Forests absorb huge amounts of carbon dioxide (CO₂) from Earth’s atmosphere, which makes them a key part of easing climate change. But humans may have already made the world’s largest rainforest useless in—and perhaps even detrimental to—the battle against greenhouse gases, a new study finds.

According to the study, the carbon balance of the Amazon rainforest is damaged largely due to large-scale (大规模的) human disturbance to the Amazon ecosystem, with wildfires—many deliberately set to clear land for agriculture and industry—responsible for most of the CO₂ emissions (排放量) from the region and the hotter dry seasons.

“The first very bad news is that forest burning produces around three times more CO₂ than the forest absorbs,” lead author of the study Luciana Gatti said. “The second bad news is that the places where deforestation is 30 percent or more show carbon emissions 10 times higher than the places where less than 20 percent of forest is destroyed.”

In the new study, the researchers analyzed nearly 600 measurements of CO₂ and CO concentration at four spots in the Brazilian Amazon collected from 2010 to 2018. The team found that, on average, fires poured about 1.6 billion tons of CO₂ into the atmosphere each year, while healthy trees absorbed only about half a billion tons. The team also found that, while the Eastern Amazon, which has seen historically greater amounts of deforestation over the past 40 years, has become a place where carbon emissions are from, the Western Amazon, which has seen much less deforestation, is neither a carbon “producer” nor a carbon sink. There, CO₂ absorption by healthy forests balances the emissions from fires.

The Amazon Basin contains about 2.8 million square miles of jungle, representing more than half of the tropical (热带的) rainforest area remaining on Earth. “Limiting deforestation, and especially wildfires, is key to changing this dangerous trend in the Amazon. Imagine if we could keep the Amazon from fires, the forest could be a carbon sink,” Gatti said. “But we are doing the opposite—we are accelerating climate change.”

Going green seems to be a fad (时尚) for a lot of people these days. Whether that is good or bad, we can’t really say, but for the two of us, going green is not a fad but a lifestyle.

On April 22, 2011, we decided to go green every single day for an entire year. This meant doing 365 different green things, and it also meant challenging ourselves to go green beyond the easy things. Rather than recycle and reduce our energy, we had to think of 365 different green things to do and this was no easy task.

With the idea of going green every single day for a year, Our Green Year started. My wife and I decided to educate people about how they could go green in their lives and hoped we could show people all the green things that could be done to help the environment. We wanted to push the message that every little bit helps.

Over the course of Our Green Year, we completely changed our lifestyles. We now shop at organic (有机的) stores. We consume less meat, choosing green food. We have greatly reduced our buying we don’t need. We have given away half of what we owned through websites. Our home is kept clean by vinegar and lemon juice, with no chemical cleaners. We make our own butter, enjoying the smell of home­made fresh bread. In our home office anyone caught doing something ungreen might be punished.

Our minds have been changed by Our Green Year. We are grateful for the chance to have been able to go green and educate others. We believe that we do have the power to change things and help our planet.