World-News

https://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080423/sc_afp/unenvironmentclimatehealth


Informant: Paul Doyon

https://www.demokratie-spiegel.de/deutschland/informativ/wirerlebenmassenaussterbenachimsteiner.html


Informant: Dorothee Krien

Alert participation is down. When we as global citizens work together we frequently achieve conservation victories. Is the Patagonian wilderness worth a few moments of your time? Please respond to these alerts.

g.b.


ACTION ALERT
PLEASE PARTICIPATE AND FORWARD WIDELY!

For Earth Day, Protest Home Depot's Complicity in Destruction of Patagonian Wilderness by Proposed Chilean Dams

By Forests.org, project of Ecological Internet https://forests.org/ April 21, 2008

TAKE ACTION Patagonia's wild rivers to be dammed, destroying ancient temperate forests, for 50 years of electricity; please let supposedly environmentally responsible Home Depot know they should not be doing business with the project's primary Chilean advocate.

https://forests.org/alerts/send.asp?id=chile_patagonia_dam

One of Chile's last true pristine and intact wildernesses is to be dammed and logged to provide hydroelectricity. The dams -- two on the Baker River and three on the Pascua River -- would irretrievably damage Patagonia, one of the Earth's wildest and most beautiful places. The HidroAysén project will flood river valleys containing several thousand hectares of ancient primary forests. The project's transmission line would require extensive clearcutting of additional pristine Chilean native forests, clearing more than a 1,500-mile swath that will impact fourteen national parks and wilderness reserves.

Shockingly, the main Chilean project proponent -- the Matte Group -- does extensive business with U.S. mega-corp Home Depot, broadly perceived as being "green". In consultation with International Rivers, Ecological Internet is working to get the Matte Group to withdraw from the project by highlighting their business interests with Home Depot. Please challenge Home Depot to live up to their green image on Earth Day 2008, and refuse to participate in the greenwashing of Patagonian wild river and ancient forest destruction. Insist Home Depot cease doing business with Matte until they withdraw from HidroAysén.

TAKE ACTION NOW: https://forests.org/alerts/send.asp?id=chile_patagonia_dam

DISCUSS ALERT: https://forests.org/blog/2008/04/alert-on-earth-day-protest-hom.asp



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EARTH MEANDERS

The converging mortgage, financial, food, fuel and climate crises are all symptoms of a massive global ecological bubble

Earth Meanders by Dr. Glen Barry, glenbarry@earthmeanders.com https://earthmeanders.blogspot.com/

April 11, 2008

Ecological overshoot whereby humanity exceeds the Earth's carrying capacity is the mother of all "bubbles". Within the current sub-prime mortgage and financial bubbles, and food and energy price increases, we are witnessing the logical and inevitable economic consequences of over-population, resource scarcity, inequitable and unreasonable consumption, and unsustainable economic growth. Growth and livelihoods based upon unreasonable presumptions of continued resource outputs from dwindling ecosystems is a dangerous, unprecedented "ecological bubble" that threatens civilization and mass apocalyptic death.

The global growth machine is seizing up because it is hitting ecological limits, and as a result of its own greed. Clearly the addition of a billion more people every decade and a half, physical limits upon arable land and fossil fuels -- as well as exceeding the atmosphere's waste absorption capacity and minimum amount of intact terrestrial ecosystems necessary to power the biosphere -- are together severely negatively impacting economies and individual's well-being.

The economic slowdown is painful for many families. I personally share economic anxieties associated with the mortgage bubble popping. We are all finding it harder to pay the mortgage, buy food and fuel, and enjoy some special luxuries. Yet all bubbles burst -- be they historically for tulips in Holland or property in Japan -- and you deal with the underlying causes or you suffer further. I believe strongly that there should be no bailout of high flying bankers, home flippers, or people that took out mortgages they cannot afford. Wall Street fat cats that created the mortgage backed security Ponzi scheme should go to jail.

Endless Growth Impossible in a Finite World

Yet this economic cooling may also offer a welcome respite to reconsider the growth at any cost madness devouring the Earth’s life giving ecosystems, and which threatens to impoverish and kill many or all of us. It is essential that we look at the far deeper ecological roots to this economic crisis, and their foretelling of related environmental bubbles. The ongoing biofuel scam, using first food and soon trees as fuel to supposedly avert climate change, shows the potential for ill-conceived climate change responses to increase land pressures, food prices and negatively impact economies. These sorts of macro ecological/economic connections are examined further here.

Humans seem to always want more, even when there is none, or achieving it diminishes the future. A colleague recently pointed out to me that there may be a genetic component, expressed sub-consciously, to humanity's expansionist bent that constantly seeks more, bigger and better human works. And that there are societal memes that foster and promote this myth that endless growth and expansion in population, consumption and resource use at the expense of ecological habitats is possible. For a few hundred years the western economic model of markets and growth that builds upon these human proclivities has created wealth while wreaking havoc upon peoples, societies and ecosystems.

Growth in economies, human populations and resources accessed by destroying ecosystems is a disease upon the living Earth. The malignant growth machine turns ecosystems into resources and then into financial investment papers and consumption. A year later the consumer products are in the landfill, the paper wealth may be further over-priced or just scrap paper, and there are both fewer resources and ecosystems -- but always more people. The ability to live well based upon long- term steady-state interdependence with intact, healthy ecosystems and their natural capital is lost forever.

The Mortgage Bubble: Destroying Our Habitat to Build Homes

The mortgage bubble is a case is point. In America and many other over-developed countries the size of new homes grew and amenities seemed to know few limits. Each had to have restaurant quality kitchens, hardwood floors, multi-car garages, track lighting, and other seemingly endless conspicuous consumption to denote social class. Each represents the unsustainable consumption of resources from ecosystems, and requires continued intensive inputs to maintain. Most such development requires extensive automobile travel, sprawl into native ecosystems, and energy that will not be there in the future.

These extravagant McMansions are the epitome of everything wrong with "modern" society, industrial capitalism, and demonstrates our detachment from Earth, whose habitats are our true home. This more at any expense economy that knows no limits and has no concept of enough is responsible for our current economic downturn and is literally killing our future economic and ecological prospects. Can those that believe in markets and capitalism not entertain any limits upon the size and resource use intensity of our homes? Does anyone see the connection between more people using more resources to build large homes, leading to less farmland and overuse of limited energy, resulting in food and energy price hikes?

In the mortgage bubble, we are seeing the first signs of many wholly ecological bubbles to come. The world is not only at peak oil, but well past peak water, land, climate, oceans, food and energy in general. Rising food prices are the front edge of the food bubble -- a result of over-population, climate change, water shortages and land scarcity. The climate bubble has already begun to burst –- it is too late to return to the relatively stable set of climate patterns with which we evolved -- but failure to stabilize emissions as early as possible will bring far worse. And perhaps most ominously, and by extension of the food and climate bubbles, we are facing a deadly water bubble that is already disrupting societies and may prove insurmountable.

Ecological Bubbles and a New Global Dream These ecological bubbles are partly responsible for the current economic downturn, and unless addressed now, they are certainly going to soon fully burst with calamitous impacts in their own right upon societal and individual well-being. The American dream which has been embraced by the world -- based upon a sub-conscious urge to expand our dominance over nature and always, forever have more of everything, with constant societal pressure to do so -- will have to give way to a more organic, ecologically-cognizant reality of living simply but well within ecological limits. Sadly for many, but a blessing for the Earth System and the not super rich, the whole world cannot live an over-consumptive super-sized lifestyle without destroying being.

It is time for a new global dream. The new dream would include aspiring that all have their basic needs met, even as individuals are free to pursue their passions and fortunes, as long as they do not undermine common ecological systems. Such a dream seeks to avert apocalyptic ecological and societal collapse through promotion of a sense of personal enoughness, voluntary simplicity and a whole range of necessary fundamental changes in society such as ending the use of coal and logging of ancient forests.

One thing is clear -- more unbridled growth based upon unsustainable resource use will not solve the global ecological problems associated with unbridled growth and unsustainable resource use. The human enterprise and each global citizen's consumption aspirations must be downsized to a scale appropriate to ecosystem limits. Or the Earth herself -- as it turns out, with the assistance of the human created economic system -- will do so brutally.

The industrial resource and illusory financial binge must end if we are to reverse the destruction, and begin the restoration, of the biosphere, its component ecosystems, and their ability to provide natural capital upon which to base a steady-state economy. It is time to get back to making honest, good livings from actually making or doing something of societal value, by making a living with the land and Earth, and that does not depend upon liquidating ecological being and financial speculation.

As the economic bubble deflates we might as well get on with finding a way to live simply, sustainably, equitably and justly with the Earth and each other. Because when the water, food and climate bubbles fully burst -- we are going to need each other, and to be ready.

Dr. Barry is founder and President of Ecological Internet; provider of the largest, most used environmental portals on the Internet including the Climate Ark at https://www.climateark.org/ and https://www.EcoEarth.Info/ . Earth Meanders is a series of ecological essays that are written entirely in his personal capacity. This essay may be reprinted granted it is properly credited to Dr. Barry and with a link to Earth Meanders. Emailed responses are public record and will be posted on the web site unless otherwise requested.

 

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Kaum ist der Agrosprit als Biomärchen enttarnt, schreien die Betreiber der agroindustriellen Anlagen nach Bestandsschutz und Erhaltungssubventionen. Nachdem die extrem negativen Auswirkungen industrieller Agrosprit-Produktion offenkundig sind, diskutiert die Politik wie der Irrweg korrigiert werden könnte. Derweil brennen die Regenwälder und Moore Asiens und Südamerikas weiter für den "Biosprit". Wir haben das Thema Agrokraftstoffe auf unserer Homepage aus verschiedenen Blickwinkeln beleuchtet: www.umweltinstitut.org/agrosprit

 

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Sustaining biodiversity, climate, and the biosphere requires protest to achieve sufficient policies based upon ecological science; and all of us including the environment movement taking risks while committing to massive social change

Earth Meanders by Dr. Glen Barry, glenbarry@earthmeanders.com https://earthmeanders.blogspot.com/ March 30, 2008

As the fourth anniversary of my Earth Meanders personal ecological essays approaches, I thought it appropriate to meander on the past and future challenges of their writing. Given the demands of 80 hour weeks required by my day job running Ecological Internet (EI), the leading provider of environmental portals, I much desired an opportunity to more broadly express my ecological insight. Thus Earth Meanders was born with the mandate of "placing environmental sustainability within the context of other contemporary issues".

After 20 years of focusing tightly upon studying and working to protect forests, and climate for the last ten years, writing these essays and expressing more widely a biocentric vision has helped me tremendously. I do this out of love for the Earth and to help myself deal with the personal pain of knowing the violence being done to her. However, I do realize there has been some confusion regarding my dual roles within EI and these writings. They are completely separate, and to make this clearer you will see that future Earth Meanders will be coming from glenbarry@earthmeanders.com .

Earth Meanders is my attempt to understand and communicate how ecology pervades every aspect of life. This ongoing dialogue regarding ecological sustainability and related issues is not meant to be strategic, or part of a campaign. The only criterion determining whether I like a piece and will send it out is if I believe it to be truthful, and it says what I meant to say. This essay is even more bloated and self- indulgent than usual, but I find it necessary to respond at length to what I consider unfair criticisms and further explain what I do and why.

Far too little effort has been made to truthfully determine global ecological policy required to sustain humanity and the Earth. A strong disservice is done to the Earth's prospects by those who generally know the scope and seriousness of the global ecological crises but continue living and working as if token change is enough. My personal approach as an essayist, and professional methods as an activist -- both based upon biocentric ecological truth seeking and protest action -- are frequently criticized, even by my closest colleagues.

Let me give a few examples, not to chastise, but to illustrate some important points. A dear advisor and financial supporter recently castigated me in regard to my cellulosic biofuels essay, letting me know "nothing that you write will have any significant impact", urging me to accept them as inevitable rather than tipping at windmills. A longtime colleague of EI recently suggested we should not protest Brazil's soy policy because it was undiplomatic and could cause outrage. As I went ahead, this individual reneged on pledged financial support.

And there is the long-standing six-year effort to get former colleague Rainforest Action Network out of the business of supporting ancient forest logging. RAN refuses to answer the simple question "how does FSC certified logging of primary and old-growth forests protect endangered forests". These sincere, truthful efforts have been met with stonewalling and increasingly personal attacks suggesting I just seek attention, like causing problems, and dismissal of EI's campaign to end ancient forest logging as "flame bait". If all I wanted was attention I would go and hang off a building as RAN does!

In each case criticism from respected associates that I depend upon for my livelihood has strongly stung. I am deeply reflective, and this leads me to consider whether changing my approach would be a good idea. Ecological Internet continues to struggle financially. Is this because of these controversial personal writings and EI protests, and should I sell out and stop strongly identifying and advocating ecological truth in order to better fit in while paying my modest mortgage?

Certainly if I stopped writing these essays and removed controversial content from EI's portals, while toning down our campaigns, it would result in more mainstream, broad-based support including more funding. But would the Earth's interests and truth in general be best served? Though modest in resources (though perhaps not in personality) I have built one of the world's only ecological truth-telling truly global networks committed to sufficient policies to achieve global ecological sustainability. Should this be traded away for social acceptability, some coins, and a return personally to IT/ecological consulting to make a living?

In response to each expression of concern, I have replied that truth matters, that a central truth is that ecosystems are required for life and are failing, and that discussion of uncomfortable yet sufficient alternative ecological views is a good thing. These three instances are but tiny examples of the timidity and cautiousness of the environmental movement.

I am constantly amazed at the lack of fight. If any other issue threatened to kill billions, and even perhaps end human civilization, there would be outrage and urgent mobilization to action. Alas, it is easier to raise armies than achieve necessary widespread personal and societal sacrifice. When asked to give up material comforts to save their species and habitat, even the greenest would rather seek reform than revolt.

If the Earth is to have a future, it is critical that little in regards to human consumption patterns remains sacrosanct. If we cannot fuel personal automobiles, power our electronics and use large timbers in construction without destroying global ecosystems; then autos, coal and ancient forest logging have to go. The status quo is irredeemable and will change either through lack of effort, continued destruction and eventual collapse; or through personal and societal revolutionary change based upon ecological truth.

Humans are animals. Fundamentally our habitat requirements are met by the variety of life and their cumulative outputs and interactions; that is, biodiversity creates ecosystems we need to live. There is virtually no chance that humanity can engineer these ecological processes and patterns. All aspects of human endeavors – economic, cultural, social, artistic and political – are subsets of the global ecological system. No ecology, no economy.

Economic, justice, security and other political concerns are very important. Yet none rise to the level of biodiversity loss, ecosystem failure, global heating and the biosphere's pending collapse. If the global ecological system fails, being ends, and all these other matters mean nothing. There are many fancy and increasingly complex policies proposed to protect the Earth's climate and biodiversity. These range from carbon markets, to biofuels, to payments for avoided deforestation -- all meant to extend growth of the human enterprise.

Yet in reality, limits to such growth have already been exceeded, and the solutions are simple -- ending the burning of fossil fuels, and any diminishment of rainforest and other natural habitats. And we must be willing to pay the price of forgone development including meeting needs of those economically dependent upon these antiquated activities.

If humanity really decides saving the Earth’s diversity of life and relatively stable climatic patterns is worthwhile, we would swing into action with a sense of urgency to support this environmental sufficiency agenda at all costs. Ecologically enlightened global citizens will protest across borders judging rightly that their survival depends upon success. Europeans and Americans will protest Amazonian rainforest loss; even as Bolivian victims of climate change induced floods protest their wasteful use of energy.

Saving the Earth and all her species including humans depends critically upon creating a movement of global citizens interested in truthfully identifying what is required to maintain the Earth, and then taking sufficient action (whatever the odds) to achieve that which must be done. This effort must not be bound by social convention, political boundaries, or the interests of environmental funders and gatekeepers of permissible thought.

I believe strongly it is less risky for the Earth and the survival of all her creatures to perhaps fall short of what is truly necessary to achieve ecological sustainability, while just maybe wholly succeeding; than to achieve in their entirety policies that are inadequate and can only inevitably lead to ecocide. For as long as we can possibly hold out, you can count upon Ecological Internet to help facilitate required global protests, and for me to write freely and truthfully here about sufficient measures to achieve global, just and equitable ecological sustainability. It is what I do.


Dr. Barry is founder and President of Ecological Internet; provider of the largest, most used environmental portals on the Internet including the Climate Ark at https://www.climateark.org/ and https://www.EcoEarth.Info/ . Earth Meanders is a series of ecological essays that are written entirely in his personal capacity. This essay may be reprinted granted it is properly credited to Dr. Barry and with a link to Earth Meanders. Emailed responses are public record and will be posted on the web site unless otherwise requested.



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