In August 2019, satellite imagery from NASA and NOAA revealed a sight that seemed almost apocalyptic: vast plumes of smoke from thousands of fires in the Amazon rainforest, so extensive they were visible from space and had darkened the skies of São Paulo—a city over 1,700 miles away—in the middle of the afternoon. The photographs and satellite data, published by major news outlets worldwide, showed bright orange fire hotspots scattered across Brazil's northern states like a r