Amazon deforestation and the EU-Mercosur trade deal

For a long time, even the most pessimistic climate activists took heart in the fact that the formidable Amazon rainforest was a kind of last-ditch backstop, a massive ecosystem that would continue to vacuum up the huge quantities of carbon we irresponsibly pumped into the atmosphere.

But what happens when that's no longer true? Worse still, if the opposite is true?

The Amazonian ecosystem, the world's largest rainforest (almost 33 percent of the planet's forest area), hasn't just...