Olivia in the Amazon
Translation from German:
Fear Of Rainforest, Olivia on the Rio Branco
The American environmental organization ECO (Earth Communications Office) issued a call, and 150,000 people gathered in front of the Washington Capitol to hear, among other things, Olivia Newton-John’s impassioned speech. It was about saving Mother Earth and her green lungs, the rainforests. They are dying day by day. Half have already been burned or cut down. Eight million square kilometers need to be preserved, 5.5 million of them in Brazil alone.
The Grease star was sent there just a few days after her much-acclaimed appearance in America’s capital. It wasn’t a safe trip; a heavily armed Black man accompanied the beautiful Olivia every step of the way. The reason: Pistols could be lurking everywhere, the brutal death squads of wealthy landowners who seize and defend their lucrative territories for cattle ranching (slash-and-burn agriculture), mining, or timber harvesting (logging) by force of arms. Left behind are the indigenous people of these regions, homeless tribes. They eke out a living in corrugated iron shantytowns and work for their greedy owners and their miserable wages. This is still better than dying in a hail of bullets from the brutal pistols if they refuse to work.
Olivia: Even though there are no chainsaws to be heard or huge fires to be seen on the horizon here in the Rio Branco region, you can already sense the impending disaster in the unnatural behavior of the local people. Distrust is reflected in their nervous glances. Anything foreign here is seen as bad luck. And one name keeps coming up: Chico Mendez, the courageous lone fighter for the rainforest and its people, who was murdered in December 1988. “His fight must continue.”
An undertaking that is no easy feat as long as Brazil is $120 billion in debt worldwide and seeks its salvation in exporting tropical timber, beef, iron ore, and precious metals, just to be able to pay the interest on its billions in loans. All, of course, at the expense of the environment.
“And we sit here amidst this wealth and don’t care about anything,” laments Livvy, pointing to her four-year-old daughter Chloe: “She should be able to take a trip to the rainforest paradise someday, like I am now. Hopefully, by then, the unscrupulous ranchers will have been stopped.”
Olivia’s words are brimming with conviction, and her commitment to all our environmental problems is equally convincing. A glance into her house in Malibu confirms it: there’s no fur coat hanging there, and no furniture made of tropical wood. Only biodegradable plastic containers, recycled paper, and spray bottles (instead of aerosol cans) are used in the household. Olivia, her husband Matt Lattanzi, and their daughter Chloe regularly search the refrigerator for tuna, the fishing of which, as is well known, results in the miserable deaths of thousands of dolphins. Their luxury sedan is soon to be sold.
Olivia’s comment: “It’s possible to do without your ostentatious and less polluting things.” How right she is!
Photo captions: Cheerful and seemingly carefree, at least for the photographer: Olivia Newton-John's trip to the Brazil Bens rainforest was less than a pleasure trip. On her excursion through the "green lung," she was rarely preoccupied with gloomy thoughts.
Olivia Newton-John didn't dare venture into the rainforest, for whose preservation she fights, without bodyguards. Criminals continue their work of destruction by any means necessary...
Text: J. Sch ütt Photos: Inter-Topics