“There’s a risk that the Amazon is approaching a tipping point that would lead to its transformation, over time, into a savanna,” he said. Recent wildfires, heat and drought in the Amazon have “set off alarm bells in the scientific community that unless we begin to phase out fossil fuel emissions, the tipping of the Amazon and other systems will become inevitable.”

The gist of the letter to Lula is that, “basically, if we want to avoid a global heating of three degrees Celsius, we have to immediately stop fossil fuel exploration and use in all economic sectors, that is the main message.”

While phasing out fossil fuels is necessary, to do so "immediately" without addressing the leading cause of the climate crisis would be suicidal. Addressing deforestation in the Amazon and preventing it from reaching the tipping point needs to be the much more urgent concern while the phaseout of fossil fuels happens strategically and gradually (such as over ten years).