Lula's Brazil Reckons With Latin America's Fossil Fuel Riddle

Its development has depended heavily on its natural resources. But what is the wisdom of developing oil reserves when the world’s climate imperative calls for leaving them in the ground?

To drill, or not to drill?

Oil is sending Brazil into a tizzy.

The government of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has been twisting itself into a pretzel since the environmental police agency, Ibama, which has authority over the exploitation of natural resources, denied a request by the national oil company Petrobras to drill in the Atlantic off the coast of the state of Amapá, close to the mouth of the Amazon river.