From one day to the next, Marina Silva, arguably Brazil’s most respected environmental advocate, finds herself with a serious chance to become her country’s next president. The opportunity arises through tragedy—the death in a plane crash Aug. 13 of Eduardo Campos, until then the presidential candidate of the Brazilian Socialist Party (PSB). Silva, who ran as a presidential candidate for the Green Party in 2010, was Campos’s running mate this time around. But on Aug. 20, a week after Campos and six others died in the crash of his campaign jet, the PSB officially made the 56-year-old Silva its presidential nominee. Silva, who grew up poor as the daughter of rubber tappers, became a colleague of the late Brazilian rainforest activist Chico... [Log in to read more]