The one that's losing half its assets, but not to divorce.

When I was growing up,

I heard a lot about how the Amazon rainforest needed saving.

This is the rainforest in 1900, 

and this is the rainforest today.

Who caused  all this damage to the rainforest?

Unfortunately, people did.

♪ The rain forest. The tropical rainforest. ♪

♪ Unfortunately, some don't understand ♪

♪ Like people coming in And clearing the land ♪

♪ Tragically this devastation  Doesn't have to happen ♪

♪ That's why I'm on the mic here rappin' ♪

For the record, 

I am absolutely fine destroying the rainforest

as long as that guy lives there.

Look, I  always thought that was  the weirdest PSA I had ever seen,

until I saw the one with Kevin Spacey.

I am the rainforest.

I watched them grow up here.

They've left, but they always come back.

Yes, they always come back.

That PSA aged so poorly,

Kevin Spacey doesn't even think it's hot anymore.

I know.

Hey, you didn't think you'd see him on Netflix again, did you?

They didn't even reshoot with Christopher Plummer.

You had no idea.

Now, the reason  you probably stopped seeing PSAs

about the Amazon and saving the rainforest

is because we actually started saving the rainforest.

Between 2004 and 2012, deforestation plunged 84%.

Yes. It's shocking. Humans actually  stepped up and did the right thing.

But let's not give ourselves too much credit.

We didn't save the rainforest as much as we didn't fully kill it, 

but just like Nazis  and high-waisted jeans,

deforestation is making a comeback.

In the last year alone,  Amazon deforestation has jumped 13.7%,

a loss of nearly 1.2 billion trees.

Now, deforestation rates are on the rise,

and this couldn't be happening  at a worse time for the planet

because when it comes to climate change, we are, and I cannot stress this enough...

fucked.

Dire new warnings  about the effects of climate change.

Intense heat, waves, storms.

Deadly wildfires, droughts.

Ocean dead zones.

People are dying. They are dying.

You know Fox is gonna use that against her.

They'll be like, "Oh, really? You're talking about death,

even though you're still alive.  Such a hypocrite.

Really, AOC?"

Now, look, we have to stop messing with the rainforest.

The Amazon is home to 10% of all species on Earth.

It absorbs 25% of the carbon emissions  captured by the world's forests.

The Amazon also produces massive amounts of oxygen and water vapor,

which serves as the Earth's cooling system, 

which is why the Amazon is often called...

The lungs of the Earth. 

The lungs of the Earth.

The lungs of the Earth.

I don't know if you know this, but every part of Earth

is actually a body part.

The Amazon is the lungs. Canada is the forehead.

Iceland is the third nipple. Malta's the skin tag.

England is the birthmark. Italy is not the foot.

Australia is the foot.

Italy's the bladder. Germany's the benign tumor.

North Korea's the malignant tumor.

Argentina is the sinus, and Fiji is the prostate.

Going there is simply  the greatest pleasure

you will ever experience.

The Amazon  touches nine different countries,

but to really understand why deforestation is on the rise,

we have to look at the country responsible for most of it.

Brazil.

Now, there are a lot of great things about Brazil.

Carnival, Neymar, some percentage of Hailey Baldwin

and the Brazilian wax, which is another kind of deforestation.

But it's also very painful. Over the last five decades,

almost 20% of the Amazon  has been destroyed.

Even though Brazil has laws to protect the environment,

those laws aren't always enforced because of insane amounts of political 

and corporate greed, and I know as an American,

we should probably shut the fuck up  when it comes to the moral high ground.

Americans lecturing Brazil  about corruption

is like Steve Bannon launching a skin care line.

It's just like take care of...

your own shit before you...

dive into the whole face...

thing.

But corruption in Brazil is truly  on a whole 'nother level.

Brazil's last three presidents  were steeped in scandals.

Dilma Rousseff, impeached for financial misconduct.

Michel Temer, charged with corruption.

And Lula da Silva, currently in jail  for stealing DVDs from a Redbox.

I'm just kidding, corruption.

And we haven't even gotten  to Brazil's massive bribery

and money laundering scandal called Operation Car Wash.

Now I'll let Fareed Zakaria, aka the original brown John Oliver, explain.

The biggest corruption scandal ever anywhere in the world,

$788 million in bribes to various officials,

five former Brazilian presidents, nearly one out of three cabinet ministers

and almost one out of three senators have been indicted or investigated.

This is the country the world  is relying on to protect the Amazon.

Thank God, America doesn't have that responsibility.

Can you imagine if we were in charge of the Amazon?

We would probably tear it down and build a headquarters for Amazon.

You just see a bunch of howler monkeys

driving UPS trucks  with Kindles in their hands.

Now, unfortunately, things are going to get a lot worse 

because of Brazil's current president, Jair Bolsonaro.

He's a former army captain  who answers the question,

"What if Carl Sagan  wasn't properly embalmed?"

And he's made it very clear

where he stands on the environment.

Mr. Bolsonaro campaigned to make Brazil great again,

to kick-start it's struggling economy.

And he sees the Amazon as Brazil's cash cow.

He may open up vast sections  of the Amazon rainforest to mining.

He said he's gonna pardon people who have been fined for deforestation.

"We don't owe the world anything"  sounds like the chorus to an Eminem song.

But Bolsonaro's stance on the environment doesn't even scratch the surface

of his insanity.

Jesus.

Bolsonaro sounds like every last comment before someone is blocked on Twitter.

This is why he's often referred to  as the "Trump of the Tropics."

So think of Trump,  but with even more tiki torches.

Bolsonaro also loves Twitter, and his tweets are insane.

The president, who tweeted a video apparently filmed at a carnival event,

showing one man urinating  on another man in a sexual act.

On the plus side,

at least Brazil's seen  their president's pee tape.

Now, eventually, "Golden Shower President" started trending online.

Bolsonaro then tweeted out,  "What is a golden shower?"

I love how there isn't a Portuguese word  for "golden shower."

Like, you ever been to another country  and then you watch TV and they're like...

[speaks gibberish] "Macaulay Culkin."

You're like, "Something's happening  with Macaulay Culkin."

Now, as dangerous as  Bolsonaro's policies are for the Amazon,

that danger is fundamentally being driven by agribusiness,

which is the industry that produces the food that we eat.

Agribusiness accounts for almost a quarter of Brazil's economy

and is one of the biggest drivers  of illegal deforestation.

Brazil is the world's largest exporter  of sugar, coffee, soybeans, orange juice 

and most importantly, beef.

The Amazon is home to millions of species,

and the biggest threat to the rainforest itself is this one.

Cattle ranching is responsible  for up to 80% of deforestation.

And to turn the rainforest into grassland, they don't just cut it down.

They burn it down.

It's all about creating new pastures.

The Amazon rainforest is being burned down and destroyed.

Elizeu takes pictures of the tragedy

in order to tell the authorities  what's going on here.

Anything that can still move tries  to escape the inferno.

No no no, don't worry. That rat goes on  to become a chef in Paris.

It's beautiful.

Brazil's beef industry is a huge driver of Amazon deforestation.

And it's dominated by a single company called JBS.

They're the largest  meat processing company in the world.

Last year, JBS made $46 billion.

That's a double what McDonald's made.

Even more surprising, Brazil only accounts for 24% of their revenue.

Their U.S. division generates 76%.

That's $35.2 billion.

That's right, America. Once again, we are fucking shit up.

Look, if it's terrible, we're probably in the mix.

We're like the raisins of international relations.

Like, the rest of the world is like, "We fucking hate raisins."

And we're like, "Raisins are essential to democracy.

Raisins have to be in everything, raisins need to be in Afghanistan

for three plus decades."

JBS also happens to be one of the most corrupt companies in the world,

which isn't shocking because  for a long time,

it was run by Joesley and Wesley Batista.

The Batista brothers. Now, come on.

Their names are Joesley and Wesley.

They look like dudes on a yacht  Liam Neeson has to rescue girls from.

The Batista brothers are possibly two  of the most corrupt people on Earth,

and they have history  with the Bolsonaro administration.

Bolsonaro's current chief of staff has admitted to taking money from JBS,

and in the past, the woman who is now  Bolsonaro's Minister of Agriculture

gave JBS tax breaks while also doing  personal business with them.

The fact that senior members  of the Bolsonaro administration

are closely linked to JBS is a huge liability

because the last president that got entangled with the Batista Brothers

was Michel Temer, and it ended horribly.

In exchange for no jail time, Joesley Batista strikes a deal,

providing information about bribing 1,829 Brazilian politicians.

The Batista brothers admitted  to bribing almost 2,000 politicians,

spent roughly $150 million just in bribes

and agreed to pay a fine of $3.2 billion,

which is almost how much Facebook has to pay for destroying democracy.

Shouldn't it be, like, more?

It should definitely be more. JBS' business practices continue

to do environmental damage.

They have been accused of buying cattle from illegally deforested land

in the Amazon, even though they deny it  and investigators recently arrested

Joesley Batista again

for allegedly bribing officials at Brazil's agriculture Ministry.

If that doesn't make you sick,  their beef just might.

JBS bribed Brazilian food inspectors to give passing grades to spoiled meat.

And on the U.S. side,

their meat isn't any better.

A massive ground beef recall  is now expanding.

The USDA says the Brazilian company,  JBS is now recalling

more than 12 million pounds of ground beef shipped to stores across the U.S.

This past year,

JBS beef and chicken from the U.S. were found to have been contaminated 

with hard plastic, rubber and e-coli.

All of which  generally cost extra at Chipotle.

But even before that,

the US had banned all Brazilian beef  imports, including JBS, indefinitely.

Do you know how bad your meat has to be  for Americans to notice?

We thought Super Size Me  was just a normal movie.

No lessons.

It actually just made us hungrier.

The Amazon has never been more vulnerable.

Between political corruption, Bolsonaro's pro-business agenda

and the incentives of agribusiness,

the Amazon is going to keep burning.

But there is some hope.  The strongest blockade

against deforestation isn't more regulation or enforcement or fines,

it's people.

The Javari Valley Indigenous Reserve...

eight million hectares of Brazilian Amazon, the size of Austria.

It's home to the largest number of non-contacted tribes in the world,

photographed only rarely from the air.

There are nearly a million  indigenous people in Brazil,

and almost half of them live in the rainforest.

Research shows that  when indigenous people 

have legal and physical protection,

so does the rainforest. Now, I know this looks like a map 

of the only school of vaccinated kids in Orange County, but...

it's actually a time-lapse  of deforestation.