With hands stained with oil and dressed in one of the orange overalls of the state oil company Petrobras, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva himself made the comparison: “I feel the same emotion I felt in 2007,” he said in an official video during a visit to the drilling ship exploring the Morpho well on August 17. Lula compared the discovery of vast reserves of oil and natural gas in the southeast and south of Brazil during his second term with the discovery of hydrocarbons last month during a new prospecting, now in his third term and in the midst of a re-election campaign. The official photo materializes the contradiction of the electoral campaign for the presidency of Brazil: in 2026, while some parts of the world are transformed by devastating droughts and others by apocalyptic floods, the two main projects vying for power in Brazil advocate increasing the exploitation of oil and natural gas.
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Neither Lula, a progressive, nor Flávio Bolsonaro, far-right and a declared candidate to submit to Donald Trump’s tutelage, say in their programs when they will leave fossil fuels alone underground. Lula talks about a “just energy transition.” But, at the same time, he states in his program: “Lula’s third government has resumed investments in oil and gas. Petrobras has broken successive oil production records and has reinvested in refining and derivatives, in gas and fertilizers, thus increasing its orders to the naval and petrochemical industries. By the end of 2025, the country reached a record figure of 4.897 million barrels of oil equivalent per day and Petrobras’ investments grew by 79% in the 2023-2025 triennium compared to the 2019-2021 period.” And later: “We understand that Petrobras will increasingly invest in oil exploration onshore and offshore to regain control of national reserves and will increase its investments in the revitalization of mature fields.”
For his part, Flávio Bolsonaro has the audacity to defend fracking or hydraulic fracturing, a highly destructive technique for extracting oil and gas: “The National Energy Security Program will focus on refining, processing, distribution, and transportation of fuels and gas, and will allow unconventional exploitation (fracking) of gas. (…) And we will turn our wealth in oil and gas into energy and employment.” Lula occasionally mentions the “just energy transition,” while Bolsonaro talks about “environmental responsibility.” But these are clearly empty words, as none of these overused expressions fit with the exploitation of fossil fuels.
The coincidence between a candidate considered left-wing and another far-right on the most urgent issue for everyone’s present and the future of children — both those already born and those yet to be born — shows the deadlock we are in. Neither of the two candidates with chances of winning the October elections commits to setting a deadline to definitively abandon fossil fuels. This means that the next president of Brazil will continue stealing the future from new generations. The difference is that Lula mentions Petrobras, the Brazilian oil company, 11 times, which shows that leadership should rest with the State. And Flávio Bolsonaro does not mention the oil company at all, indicating that, for the son of former president Jair Bolsonaro, leadership of the process should rest with the private sector. What is happening in Brazil is a portrait of the world’s insanity: just look at how Donald Trump appropriates almost a quarter of Venezuela’s oil while some regions of the planet are literally burning.
It seems we have lost the ability to realize how absurd what we are living through is. If a candidate claimed they were going to kill part of the population with droughts and floods, or that in a few years they would reduce agricultural production because they would work tirelessly to alter the rainfall regime, or even that they would take drastic measures so that children have a worse quality of life on the planet, it would be expected that no one would vote for them and that, moreover, some kind of sanction would be imposed.
By stating that they will increase oil and gas production, that is precisely what both candidates are saying. It is proven, beyond doubt, that worldwide burning of fossil fuels is the main cause of global warming, with some consequences already more than visible today and others advancing silently. The only solution is to leave fossil fuels underground. Increasing oil and gas production, as Lula and Bolsonaro promise and as most governments of countries with oil fields on their territory do, will accelerate the planet’s warming, causing chain consequences and bringing us closer to the risk of species extinction.
From Flávio Bolsonaro, those committed to the fight against global warming expect precisely that: the worst. His father’s government widely demonstrated the destructive capacity of the family and the far right. Lula’s record as a fossil fuel enthusiast is not encouraging, but one might expect that, at some point in this third term, he would finally have landed in the 21st century and understood what climate collapse is. But no.
In the video where he celebrates the discovery of hydrocarbons, Lula is at the Equatorial Margin, on the Amazon coast, a “new frontier of exploitation” of oil, with great potential for ecological catastrophe. And he still says: “This [oil] is, once again, a passport to guarantee a calmer future for the families of the Brazilian people.” He forgot to say what future. We can help the president-candidate: a future with more droughts, more floods, more heat, more diseases, more deaths; and less rain, less biodiversity, less agriculture. Less life.
