Look, I don’t ask for much. I usually just ask that things make sense. But clearly, in a world facing a catastrophic **climate crisis**, that is asking too much. We live in a reality where the **Pantanal wetlands**—the world’s largest tropical wetland area—are literally on fire, and nothing makes sense anymore.

Let’s talk about the Pantanal. If you didn’t sleep through 6th-grade geography, you might know it is defined by being wet. It is a giant swamp in South America. It is supposed to be soggy, full of biodiversity, and water. But because humans are apparently the dumbest species to crawl out of the slime, we managed to dry it out and light a match. We broke the one rule of wetland conservation: keep them wet.

Enter **Lalo de Almeida**. He is a renowned documentary photographer based in São Paulo. For thirty years, he has been capturing the **Amazonian Dystopia** and the environmental degradation of the surrounding areas. Thirty years. You would think after a decade of photographic evidence, we might get the hint. You would think someone would look at his viral photos and say, “Hey, maybe we should stop destroying the ecosystem that keeps us alive.”

But no. That is not how the attention economy works.

Instead of fixing the problem, we give the guy a prestigious photography grant. We clap for him. We turn the disaster into an accolades ceremony.

I am not knocking **Lalo de Almeida**. He is doing his job. He went into the smoke. He saw the “pure apocalypse.” That is his quote, not mine. He watched the world end in real-time. He took photos of the flames eating up the biomass and the animals. He captured the exact moment when greed won over survival. He did the hard work.

But look at us. Look at the reaction. We put the photos in a gallery in London. That’s right. A major exhibition. Rich people in comfortable shoes will walk around a nice, air-conditioned room in the UK. They will sip expensive wine. They will look at a photo of a charred landscape and nod their heads. They will say things like, “Oh, how powerful,” or “Truly moving.” They will stare at the ashes of a place they have never been to, and they will feel a little tingle of sadness.

Then they will leave the gallery, get in their massive cars, and drive home to burn more gas. It is a joke.

It makes me sick. And don’t think I’m letting anyone off the hook here. It is not just the Right, and it is not just the Left. They are both useless.

The Right will tell you that burning the forest is good for business. They look at a tree and see a dollar sign. They look at the **Pantanal** and see a parking lot for cows. They are simple creatures with simple, greedy brains. They want to squeeze every last cent out of the dirt until there is nothing left but dust. They don’t care if your grandkids have to wear gas masks to go to school. As long as the stock market line goes up for one more day, they are happy. They are the arsonists.

But the Left isn’t any better. They are the ones at the gallery. They are the ones crying about the “tragedy” on social media. They post the picture of the burning jaguar with a sad face emoji. They act like they care so much. But it is all a show. It is a performance. They consume the destruction as art. They turn the death of the planet into content. They feel good about themselves because they “raised awareness.”

Guess what? The fire doesn’t care about your awareness. The fire doesn’t care about your art prize. The fire just burns.

**Lalo de Almeida** calls it an “Amazonian Dystopia.” That is a fancy way of saying we built a hell on earth. And we did build it. We built it with cheap burgers and soy and timber. We built it because we are bored and hungry and we don’t know when to stop taking things.

The news tells us about his “environment stories.” Stories. That is what we have reduced reality to. Just stories. We tell ourselves stories so we don’t have to face the fact that we are the bad guys. We look at the photos from 2020, and 2021, and we say, “Wow, that looks bad.” And then we do absolutely nothing to change it.

It is 2024. The fires aren’t stopping. They are getting worse. But hey, at least the photos are getting better, right? At least the composition is nice. Maybe next year, when the last tree falls, we can get a really high-definition shot of it. We can frame it and hang it in a museum titled “Here Lies Earth: It Was Nice While It Lasted.”

This photographer has to go out there and breathe smoke just to prove to us that fire is hot. He has to document the “exploitation.” That is a polite word for theft. We are stealing the future. And we are applauding the documentation of the crime scene.

So go ahead. Look at the pictures. Feel sad for five minutes. Then go back to your life. Pretend that the smoke isn’t coming for you, too. But don’t tell me you care. If you cared, the swamp wouldn’t be on fire. If we weren’t all useless, toxic grifters in our own little ways, we wouldn’t need an art exhibit to tell us that the apocalypse is here. We would just look out the window.

But we won’t look. We will just wait for the next photo essay. We will wait for the next award ceremony. Because that is easier than admitting we are the ones holding the matches.

***

### References & Fact-Check

* **Primary Source:** [‘Pure apocalypse’: a photographer’s journey through the Pantanal wildfires](https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2026/feb/02/lalo-de-almeida-photographer-journey-through-pantanal-wildfires-brazil) (*The Guardian*) * **Subject:** **Lalo de Almeida**, a documentary photographer specializing in the Amazon and Pantanal regions. * **Key Event:** The exhibition and recognition of Almeida's work documenting the **Pantanal wildfires** (specifically the devastation seen in 2020/2021) and the concept of an "Amazonian Dystopia." * **Location:** The **Pantanal**, the world's largest tropical wetland area, which extends across Brazil, Bolivia, and Paraguay.