Environment

An overwhelming majority of governments, including Norway, Sweden, Germany and Indonesia expressed serious concerns about the risks of large-scale production of biofuels to forests, ecosystems, indigenous peoples and local communities at a meeting of the Subsidiary Body on Scientific, Technical and Technological Advice (SBSTTA) in Paris in early July [1]. 

Vandana Shiva is a well known voice in the current struggles against globalization, genetic engineering, biopiracy and much more. In this online video, Shiva talks about feminism, why we need more trees and how to build a better world.

What does a poor government do when it finds an oil treasure in a protected natural park? Does it choose profit, and therefore the pollution and the cultural extinction of indigenous people that goes with it, or does it leave the oil in the ground and wave goodbye to millions of dollars that could be spent fighting poverty?  

On the 23 of June, I had the opportunity to attend the Friends of Trees Conference in Barcelona. It has taken me a few weeks to digest all the information, which I, together with about 900 other people managed to inhale: the fumes of change, the organic revolution, the climate crisis, the need for solidarity and action. It was a most overwhelming task and Al Gore's redundant joke of, "I used to be the next president of the United States," has hardly helped ease the intensity of the situation. 

In early February 2007 the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released its strongest statement yet on global warming. According to a 20-page summary of the report, the warming of the Earth will continue for centuries, even if greenhouse gas concentrations are stabilized.

Rural eastern Paraguay used to be full of jungle, small farms, schools and wildlife. Now it is a green sea of soybeans. The families, trees and birds are gone. The schools are empty. The air is filled with the toxic stench of the pesticides like paraquat and 2,4-D used to protect the soy crops.