April 1, 1998 a U.N. team of disaster experts traveled to northern Brazil, where fires set by subsistence farmers have swept out of control and scorched millions of acres of Amazon jungle. There are about 1500 fire fighters plus planes and helicopters aiding in the effort to control the blaze. The Brazilian government showed a line of fire about 140 miles long pushing through the rainforest. About 38,400,000 acres have been scorched, after burning our of control for more than two months. Smoke from the rainforest fire has filled the skies throughout central United States as far north as Minnesota and dumped ash along the Gulf Coast. The fire has destroyed homes in indigenous communities such as those of the stone-age tribe of the Yanomami. The Yanomami tribe was providing crucial aid in the fire-fighting efforts. We have no record of a fire on this scale in the Amazon. Carlos Monteiro, chief of the U.N. called the fires "an environmental disaster without precedent on the planet."

The Amazon
We were in the heart of the Amazon jungle. We made our way on a path to "Camp 41." As we came through the jungle, I was struck by the incredible sounds. The whole place was teeming with life---birds, crickets, bats, bees--all in communication. This sharply contrasted, with the mechanized, often discordant world we'd left behind.

The Amazon Rainforest is the home of many plants and flowers that provide us with medicines, vaccines, and other pharmaceuticals. given the rainforests teeming biological diversity, its value to humanity as a laboratory of natural phenomena and as a medical storehouse is priceless. Medical researchers claim that if the Amazon Rainforest disappears, the plants that provide medical miracles will be lost forever.

I will never forget the day that my father came home and told us that we were moving to Manaus, Brazil. I was so excited. We had been in the same place for almost 6 months. My father was in oil exploration, so we moved a lot, and I was ready to hit the road again. I could not wait to get to school the next day. I wanted to find out exactly where Manaus, Brazil was. It was near the Amazon River at the edge of the rainforest in South America. It sounded so glamorous.

This is home, beautiful blue globe in a vast universe. We travel in outer space and cyber space, but our space is here on earth. You can have a mountain of degrees, a mountain of money or a mountain of power, but in a moment of silence on top of your mountain what do you hear? Hear yourself breathe. If your mountain is high enough breathing is arduous, air is thin, less oxygen per lung full. There is no escaping or denying the fact that you need air. When the Amazon goes the rest of us are right behind. At the current rate of destruction we have less than 20 years.

The Amazon Rainforest, the largest and richest ecosystem on earth, has stood inviolate for thousands if not millions of years since its creation. The profusion and variety of life forms present in the rainforest and its critical role in supplying the world with air has resulted in its being called the "Heart and Lungs" of the planet. Indeed, the majority of the world's oxygen is supplied by its dense foliage and teeming plant life which upon first inspection, seems boundless and indestructible.

Earth’s greatest natural resource is quite literally going up in smoke, as over 320 square miles of irreplaceable primary rainforest are burned or logged every day. Only twenty years ago, rainforests covered about 14 percent of the earth’s land area. Today, rainforests are less than 6 percent.