Who is to say that the status quo isn't alarming, "things aren't worse than last year" isn't a valid argument that things are fine in any logical setting.

And the internet has helped spread information, some of these issues may have been captured by Nat Geo in the 40s but others will have been missed. A status quo progression may be championed as an issue not because everyone previously accepted it but because no one was previously aware of it.

Per the linked article:

"As of August 16, 2019, an analysis of NASA satellite data indicated that total fire activity across the Amazon basin this year has been close to the average in comparison to the past 15 years. (The Amazon spreads across Brazil, Peru, Colombia, and parts of other countries.) Though activity appears to be above average in the states of Amazonas and Rondônia, it has so far appeared below average in Mato Grosso and Pará, according to estimates"

A status quo isn't inherently bad, and this one looks like it's been consistent for many years.

I wanted to clarify that my statement above isn't specific to this article. I was trying to make a general reply, with consideration to the rest of the thread, to that original point and general statement.

I'm not in a position to evaluate how dire this specific instance is with any sort of confidence in my findings.

I wasn't being serious about that. I was trying to say is that just as they can't tell if the Amazon is on fire because they don't live there, they can't tell if someone is being opressed by the system because they simply aren't this certain someone.

But this is true of everything, everywhere, all the time. The world is a complex place, and we have to make do with the knowledge we have at hand. It doesn't mean that we should be brash and unwavering in whatever our current judgement is, but we also can't endlessly refuse to form own judgements simply because we don't know everything there is to know in the universe.