reign, and ever since, the rainforest has rarely known peace.
To a certain cast of mind, the rainforests that straddle Earth’s equatorial zone constitute the apex of all creation. Every day, 12 hours of sunlight strikes their in . Together, these twin supplies of solar energy and water fuel the year-round growth of a green multistory shelter, from which some of the world’s most diverse animal, fungal, and microbial ecologies have emerged. Few other physical systems, perhaps in the entire universe, convert inanimate materials so readily, and so profusely, into life.
