Slash and burn is like that messy friend who shows up to your house, eats all your snacks, starts a fire in the backyard, and then leaves a mess for you to clean up. We can’t just ban it overnight—millions of people depend on it for survival. But we can do smarter stuff: agroforestry (growing trees with crops), no-burn techniques, and paying farmers to keep forests standing.
Until then, when you see a satellite photo of the Amazon with a thousand little smoke plumes, just remember: somewhere, a farmer thinks he’s just making dinner. But the planet is really not laughing.
And hey, maybe skip the charcoal-grilled steak tonight. Just saying.
