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US Wood Importers Pillage Virgin Indonesian Rainforests
RAN Calls For US Moratorium To Help End Indonesian Massacre
Yale Research Confirms Environmental Impact of Crime and Corruption

Rainforest Action Network sent letters to 163 U.S. tropical wood importers and members of the International Wood Products Association calling for an immediate corporate embargo on forest-based products from Indonesia’s ravaged rainforests. The letter follows Science magazine’s publication of new research from the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies confirming ‘expansive and accelerating deforestation’ of the country’s ‘protected areas’ and calling for ‘immediate transnational management’ to end the massacre. . . . In the March 18, 2004 letter, Rainforest Action Network executive director Michael Brune reiterated Indonesian President Megawati Soekarnoputri’s plea for an international moratorium to help stop illegal logging. It affirmed widespread acknowledgement that reduced-impact logging and stump-to-store bar coding schemes have failed, quoting the Indonesian Minister of Forests’ admission that “it has become clear that Indonesia will not overcome illegal logging without stemming the foreign demand for Indonesian logs and forestry products.” Mr. Brune challenges U.S. companies to join Centex Homes, International Paper and Lanoga Corporation and suspend purchasing from the region until legal supplies are verifiable. A copy of the letter is available at www.ran.org/indonesiamoratorium. . . . “Indonesia is ground zero for illegal logging,” said Michael Brune, executive director of Rainforest Action Network. “Corrupt logging companies are pillaging Indonesia’s virgin rainforests and turning Borneo into a barren wasteland. American corporations that are trading in illegal Indonesian timber are as guilty as the criminals who supply them.” . . . According to an October 27, 2003 BusinessWeek editorial titled “Indonesia’s Chainsaw Massacre,” the country’s rainforests are “disappearing at a rate equivalent to the area of 300 soccer fields every hour” to offer “Western consumers cheap lumber.” Rainforest Action Network’s 2003 report, “Importing Destruction,” documents the connections of U.S. companies to the international market for Indonesia tropical plywood.

posted by Lorenzo 4:50 PM

 

Earth faces sixth mass extinction
NewScientist.com, 18 March 04
There is growing concern over the rate at which species of plants and animals are disappearing around the world. But until now the evidence for such extinctions has mainly come from studies of birds. "The doubters could always turn around and say that there's something peculiar about birds that makes them susceptible to the impact of man on the environment," says Jeremy Greenwood of the British Trust for Ornithology in Norfolk, and one of the research team. Now there is concrete evidence that insects - which account for more than half the described species on Earth, are disappearing faster than birds. The Earth may be on the brink of a sixth mass extinction on a par with the five others that have punctuated its history, suggests the strongest evidence yet.

posted by A Curmudgeon 11:12 AM

 

Something to think about
We're playing by their rules. The system was invented by the people who are poisoning us. The rules say they get to argue over how much cyanide they can put in our coffee, how much poison they can put out before they have to take responsibility for it. That's not a system we can ever win in.
-- Larry Wilson, Yellow Creek, Kentucky community leader

posted by Lorenzo 2:59 PM

 

Earth Day Deadline for US-based Mega-banks
San Francisco - Rainforest Action Network today sent letters to "The Liquidators," ten of the most environmentally destructive US-based banks, issuing an Earth Day deadline to meet or beat new industry best practices set by Citigroup's recently announced environmental initiatives. The letter follows the release of a secret Pentagon report confirming that catastrophic climate change is a greater national security threat than terrorism and a World Bank report recommending it phase out funding for fossil fuel projects by 2008. Both reports agree: "global warming requires immediate action." . . . "The jury is no longer out on the effects of global warming and deforestation," said Michael Brune, executive director of Rainforest Action Network. "The Earth's ancient forests and their indigenous communities are victims of the vicious cycle of devastation caused by global dependence on fossil fuels. Destroying pristine old-growth forests for a few weeks supply of dirty energy is a barbaric practice and a key catalyst in the rapid destabilization of our global climate. The time has come to redefine capital and redirect its flow away from environmentally fatal projects. The era of investments that reap short-term profits while bankrupting our environment is over." . . . "Mega-banks should be environmental leaders, not laggards," . . . When two of the world's most recalcitrant institutions, the Pentagon and the World Bank, recommend immediate action to protect the global environment, leading financial institutions like these have no excuse for further delays.

posted by Lorenzo 4:47 PM

 

One in eight of the world's bird species face extinction
(Discovery Channel, March 8, 2004)
One in eight of the world's birds faces extinction, fuelled by unchecked agricultural expansion and unsustainable forestry, especially in the tropics, according to a new report by Birdlife International. . . . "The State of the World's Birds 2004" said the alarming statistics showed that "our global environment is under serious strain with a massive and still increasing haemorrhage of biodiversity." . . . It said one in eight of the world's birds — or 1,211 species — face extinction. Of these, 179 species are critically endangered, 344 face very high risk of extinction and 688 are listed as vulnerable. . . . The report said threatened species were not evenly distributed among bird families, with particularly high proportions among species of albatrosses (95 percent), cranes (60 percent), parrots (29 percent), pheasants (26 percent) and pigeons (23 percent). . . . It said 966 species of globally threatened birds had populations of less than 10,000, while 502 species had populations less than 2,500. About 77 species had populations lower than 50. . . . The study said nearly all the world's countries and territories hosted one or more globally threatened bird species. . . But it said some regions held particularly high densities of threatened species such as the tropical Andes, Atlantic forests of Brazil, the eastern Himalayas, eastern Madagascar and the archipelagos of south-eastern Asia. . . . The report said uncontrolled farming had played havoc with biodiversity and could ring the death knell for many bird species. . . . "Brazil alone has over 20,000 square kilometers (8,000 square miles) of coffee plantation, most of it having replaced primary rainforest. In Indonesia, coffee planting is responsible for massive forest loss, even in protected areas." . . . Of the 7,500 sites in nearly 170 countries identified as important bird areas, Africa fared badly. . . . Birdlife said habitat clearance for agriculture threatened more than 50 percent of the important bird areas in the world, with shifting agriculture adding pressure. . . . Europe also fared badly on this count, with the report blaming agricultural expansion for threatening 32 percent of the estimated 4,000-odd important bird areas there. . . . Other factors exacerbating the problem were pollution, forest fires, climate change and trading in birds, Birdlife said.

posted by Lorenzo 2:47 PM

 

Melting Arctic sea ice might trigger colder weather in Europe and North America
(NASA, March 5, 2004)
Global warming could plunge North America and Western Europe into a deep freeze, possibly within only a few decades. . . . That's the paradoxical scenario gaining credibility among many climate scientists. The thawing of sea ice covering the Arctic could disturb or even halt large currents in the Atlantic Ocean. Without the vast heat that these ocean currents deliver--comparable to the power generation of a million nuclear power plants--Europe's average temperature would likely drop 5 to 10°C (9 to 18°F) . . . Some scientists believe this shift in ocean currents could come surprisingly soon--within as little as 20 years, according to Robert Gagosian, president and director of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. . . . the Pentagon is taking notice. Andrew Marshall, a veteran Defense Department planner, recently released an unclassified report detailing how a shift in ocean currents in the near future could compromise national security. . . . "It's difficult to predict what will happen," cautions Donald Cavalieri, a senior scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, "because the Arctic and North Atlantic are very complex systems with many interactions between the land, the sea, and the atmosphere. But the facts do suggest that the changes we're seeing in the Arctic could potentially affect currents that warm Western Europe, and that's gotten a lot of people concerned." . . . The view from orbit clearly shows a long-term decline in the "perennial" Arctic sea ice (the part that remains frozen during the warm summer months). According to a 2002 paper by Josefino Comiso, a climate scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, this year-round ice has been retreating since the beginning of the satellite record in 1978 at an average rate of 9% per decade. Studies looking at more recent data peg the rate at 14% per decade, suggesting that the decline of Arctic sea ice is accelerating. . . . Some scientists worry that melting Arctic sea ice will dump enough freshwater into the North Atlantic to interfere with sea currents. Some freshwater would come from the ice-melt itself, but the main contributor would be increased rain and snow in the region. Retreating ice cover exposes more of the ocean surface, allowing more moisture to evaporate into the atmosphere and leading to more precipitation. . . . Once considered incredible, the notion that climate can change rapidly is becoming respectable. In a 2003 report, Robert Gagosian cites "rapidly advancing evidence [from, e.g., tree rings and ice cores] that Earth's climate has shifted abruptly and dramatically in the past." For example, as the world warmed at the end of the last ice age about 13,000 years ago, melting ice sheets appear to have triggered a sudden halt in the Conveyor, throwing the world back into a 1,300 year period of ice-age-like conditions called the "Younger Dryas." . . . Much depends on how fast the warming of the Arctic occurs, according to computer simulations by Thomas F. Stocker and Andreas Schmittner of the University of Bern. In their models, a faster warming could shut down the major Atlantic current completely, while a slower warming might only slow the current for a few centuries. . . . we don't know how much of that warming is a natural climate fluctuation and what portion is due to manmade greenhouse gases." . . . If the Great Conveyor Belt suddenly stops, the cause might not matter. Europeans will have other things on their minds--like how to grow crops in snow. Now is the time to find out, while it's merely a chilling possibility.

posted by Lorenzo 2:11 PM

 

The 'Green' Way to Fight the Loss of U.S. Jobs
(Neal Peirce, Seattle Times, March 2, 2004)
This election season should elevate us past defensiveness to a grand debate on how the United States anticipates the inevitable decline of fossil fuels, pushes an imaginative array of sustainable-development technologies, and uses the process to generate millions of new jobs for Americans. . . . Indeed, while official Washington ponders still more subsidies for oil, gas and coal interests, several states are edging into leadership positions in advancing wind turbines, solar panels, hydrogen fuel cells, "green" buildings, and more. . . . In California, even as the regular state budget teeters on the edge pending a bond referendum March 2, state Treasurer Phil Angelides has launched a "Green Wave" agenda to mobilize the immense investments powers of the two multibillion-dollar state pension funds — CalPERS and CalSTRS. More than $500 million in pension investments will go to private firms developing "clean" technologies that create jobs and economic growth in the state. Another combined $1 billion in the funds will be invested in stock portfolios of environmentally screened funds — funds, as Angelides notes, that are now tending to outperform regular market funds. . . . And finally, CalPERS and CalSTRS will audit their $16 billion worth of real-estate investments to maximize opportunities "to use clean energy, energy efficiency and green building standards." . . . Kerry and Edwards both endorsed the Apollo Project plan aimed at U.S. energy independence when it was announced in January. Kerry underscored the long-term national-security implications: "Renewable energy sources are important because they are entirely under our control. No foreign government can embargo them. No terrorist can seize control of them. No cartel can play games with them. No American soldier will have to risk his or her life to protect them." . . What Kerry could have said, but didn't, is that most of the jobs produced by a sustainable-energy economy won't be exportable. . . . Suddenly, we have this dramatic convergence of 21st-century energy needs, national-security priorities, sustaining communities and our crying need to create solid, family-wage jobs that won't easily vault overseas. . . . It's an equation for fresh hope — a quality too often missing in these years of terror frights and dismal deficits. The presidential campaign provides an ideal opportunity to expose the challenging new ideas and possibilities to the American people.

posted by Lorenzo 2:23 PM