HIMEOBS: Harbinger of the Police State?

I was intrigued by all the recent posts about “HIMEOBS” and started asking the Googles what it’s all about. I didn’t find anything useful except a few urban legends, but when I came home from work, there was a crater where my house used to be. Pinned to the charred wreckage that used to be the post for my mailbox, I found the the attached note.

Can somebody help me? I think I’m in over my head!

Are they AFTER ME?

The Climate-Cost of Coffee

If you’re like me, you need a cup (or two) of coffee before the engines fire up in the morning. And, if you’re like me you’re always amazed at how empty your pockets are after a week of buying the coffee. But have you ever thought about the actual cost of that cup?

Coffee is the world’s second most traded commodity after petroleum. Among the problems associated with coffee production are: land use for production, deforestation to gain additional land, and mistreatment of coffee plantation workers. Not to mention transporting it from the tropical regions it grows in to North America where nearly half of it is consumed, and serving it in disposable cups.

Traditionally, coffee plants were grown under the protection of the rainforest canopy, but in the last half century, a variety of coffee plant yielding 3 times the product but requiring sun has become dominant, in some countries making up 70% of production.

The simple switch to this variety has meant that where coffee production and rainforest biodiversity used to go hand in hand, they’re now at odds. And odds are, the $10 Billion dollar crop will win.

With deforestation in the tropics comes soil erosion, and with erosion come contaminated rivers and streams. What’s more, monoculture practices promote the spread of diseases and pests, whose movement from one coffee plant to the next used to be blocked by the now missing trees. The result is widespread pesticide application and, ironically, a need for new varieties bred or genetically modified to resist the diseases that they would not have succumbed to had the previous “new variety” not been introduced.

The tally so far? My morning coffee has cost millions of hectares of our planet’s most effective natural carbon sink, the introduction of nasty chemicals to biologically sensitive areas and 25 Million workers, and a loss in biodiversity estimated s high as 90% of species. And I haven’t even started on the human rights issues.

By now, thanks in part to efforts by celebrities like Cold Play, most of us are at least aware of the issue of Fair Trade, even if we don’t actively seek Fair Trade goods. In a nutshell, Fair Trade organizations strive to ensure that workers’ basic human rights are maintained; that they’re paid enough to develop some self-sufficiency, and that their cultivation practices are relatively safe and sustainable. Here in the west, being guaranteed minimum wage seems like a given, but for coffee farmers, that’s not at all the case. The assurances provided by Fair Trade make an enormous difference to the coffee farmers’ well-being.

That said, Fair Trade certification does not guarantee that the coffee is shade grown. For a true sustainability assurance, consumers need to seek Rainforest Alliance-certified (RAC) coffee. So far, that’s not an easy task, with RAC making up less than 5% of world coffee to date. But a new $94 million UN-sponsored project seeks to more than double the market share of sustainable coffee by 2013. And it looks set to meet its target with companies like (I hate to say it) McDonald’s stepping up, and committing to switch all of its UK and Ireland locations to RAC coffee. So what then IS the cost of your coffee? Well, no one really knows: no one that will admit the number publicly, at least. What I can tell you is that in 2003, Starbucks commissioned CH2M Hill to audit their carbon emissions from shipping of the product and facility management, but ignoring those from the production of the coffee (ie deforestation) because, apparently, they have no control over those operations. The result? 376 000 tons.

Final Tally: A venti dark roast costs about $2.50, 0.5lbs CO2, and 45 square feet of rainforest.

World leaders at climate summit

World leaders at climate summit Leaders of 80 countries are expected to attend a special UN meeting in New York to discuss the effects of global warming and the ways to combat it.

The meeting comes just days after scientists reported that more Arctic ice melted this year than ever before.

The UN climate chief says a breakthrough is essential.

US President George W Bush will not be present, hosting instead a meeting of 16 “major emitter” countries in Washington on Thursday and Friday.

However, the attendance of 150 countries and 80 heads of state makes Monday’s meeting the most high-level UN gathering on climate change.

Political impetus

UN climate chief, Yvo de Boer, said: “I expect the meeting on Monday to express a sense of urgency in terms of negotiating progress that needs to be made.” Arnold Schwarzenegger, California governor

California is moving the United States beyond debate and doubt to action

The BBC’s environment reporter, Matt McGrath, says this meeting will not solve the problems of climate change but UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon hopes it will give impetus to negotiations on global warming that are due to take place in Bali, Indonesia, in December.

Mr Ban said: “Bali must advance a negotiating agenda to combat climate change on all fronts, including adaptation, mitigation, clean technologies, deforestation and resource mobilisation.”

The secretary general will deliver the keynote address at Monday’s summit, entitled “The Future in Our Hands: Addressing the Leadership Challenge of Climate Change.”

Our correspondent says the large turnout of heads of government, plus California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and former US Vice President Al Gore, is likely to encourage the UN that politicians are ready to commit to long-term, legally binding reductions on emissions of greenhouse gases.

Governor Schwarzenegger said ahead of the meeting: “California is moving the United States beyond debate and doubt to action.”

Mr Bush, who does not support binding emission targets, will not take part in the formal discussions but will be joining Mr Ban and other key leaders for dinner.

Going Solar

Check Out LiveEarth.org! We’ve relaunched our home page! Your Green Tips and Live Earth Inspirations (like Steve’s below) are still being featured daily in our “Inspired By” section, so keep ‘em coming. You can also leave your comments for each other on each post. Also just launched is a new section called “What’s Greener?” where we’ll be posting a question like “Paper Or Plastic?” at the beginning of each week. We’ll leave it to you to tell us your opinions, then at the end of the week, our Green Team will review all of your comments, combined with their expertise, and post the answer. Be sure to visit LiveEarth.org this coming Monday to check it out! We’re also posting new Climate Crisis Solutions, as well as current NGO events and more, so be sure and check back often!

Inspired By Live Earth: Going Solar Steve from Michigan sent in his climate crisis belief that the owner of every house and commercial building should take the responsibility of installing some type of alternative energy system to heat or cool or electrify the structure. Especially for the balance of 2007 while the federal government is offering a 30% tax credit with no cap for commercial and a $2000 cap on residential. Read more of Steve’s suggestions, and check out some resources from our Green Team right here.

Climate Crisis Solution #25: Green Your Cube! Turn off your PC! Host a teleconference! Bring a mug to work! Go paperless! Find out more in Climate Crisis Solution #25 at www.liveearth.org.

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Saving Whales

The Navy’s sonic assault on whales should be stopped immediately. I’m asking for your help to make it happen.

Let me be clear: I have the deepest respect for the U.S. Navy. When I was growing up, my father was a doctor and commander in the Navy. His role in helping to establish a base at the South Pole in 1957, as part of the International Geophysical Year, had a lifelong impact on me.

We loved the Navy because it helped win World War II. But we also loved the Navy because it was a leader in the scientific study of the natural world.

That’s why I feel so strongly that today’s Navy should be using its vast resources to protect not just our nation but the health of our planet’s oceans as well.

And it’s why I am so distressed by the acoustic onslaught the Navy is now waging beneath our planet’s oceans—an onslaught known to kill whales with dangerous mid-frequency sound waves.

Mid-frequency sonar is designed to detect enemy submarines. The Navy’s warships deploy underwater speakers that blast the ocean with noise in excess of 235 decibels—a sonic barrage roughly comparable to a Saturn V rocket at blast-off.

That explosive level of noise can cause whales - who have an exquisite sense of hearing - to panic, surface too quickly, and hemorrhage internally. Many beached whales have been found bleeding around their brains and ears after their fatal encounters with military sonar.

Imagine a sound so disorienting or so painful that you jump out of the sea and die on the beach rather than be subjected to it for another minute! From a whale’s point of view, the Navy’s sonic assault must seem like torture.

But that torture isn’t just cruel, it’s unnecessary.

You see, the Navy could adopt simple safety measures when training with sonar that would prevent the needless infliction of pain and death on these magnificent animals. For example, the Navy could avoid marine habitats where whales are known to migrate, feed, and raise their young. These common-sense precautions would not compromise military readiness.

But the Navy refuses. So the maiming and killing of whales goes on.

This callousness toward nature - toward the ocean itself - does not reflect the Navy I grew up with. We deserve better. And, as Americans, it’s our right to demand better.

Our message is simple: Whales should not have to die for military practice.

Please join me and millions of other people in getting that message to the U.S. Navy and to Congress. Click here now and tell the Navy to do the right thing.

Then please help us build a nationwide outcry by forwarding this message to your friends and family members who would want to know about the Navy’s reckless assault on whales and other marine life.

Let’s not wait for hundreds, or even thousands, more whales to suffer and die. Please stand with me in demanding a more humane Navy right now.

Sincerely,

James Taylor NRDC Action Fund

Help stop clearcutting in the Alaskan rainforest

We need your urgent action to make sure that Congress stands firm against taxpayer subsidies for destroying America’s greatest temperate rainforest.

Please go to http://www.savebiogems.org/tongass/takeaction right now and tell your senators and representative to protect the Tongass, a thriving habitat for grizzly bears, salmon runs, bald eagles and the elusive Alexander Archipelago wolf.

Thanks to pressure from you and other online activists, the House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly in June to halt taxpayer subsidies for destructive new logging roads in Alaska’s Tongass National Forest.

But Alaska’s senior senator, Ted Stevens, is now working feverishly behind closed doors to make sure that this long-overdue legislation never sees the light of day. And he’s drafting his own, underhanded, amendment to restrict sharply the public’s ability to halt wasteful and devastating Tongass logging in court.

Over the last 25 years, more than 1 billion taxpayer dollars have been spent to clearcut and build roads through this irreplaceable BioGem.

NRDC activists like you have spoken out again and again against these wasteful handouts, which have enabled timber companies to expand their reach into the unspoiled heart of America’s rainforest.

Please go to http://www.savebiogems.org/tongass/takeaction and demand that House and Senate negotiators stand up to Senator Stevens and his destructive logging-road subsidies in the Tongass!

Thank you for helping to defend this priceless rainforest refuge for imperiled Alaskan wildlife.

Sincerely,

Frances Beinecke President Natural Resources Defense Council

Indonesia to Plant 79 Million Trees in One Day

JAKARTA – Indonesia, which has destroyed vast tracts of forest, will plant 79 million trees in a single day ahead of the U.N. climate change summit in Bali in December, an official said on Thursday.

The event, scheduled for November 28, is part of a global campaign to plant one billion trees launched at U.N. climate change talks in Nairobi last year, said Ahmad Fauzi Masud, spokesman for the forestry ministry.

“Everybody, residents and officials from the lowest unit of the government to the president, will take part in this movement,” he said. “It will be a national record and, possibly, a world record.”

Indonesia currently holds a far less flattering world record: according to Greenpeace, it had the fastest pace of deforestation in the world between 2000-2005, with an area of forest equivalent to 300 soccer pitches destroyed every hour.

Southeast Asia’s biggest economy is also among the world’s top three greenhouse gas emitters because of deforestation, peatland degradation, and forest fires, according to a recent report sponsored by the World Bank and Britain’s development arm.

Environmental groups are concerned that rapidly expanding palm oil plantations, partly driven by ambitious plans for biofuels, are damaging the country’s rainforests.

Participants from 189 countries are expected to gather in Bali in December to discuss a new deal to fight global warming. The existing pact, the Kyoto Protocol, runs out in 2012.

Under Kyoto, about 35 rich nations are obliged to cut emissions by 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2008-12.

Help Protect The World's Forests, Buy Virgin Paper

ALPHARETTA, GA. You can buy virgin paper and still support responsible forest management. That’s the takeaway from Neenah Paper’s latest environmental certification.

The company’s flagship STARWHITE Brand is now the first paper in North America to meet the requirements for labeling as FSC Pure. The FSC Pure label means the paper is made only with virgin fiber that comes from a forest certified by the Forest Stewardship Council.

STARWHITE, known for its “Whites for All Occasions,” is also now 100 percent Green-e certified and Carbon Neutral.

“Being green and buying virgin fiber aren’t mutually exclusive,” says Gabe Bolton, the U.S. Chain of Custody Coordinator for SmartWood, the certification arm of the Rainforest Alliance. “Virgin fiber is still a significant requirement. In fact, buying FSC Pure fiber can be a more environmentally friendly choice because you can’t always know where post-consumer waste has come from. However, with fiber labeled FSC Pure, you can be assured of where it comes from – an FSC-certified forest.”

Neenah is introducing an exciting addition to the brand, a “Soft Touch” finish that will be available in the Sirius and Natural colors on a 110 lb. basis weight Cover sheet. Joining the existing palette of four whites that includes Sirius (98+ brightness blue white), Tiara, Archiva and Natural, will be four pearlescent offerings: Stardust, Flash White, Flash Pearl and Flash Natural in both smooth and vellum.

“It wasn’t that long ago that people thought offering this kind of paper would be very difficult to achieve,” says Bolton. “The interest in FSC Pure papers is obviously growing. Neenah Paper has taken another commendable step forward in helping to protect the world’s forests.”

Why Virgin Fiber: Seeing the Forest for the Trees

Wood-based papers can only be recycled four times (1) before the fibers deteriorate, necessitating the use of virgin pulp.

According to Greg Maze, Senior Brand Manager for Neenah Paper, “We, as a country, recycle only about 51 percent of what we use. There is a shortage of paper that is recycled from post-consumer waste. That means we are ultimately dependent on the forests for paper. It takes approximately 480 trees to produce 40,000 pounds of virgin paper and those trees can filter 1.2 million pounds of carbon dioxide over their lifetime. Neenah views it as our responsibility to support efforts to ensure the replanting and reforesting of trees that are crucial to preventing climate change, combating air pollution and maintaining forest biodiversity, such as using FSC certified fiber.”

Through its certification process, FSC works to independently verify that forests are well managed. The process evaluates social, environmental and economic factors involved in forestry operations and tracks the fiber that results through all steps of production (the chain of custody) until they reach the end-user. This ensures that only fiber meeting the stringent standards of the FSC are used in producing end products that proudly carry the label FSC Certified.

Carbon Neutral

As a member of the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX), Neenah voluntarily committed to reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by six percent below its baseline by 2010. The CCX is the world’s first and North America’s only voluntary but legally binding greenhouse gas emissions reduction, registry and trading program.

Neenah is exceeding target reductions and is offsetting 100 percent of the emissions associated with the manufacturing of STARWHITE Papers, now a carbon neutral brand.

Green-e Certified

STARWHITE is also made entirely with renewable energy, which is an alternative to energy derived from fossil fuels such as wind, solar, low-impact hydro and biomass. Green-e is the nation’s leading independent certification and verification program for renewable energy products

Neenah Paper has committed to purchasing over 48 million kWh of Green-e certified renewable energy annually from the Wisconsin Energy Corporation subsidiary We Energies’ Energy for Tomorrow program. By supporting its local utility, Neenah Paper is directly offsetting the production of electricity from fossil fuels in Wisconsin, growing the utility’s renewable energy program, directly increasing demand for renewable energy resources and reducing local air pollution.

We Energies’ is one of only nine utility renewable energy programs certified as Green-e in the country. For the fifth straight year, it has been ranked among the nation’s top 10 green energy programs, according to the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory.

About Neenah Paper

Neenah Paper manufactures and distributes a wide range of premium and specialty paper grades, with leading positions in many of its markets and well-known brands such as CLASSIC, ENVIRONMENT, STARWHITE, NEENAH, ESSE and other fine brand names. Neenah Paper is a proud consumer of Green Energy and is a U.S. EPA Green Power Partner. Neenah also manufactures many brands carrying the Green-E, Green Seal and Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certifications. For more information, call 1-800-558-5061 and press “5” or visit the web site at www.neenahpaper.com.

About Neenah Green

Neenah Green is Neenah Paper’s initiative to alleviate climate change by using cutting-edge environmental technologies to reduce its carbon footprint and by providing customers with a variety of sustainable choices. A member of the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX) and the EPA Green Power Leadership Club, Neenah is forging new ground in the environmental arena. The environmental leader’s innovative approaches to sustainability include the use of Green Steam and Green-e certified renewable energy to power its mills and manufacture several of its paper brands. Through these efforts alone, Neenah has reduced natural gas consumption by 80 percent annually and has decreased carbon dioxide emissions by 150,000 metric tons, the equivalent of planting 250,000 tree seedlings. In addition to manufacturing a range of recycled offerings, Neenah also produces an FSC-Pure certified brand made from 100 percent FSC-certified virgin pulp. This brand, STARWHITE, has also achieved carbon neutral status. For more information about Neenah Green, call 1-800-558-5061 and press “5” or visit the web site at www.neenahpaper.com.

the 10 rarest animals in the world

This article caught my eye. it’s not as politically focused but it still applies.

Explore the Rainforests!

Wild and wondrous, rainforests extend from as far as Alaska and Canada to Latin America, Asia and Africa. They nurture thousands of plants and animals found nowhere else on Earth and provide life’s essentials such as our medicines, food and water.

The Nature Conservancy is working around the world to protect rainforests, engaging local and indigenous communities in creative solutions that balance the needs of people with nature.

The places and projects featured on this site reflect examples of The Nature Conservancy’s current work in rainforest protection. Contributions to the Rainforests Fund will support the Conservancy’s evolving strategic priorities for protecting the world’s rainforests.

Why should you care About the rainforest? Besides providing food, water and air to the rest of the world, rainforests offer critical habitat for many of the Earth’s most interesting and rare plants and animals. Read on for more rainforest facts:

- Temperate and tropical rainforests help regulate the Earth’s temperature and weather patterns; - Rainforests provide jobs to surrounding communities; - Rainforests contain many of the essential plants used in the treatment of cancer; and - Fifty percent of the world’s plants and animals can be found in the rainforest.

Do you know where you get your wood?

Sorry if that title sounds a little dirty but it’s a dirty problem that needs your attention. I’m talking about Illegally Harvested Timber. I’m sure most people just assume that the wood in our desk, chairs, tables, houses etc. are from some forest up in Canada, and, like fools, those Canadians are shipping it off and for pennies and buying back finished goods for hundreds of dollars. While that is true there is a growing concern about wood that isn’t being “forested” properly or legally.

Why is this an issue? Wood is wood, trees are trees and they can grow back right. Well yes and no. · They won’t grow back unless they are being replanted. Illegally harvested timber is not being replanted. So then maybe you thing, who cares it just wood, if people are dumb enough to devastate a forest and ruin their lively hood, its there own fault and their own problem. · Wrong again. A lot of the timber that is being cut illegally is coming from areas that have many endangers wildlife species. Need an example? Sure: Ramin forests, Ramin is a hardwood that grows Indonesian. This forest is one of the last natural habits for the endangered orangutan.

Now I’m not saying stop using wood that would be a little too much of a stretch. Luckily for us wood is a resources that can be replenished and used in a sustainable manner if the right steps are taken.

I encourage you to read more about this subject and ways that you can help avoid purchasing illegally harvested timber and slow this black market trade by checking out the following articles.

Global Timber Smugglers—and How You Can Stop Them How Technology and Purchasing Power Can Slow Timber Smuggling Forest Certification Resource Center

We are burning here.

10/22/2007 8:08:03 PM Chatsworth, California, USA

Outside the wind is blowing in 70 mph gusts. The relative humidity is 3%. And the entire world seems to be on fire. Within a 200 mile radius more than a quarter of a million people have been evacuated. Yesterday I was rushed to the hospital by ambulance after being beaten and kicked by my housemate’s boyfriend.

What do these seemingly disconnected events have in common? They are all the result of human violence.

In the past thirty years the population of Southern California has grown to more than 21 million. In Los Angeles County this has meant that more than 2500 persons live, on average, within each square mile of the county. This population density is a form of violence. Global climate change is a form of violence. Human aggression is a form of violence. I feel today that I am in the vortex of violence.

As the Southern California expansion of housing and population has extended itself further and further into vast areas of wilderness, development of McMansions and other forms of excessive housing appropriations have displaced the natural habitats of innumerable species. The hubris of wealth and development has ignored the dangers that occur when the natural phenomenon of Santa Ana wildfires comes to purge and reclaim the soil of this region.

Additionally, due to global climate change, this region had the driest winter in all of recorded history last year. Today, temperatures are 10-20 degrees above normal, wind speeds are twice that of a normal Santa Ana condition, the relative humidity is the lowest ever recorded. These conditions have persisted for the past three days and they are expected to continue for at least three more. Add to all this the hundreds of thousands of manmade dry wood structures and you get what the BBC World News tonight called “the perfect storm”.

My housemate transports horses in her trailer for a living and for the last 72 hours she has been pressed into the duty of helping to rescue the thousands of equine beings who have been unwittingly placed in harms way by their human masters. Except for an interview on the local news. I haven’t seen her in three days. Her boyfriend, on the other hand, showed up yesterday and beat me so badly that I had to taken to the hospital. I had locked the front door while taking a nap and he, not being a resident here, didn’t have a key. I made the mistake of letting him in.

There is no pride being a male victim of domestic violence. The police have no sympathy and therefore discharge their duties with only a slight modicum of competence. The officer who came to the hospital was untrained in the very basics of criminal law.

I have no doubt that this senseless act was the product of the stress and extremity of the fires. But as women have known since the dawn of time, the perpetration of physical rage on persons of weaker physical stature is a never ending source of fear and brutality.

We can not live in a world tolerant of violence, whether it is violence against a person, a habitat, or an entire planet. Yesterday I won the triple crown of all three. I feel powerless against the wind, the flame, and the fist. I am tired and my head hurts.

What are Biofuels all about

Quick guide: Biofuels What are biofuels?

Biofuels are any kind of fuel made from living things, or from the waste they produce.

This is a very long and diverse list, including:

wood, wood chippings and straw pellets or liquids made from wood biogas (methane) from animals’ excrement ethanol, diesel or other liquid fuels made from processing plant material or waste oil In recent years, the term “biofuel” has come to mean the last category – ethanol and diesel, made from crops including corn, sugarcane and rapeseed.

Bio-ethanol, an alcohol, is usually mixed with petrol, while biodiesel is either used on its own or in a mixture.

Pioneers such as Henry Ford and Rudolph Diesel designed cars and engines to run on biofuels. Before World War II, the UK and Germany both sold biofuels mixed with petrol or diesel made from crude oil; the availability of cheap oil later ensured market dominance.

Ethanol for fuel is made through fermentation, the same process which produces it in wine and beer. Biodiesel is made through a variety of chemical processes.

There is interest in trying biobutanol, another alcohol, in aviation fuel.

Are biofuels climate-friendly?

In principle, biofuels are a way of reducing greenhouse gas emissions compared to conventional transport fuels.

More Quick Guides Burning the fuels releases carbon dioxide; but growing the plants absorbs a comparable amount of the gas from the atmosphere.

However, energy is used in farming and processing the crops, and this can make biofuels as polluting as petroleum-based fuels, depending on what is grown and how it is treated.

A recent UK government publication declared that biofuels reduced emissions “by 50-60% compared to fossil fuels”.

Where are biofuels used?

Production of ethanol doubled globally between 2000 and 2005, with biodiesel output quadrupling.

Brazil leads the world in production and use, making about 16 billion litres per year of ethanol from its sugarcane industry.

Sixty percent of new cars can run on a fuel mix which includes 85% ethanol.

The European Union has a target for 2010 that 5.75% of transport fuels should come from biological sources, but the target is unlikely to be met.

The British government’s Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation requires 5% biofuels sold at the pump by 2010 to be biofuels.

In the US, the Renewable Fuels Standard aims to double the use of biofuels in transport by 2012.

What are the downsides?

From the environmental point of the view, the big issue is biodiversity.

With much of the western world’s farmland already consisting of identikit fields of monocultured crops, the fear is that a major adoption of biofuels will reduce habitat for animals and wild plants still further.

Asian countries may be tempted to replace rainforest with more palm oil plantations, critics say.

If increased proportions of food crops such as corn or soy are used for fuel, that may push prices up, affecting food supplies for less prosperous citizens.

The mixed picture regarding the climate benefit of biofuels leads some observers to say that the priority should be reducing energy use; initiatives on biofuels detract attention from this, they say, and are more of a financial help to politically important farming lobbies than a serious attempt to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

There are few problems technically; engines can generally cope with the new fuels.

But current technologies limit production, because only certain parts of specific plants can be used.

The big hope is the so-called second-generation of biofuels, which will process the cellulose found in many plants. This should lead to far more efficient production using a much greater range of plants and plant waste.

Why biofuels are becoming 'bad' for the environment

Biofuels ‘crime against humanity’ By Grant Ferrett BBC News

Food prices have risen as more land is used to produce biofuels A United Nations expert has condemned the growing use of crops to produce biofuels as a replacement for petrol as a crime against humanity.

The UN special rapporteur on the right to food, Jean Ziegler, said he feared biofuels would bring more hunger.

The growth in the production of biofuels has helped to push the price of some crops to record levels.

Mr Ziegler’s remarks, made at the UN headquarters in New York, are clearly designed to grab attention.

He complained of an ill-conceived dash to convert foodstuffs such as maize and sugar into fuel, which created a recipe for disaster.

Food price rises

It was, he said, a crime against humanity to divert arable land to the production of crops which are then burned for fuel.

He called for a five-year ban on the practice.

Within that time, according to Mr Ziegler, technological advances would enable the use of agricultural waste, such as corn cobs and banana leaves, rather than crops themselves to produce fuel.

The growth in the production of biofuels has been driven, in part, by the desire to find less environmentally-damaging alternatives to oil.

The United States is also keen to reduce its reliance on oil imported from politically unstable regions.

But the trend has contributed to a sharp rise in food prices as farmers, particularly in the US, switch production from wheat and soya to corn, which is then turned into ethanol.

Mr Ziegler is not alone in warning of the problem.

The IMF last week voiced concern that the increasing global reliance on grain as a source of fuel could have serious implications for the world’s poor.

World Bank Fund Will Pay to Leave Forests Standing

NUSA DUA, Bali, Indonesia, December 11, 2007 (ENS) – A new multi-million dollar fund to compensate developing countries for the value of their living forests was launched today by the World Bank at the United Nations climate conference in Bali.

The Forest Carbon Partnership Facility was developed because forests are more important left standing than cut down, said World Bank Group President Robert Zoellick, introducing the new facility. As a natural function, trees absorb carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas.

“This initiative is a practical pilot to expand the tools for Climate Change negotiations,” said Zoellick. “The Forest Carbon Partnership Facility signals that the world cares about the global value of forests and is ready to pay for it. This can change the economic options for many people who depend on the forests for their livelihoods. There is now a value to conserving, not just harvesting the forest.”

Deforestation and forest degradation together are the second leading cause of global warming, second only to the combustion of fossil fuels.

High on the agenda at the Bali talks is reducing the 1.6 billion tons of carbon emissions caused each year by deforestation, which amounts to about 20 percent of global carbon emissions and more than the combined total of the world’s energy-intensive transport sectors.

Deforestation and forest degradation are responsible for a high percentage of some countries’ national emissions – 70 percent of Brazil’s and 80 percent of Indonesia’s, for instance.

The new facility will build the capacity of developing countries in tropical and subtropical regions to reduce emissions from deforestation and degradation and tap into a future system of positive incentives to reduce emissions.

The resources of the Forest Carbon Partnership Facility can be used in any new climate change regime negotiated after 2012, when the first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol ends.

The Kyoto Protocol currently does not give carbon finance incentives to developing countries for reducing deforestation and degradation, known by the acronym REDD.

This issue is under discussion at the climate change meetings in Bali, and it may become part of a post-2012 climate change agreement.

The facility is a new source of revenue for the more than 1.2 billion people who depend on forests for their livelihoods.

Nine developed countries and a nongovernmental organization have already made financial commitments totaling US$160 million to the Forest Carbon Partnership Facility. The largest contributor to date is the government of Germany.

“We must not lose another day when it comes to climate and forest protection”, said German Development Minister Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul. “I am very pleased that in our capacity as G8 President, Germany was instrumental in helping to develop the Forest Carbon Partnership Facility.”

Germany will contribute US$59 million (40 million euros) to help developing countries conserve their forests and mitigate climate change. “Forest protection must be a central element in a future agreement on climate change,” said Wieczorek-Zeul.

The other contributors include the United Kingdom (US$30 million), the Netherlands (US$22 million), Australia and Japan (US$10 million each), France and Switzerland (US$7 million each), Denmark and Finland (US$5 million each).

In addition, The Nature Conservancy, a nongovernmental organization based in the United States, has committed US$5 million.

The World Bank and the Forest Carbon Partnership Facility recognize the special role that indigenous peoples and other forest dwellers play in managing and protecting the forests in which they live and on which they depend. They will have observer status in the facility’s governance structure, at the same level as other constituent groups, such as international organizations, non-contributing private sector, and nongovernmental organizations.

The facility consists of two separate mechanisms, each with its own trust fund for which the World Bank will act as trustee.

The Readiness Mechanism – target size: US$100 million – will assist some 20 countries in preparing themselves to participate in a future, large-scale, system of positive incentives for reducing deforestation and degradation.

This will include some basic infrastructure capacity building for these countries such as preparing a national REDD strategy, establishing a baseline and putting in place a monitoring system. Indigenous groups and other forest dwellers will participate in the process so they can benefit from future carbon finance flows.

The Carbon Finance Mechanism – target size: US$200 million – will enable an initial group of these countries that will have successfully participated in the Readiness Mechanism to pilot incentive payments for REDD.

The Carbon Fund will remunerate the selected countries or actors within the selected countries, in accordance with negotiated contracts, for emissions reductions that are verified independently.

On Saturday, meetings on forest conservation took center stage at the first Forest Day ever held at a UN climate meeting. The parallel event was hosted by the Center for International Forestry Research, CIFOR.

The Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, UNFCCC, Yvo de Boer, was presented with a set of key recommendations on the role of forests in combating climate change for consideration by the government ministers participating in the high-level segment of the conference which begins Wednesday.

De Boer welcomed the contribution that the many world-leading experts and forest organizations attending Forest Day could make in influencing forest and climate policy at the global level

“In the climate change process, there is growing political acknowledgement of the need to reduce emissions from deforestation,” he said, adding that “if we do not sustain trees, we will soon live in a world that will not sustain us.”

Forest Day recommendations from the Collaborative Partnership on Forests include the recognition that the success of REDD mechanisms “depends on the political will to address the drivers of deforestation, including drivers beyond forestry sector.”

“We cannot rely on markets alone. We need a combination of market mechanism and governance,” the partnership recommends.

Other recommendations stress functional simplicity and moderate transaction costs.

“To ensure equity in the distribution of REDD benefits, it’s essential to clarify land rights and legal rights to carbon,” the partnership recommends, adding, “We need adaptation now. Adaptation should be focused on the most vulnerable, including forest-dependent people.”

A new study by CIFOR presented on Forest Day in Bali warns that the new push to reduce emissions from deforestation and degradation, is imperiled by “a routine failure to grasp the root causes of deforestation.”

Based on more than a decade of in-depth research on the forces driving deforestation worldwide, the report shows that there is ample opportunity to reduce carbon emissions if financial incentives are sufficient enough to flip political and economic realities that cause deforestation.

“After being left out of the Kyoto agreement, it’s promising that deforestation is commanding center-stage at the Bali climate talks,” said CIFOR Director General Frances Seymour. “But the danger is that policy-makers will fail to appreciate that forest destruction is caused by an incredibly wide variety of political, economic, and other factors that originate outside the forestry sector, and require different solutions.”

Stopping deforestation in Indonesia caused by overcapacity in the wood processing industry is a completely different challenge from dealing with deforestation stemming from a road project in the Amazon or forest degradation caused by charcoal production in sub-Saharan Africa, Seymour said.

Complex, indirect forces are often more important than the logging and slash and burn activities usually understood as the main causes of deforestation.

Forces such as fluctuations in international commodity prices; agricultural and, more recently, biofuel subsidies; and roads and other infrastructure projects can encourage forest clearing, the CIFOR report shows.

“Deeply ingrained and routinely corrupt government practices often favor large corporate interests over community rights to forest resources,” CIFOR says.

The report sees promise in the idea that deforestation can be addressed with financial incentives that compensate landowners for “environmental services.”

Seymour said discussions in Bali to fight deforestation by compensating forest stewards for protecting the carbon-storage capacity of forests through what is now a multi-billion dollar global market for carbon credit are potentially powerful.

“Such payments to individual land-users have the potential to flip financial incentives from favoring forest destruction, as they now do, to favoring conservation,” Seymour said. “But the key question is whether or not REDD incentives will be sufficient to flip political and economic decisions at the national level that drive deforestation.”

“It’s critical to understand that, due to decades of inattention to the rights of forest dwellers, new payment streams tied to conservation could intensify the severe poverty that now afflicts the majority of rural forest communities in the developing world,” she said.

“Since forest property rights are often very unclear, payment for carbon services could end up providing incentives for corrupt officials or local elites to appropriate this new forest value from local communities,” Seymour said. “We’ve seen this happen before in similar situations, and there’s every reason to believe, given the kind of money now being paid for carbon credits, that it could happen again.”

“We need to temper the desire for maximum reduction in forest-based carbon emissions with regard for the legitimate rights of forest communities to realize the income potential of their forestlands,” Seymour said. “At times there will be trade-offs between reducing carbon emissions and reducing poverty.”

The CIFOR report is online here: http://www.cifor.cgiar.org/PressRoom/MediaRelease/2007/2007_12_07_redd.htm

For more information on Carbon Finance at the World Bank, visit: www.carbonfinance.org

Copyright Environment News Service (ENS) 2007. All rights reserved.

UN: Mangrove Forests Vanishing at an "Alarming" Rate

ROME, Italy, February 3, 2008 (ENS) - The world has lost about 20 percent of its wetland mangrove forests since 1980, the United Nations said Thursday in a new report to mark World Wetlands Day, February 2. Mangroves are salt tolerant evergreen forests found along coastlines, lagoons, rivers or deltas in 124 tropical and subtropical countries and areas. Environmental and economic damages caused by the "alarming" loss of mangroves in many countries should be urgently addressed, said the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, FAO, calling for better mangrove protection and management programs. "Mangroves are important forested wetlands," said Wulf Killmann, director of FAO's Forest Products and Industry Division. "If deforestation of mangroves continues, it can lead to severe losses of biodiversity and livelihoods, in addition to salt intrusion in coastal areas and siltation of coral reefs, ports and shipping lanes. Tourism would also suffer." "Countries need to engage in a more effective conservation and sustainable management of the world's mangroves and other wetland ecosystems," Killmann said. Mangrove ecosystems serve to protect coastal areas against erosion, cyclones and wind. They provide wood, food, fodder, medicine and honey. They are also habitats for many animals like crocodiles and snakes, tigers, deer, otters, dolphins and birds. Many fish and shellfish species also depend on these coastal forests and mangroves help to protect coral reefs against siltation from upland erosion. Indonesia, Australia, Brazil, Nigeria and Mexico together account for around 50 percent of the total global mangrove area. Most countries have now banned the conversion of mangroves for aquaculture and they assess the impact on the environment before using mangrove areas for other purposes "This has led to better protection and management of mangroves in some countries," Killmann said. "But overall, the loss of these coastal forests remains alarming. The rate of mangrove loss is significantly higher than the loss of any other types of forests." The world has lost around 3.6 million hectares of mangroves since 1980, equivalent to a 20 percent loss of total mangrove area, according to FAO's recent mangrove assessment study, entitled, "The world's mangroves 1980-2005." The total mangrove area has declined from 18.8 million hectares in 1980 to 15.2 million hectares in 2005, according to the report. Since 2000, there has been a slowdown in the rate of mangrove loss, the report shows, reflecting an increased awareness of the value of mangrove ecosystems. "On a positive note, a number of countries have had an increase in mangrove area over time, including Bangladesh," said FAO Senior Forestry Officer Mette Wilkie. "Part of the largest mangrove area in the world, the Sundarbans Reserved Forest in Bangladesh, is well protected and no major changes in the extent of the area have occurred during the last few decades, although some damage to the mangroves was reported after the recent cyclone in 2007," she said. "In Ecuador, the abandoning of ponds and structures for shrimp and salt production led to a rebuilding of various mangrove sites," she added. Asia suffered the largest net loss of mangroves since 1980, with more than 1.9 million hectares destroyed, mainly due to changes in land use. North and Central America lost about 690,000 hectares and Africa lost 510,000 hectares over the last 25 years. At the country level, Indonesia, Mexico, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea and Panama recorded the largest losses of mangroves during the 1980s. A total of some one million hectares were lost in these five countries - a land area comparable to the island nation of Jamaica. In the 1990s, Pakistan and Panama succeeded in reducing their rate of mangrove loss. But Vietnam, Malaysia and Madagascar increased their mangrove clearing and became three of the five countries that lost the most mangroves since 1990. The FAO report cited high population pressure, the large-scale conversion of mangrove areas for shrimp and fish farming, agriculture, infrastructure and tourism, as well as pollution and natural disasters as the major causes for the destruction of mangroves. The assessment of the world's mangroves 1980-2005 was prepared in collaboration with mangrove specialists throughout the world and was co-funded by the International Tropical Timber Organization, ITTO. FAO and ITTO are currently working with the nonprofit International Society for Mangrove Ecosystems and other partner organizations to produce a World Atlas of Mangroves to be published later this year. The atlas will give GIS-based distribution maps and describe recent status of mangrove forests around the world, with detailed estimates of changes in mangrove forests worldwide and at regional and national levels. Copyright Environment News Service (ENS) 2008. All rights reserved.

Recent Studies Decry Environmental Impact of Biofuels Reports New York Times

New York Times    February 8, 2008

by Elisabeth Rosenthal

 

Almost all biofuels used today cause more greenhouse gas emissions than conventional fuels if the full emissions costs of producing these “green” fuels are taken into account, two studies being published Thursday have concluded.

These studies for the first time take a detailed, comprehensive look at the emissions effects of the huge amount of natural land that is being converted to cropland globally to support biofuels development.

The destruction of natural ecosystems — whether rain forest in the tropics or grasslands in South America — not only releases greenhouse gases into the atmosphere when they are burned and plowed, but also deprives the planet of natural sponges to absorb carbon emissions. Cropland also absorbs far less carbon than the rain forests or even scrubland that it replaces.

Together the two studies offer sweeping conclusions: It does not matter if it is rain forest or scrubland that is cleared, the greenhouse gas contribution is significant. More important, they discovered that, taken globally, the production of almost all biofuels resulted, directly or indirectly, intentionally or not, in new lands being cleared, either for food or fuel.

“When you take this into account, most of the biofuel that people are using or planning to use would probably increase greenhouse gasses substantially,” said Timothy Searchinger, lead author of one of the studies and a researcher in environment and economics at Princeton University. “Previously there’s been an accounting error: land use change has been left out of prior analysis.”

These plant-based fuels were originally billed as better than fossil fuels because the carbon released when they were burned was balanced by the carbon absorbed when the plants grew. But even that equation proved overly simplistic because the process of turning plants into fuels causes its own emissions — for refining and transport, for example.

The clearance of grassland releases 93 times the amount of greenhouse gas that would be saved by the fuel made annually on that land, said Joseph Fargione, lead author of the second paper, and a scientist at the Nature Conservancy. “So for the next 93 years you’re making climate change worse, just at the time when we need to be bringing down carbon emissions.”

The Intergovernment Panel on Climate Change has said that the world has to reverse the increase of greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 to avert disastrous environment consequences.

In the wake of the new studies, a group of 10 of the United States’s most eminent ecologists and environmental biologists today sent a letter to President Bush and the speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, urging a reform of biofuels policies. “We write to call your attention to recent research indicating that many anticipated biofuels will actually exacerbate global warming,” the letter said.

The European Union and a number of European countries have recently tried to address the land use issue with proposals stipulating that imported biofuels cannot come from land that was previously rain forest.

But even with such restrictions in place, Dr. Searchinger’s study shows, the purchase of biofuels in Europe and the United States leads indirectly to the destruction of natural habitats far afield.

For instance, if vegetable oil prices go up globally, as they have because of increased demand for biofuel crops, more new land is inevitably cleared as farmers in developing countries try to get in on the profits. So crops from old plantations go to Europe for biofuels, while new fields are cleared to feed people at home.

Likewise, Dr. Fargione said that the dedication of so much cropland in the United States to growing corn for bioethanol had caused indirect land use changes far away. Previously, Midwestern farmers had alternated corn with soy in their fields, one year to the next. Now many grow only corn, meaning that soy has to be grown elsewhere.

Increasingly, that elsewhere, Dr. Fargione said, is Brazil, on land that was previously forest or savanna. “Brazilian farmers are planting more of the world’s soybeans — and they’re deforesting the Amazon to do it,” he said.

International environmental groups, including the United Nations, responded cautiously to the studies, saying that biofuels could still be useful. “We don’t want a total public backlash that would prevent us from getting the potential benefits,” said Nicholas Nuttall, spokesman for the United Nations Environment Program, who said the United Nations had recently created a new panel to study the evidence.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/08/science/earth/08wbiofuels.html?pagewanted=2&_r=2&ref=world - secondParagraph

“There was an unfortunate effort to dress up biofuels as the silver bullet of climate change,” he said. “We fully believe that if biofuels are to be part of the solution rather than part of the problem, there urgently needs to be better sustainability criterion.”

The European Union has set a target that countries use 5.75 percent biofuel for transport by the end of 2008. Proposals in the United States energy package would require that 15 percent of all transport fuels be made from biofuel by 2022. To reach these goals, biofuels production is heavily subsidized at many levels on both continents, supporting a burgeoning global industry.

Syngenta, the Swiss agricultural giant, announced Thursday that its annual profits had risen 75 percent in the last year, in part because of rising demand for biofuels.

Industry groups, like the Renewable Fuels Association, immediately attacked the new studies as “simplistic,” failing “to put the issue into context.”

“While it is important to analyze the climate change consequences of differing energy strategies, we must all remember where we are today, how world demand for liquid fuels is growing, and what the realistic alternatives are to meet those growing demands,” said Bob Dineen, the group’s director, in a statement following the Science reports’ release.

“Biofuels like ethanol are the only tool readily available that can begin to address the challenges of energy security and environmental protection,” he said.

The European Biodiesel Board says that biodiesel reduces greenhouse gasses by 50 to 95 percent compared to conventional fuel, and has other advantages as well, like providing new income for farmers and energy security for Europe in the face of rising global oil prices and shrinking supply.

But the papers published Thursday suggested that, if land use is taken into account, biofuels may not provide all the benefits once anticipated.

Dr. Searchinger said the only possible exception he could see for now was sugar cane grown in Brazil, which take relatively little energy to grow and is readily refined into fuel. He added that governments should quickly turn their attention to developing biofuels that did not require cropping, such as those from agricultural waste products.

“This land use problem is not just a secondary effect — it was often just a footnote in prior papers,”. “It is major. The comparison with fossil fuels is going to be adverse for virtually all biofuels on cropland.”

 

 

The Wasted Years

“Our enormously productive economy…demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfaction, our ego satisfaction, in consumption…we need things consumed, burned up, replaced and discarded at an ever-accelerating rate.” – Victor LeBeau, Retail Analyst Post WW II

Circling the web like a good Mom rounding up kids for school, the Story of Stuff's viral message is affectionately startling, gently nudging us to wake up to some very large elephants quickly filling up the room. Viewed over 1.5 million times, Annie Leonard’s matter-of-fact practical approach appeals to a child-like mentality, important for both the children inheriting this messy situation and the deer-in-headlights-National-Enquirer-population still obsessed with making it. Leonard’s no ordinary Mom though; she is Coordinator of the Funders Workgroup for Sustainable Production and Consumption, working for two decades to raise awareness about international sustainability and environmental health issues.

Her point is simple and straightforward: the world economy follows a straight-line growth model based on planned obsolescence, while the world itself prefers to work in a circular symbiotic relationship. Because of the causal bond marketing has with our spending habits, in just fifty years, America (and most Western cultures) has doubled consumption rates. Leonard walks us through the process from extraction of natural resources to production and distribution and finally to consumption and disposal of the accumulation of all these products (all while our government, supposedly for the people, sits back and takes direction from corporate interests). Some of the more incredible facts she’s collated:

• 80% of the world's forests are gone.
• 2000 trees a minute are cut down in the Amazon alone. That is 7 football fields a minute!
• The U.S. has less than 4% of its forests left.
• 40% of our waterways are undrinkable.
• The U.S. has 5% of the world's population and 30% of the waste.
• 75% of global fisheries have been fished beyond capacity.
• 100,000 synthetic chemicals are used in production today.
• Bromated Flame Retardants (BFR) neurotoxins (toxins to brain) are in computers, mattresses, pillows.
• Food with highest level of contaminants is mother's milk.
• 200,000 people a day are moving to cities from environments that no longer support them.
• U.S. industry *admits* to 4 billion pounds of toxic pollution released per year (likely far more).
• We see more ads in one year than people 50 years ago saw in a lifetime. 3,000 ads a day!
• Average house size has doubled in the U.S. since the 1970's.
• Average American creates 4.5 lbs. garbage a day -- an amount doubled from 30 years ago.
• For every one garbage can you put out at the curb, 70 cans were filled by all the processes needed in order to make it.
• 99% of all those things we buy are not in use after 6 months.

 

Comedian George Carlin’s well-known routine about “stuff” is a comical look at the strange human reliance on the many things we so often use to identify ourselves. While he puts a relevantly humorous spin to our quirky behavior, the truth is all too disturbing. We are no longer creatures born naked into this world, but consumers defined by everything from the baby stroller we go home from the hospital in, to the cars we drive and the clothes we wear, all the way to the computer monitor displaying these words. We are draped in the jewels of clever advertising, foregoing human vision quest and self-discovery for President’s Day sales at Macy’s. (What irony that the founding fathers of our nation, who fled to American soil to avoid the oppression of monarchy, are now lionized in clearance racks under the dominion of corporate capitalism.)

In 1977, President Jimmy Carter urged America to plan for the future by conserving energy. Today his words are even more legitimate: “It is a problem we will not solve in the next few years, and it is likely to get progressively worse through the rest of this century. We must not be selfish or timid if we hope to have a decent world for our children and grandchildren. We simply must balance our demand for energy with our rapidly shrinking resources. By acting now, we can control our future instead of letting the future control us.” Yet our use of crude oil has increased in the last 30 years. The U.S. consumes 17 million barrels every day, leading the world dependency on oil. The amount of motor vehicles operated in the U.S. will increase 15 million a year until at least 2010 while Americans are estimated to travel almost 4 billion miles a day.

A recent Nielsen poll revealed “nearly one in two global consumers would give up all forms of packaging provided for Convenience purposes if it would benefit the environment, including: packaging designed for easy stacking/storing at home (49%); packaging that can be used for cooking, or doubling as a re-sealable container (48%); and packaging designed for easy transport (47%).” One would not guess this the case cruising through supermarket aisles. Packaging houses more packaging of questionably valid products. Take the seemingly harmless facial tissue as an example. Kleenex, the brand that has become synonymous with this common household item (made by Kimberly-Clark), is the largest tissue product company in the world. At the expense of ancient forests, they produce 3.7 million tonnes (4 million tons) of tissue products annually amounting to net sales of $14.3 billion. Less than a century ago, the disposable tissue phenomenon didn’t exist. People carried something called a handkerchief. Not only were they reusable and more cost-effective, but also significantly more efficient than a thin piece of chlorine bleached, formerly-known-as-a-tree paper. Marketing eradicated this common sense behavior and the handkerchief disappeared. We also use an exorbitant amount of paper for everything from faxes to Post-It Notes to cardboard boxes. The U.S. consumes a third of the world’s paper, about 650 pounds per person annually. Paper production is the fifth largest energy consumer and first in water consumption per ton of product.

While 1.2 billion people suffer from starvation each year, and more than 9 million will die from it, it is estimated that $38 billion worth of food in the US rots – going completely uneaten each year. Food sent back to kitchens at restaurants for minor complaints gets thrown out. The untouched breadbasket delivered to the table, pitched in the trash because of health code violations preventing it from being re-served. Only those desperate and humble enough will mill through trashcans for food. They are actually quite fortunate; to be homeless in America means living better than most of the impoverished world.

In addition to the food we senselessly dispose of, we overproduce our food, consuming massive amounts of resources to feed and water our livestock obsession. It takes 55 feet of rainforest and 2500 gallons of water to produce one animal “meal.” Not to mention the amount of methane released into the environment and 130 times the amount of human excrement that factory farming contributes to the planet. And just this week, 143 million pounds of beef were recalled by the state of California. That is enough to feed every American two hamburgers. Yet the linear production model of more-faster-cheaper leaves enormous gaps in a system that is often detrimental to our health. Enter antibiotics and other questionable feed additives designed to “protect” our food sources. Compare that to Joe Salatin’s PolyFace farm (featured in Michael Pollan’s book Omnivore’s Dilemma) where not only is there very little waste and higher production yields, but far less probability of carelessness and contamination.

The Story of Stuff walks us through the ways in which we enslave the natural world, poison our people and brainwash ourselves through gobbledy-#%#* marketing nonsense. But do we realize that the biggest challenge of being so fortunate – as citizens of the western world – is not to take so much for granted? We allow ourselves to become disrespectful, petty and just plain mean. Our relationships are no longer germane to our mutual survival in a physical sense, but have become purely egotistic. This shift is what leads people to be greedy and self-serving. Once we no longer had to work so hard to maintain food, shelter and water, we became intoxicated with decadence and megalomania. Our boredom, for lack of a better term, eroded the pure essence of just "humans being" and turned us into monsters. If there are future generations, they will surely look back on these as wasted years.

As the saying goes, you can lead a horse to water... but our thirst has long surpassed something as simple as that. We need to quench rampant self-indulgence and downgrade our ego constructs. Marketing has unleashed a crisis on the human condition. We’re convinced that our salvation lies in Stuff.

Consider greenwashing. Rather than keep using the perfectly good things we have, we hear the "green" message to trash and replace them with something more "eco-friendly" – even if we end up creating more avoidable garbage in the process. Good ol’ marketing cleverly disguises itself once again. Do we really need to buy more of anything, green or otherwise?

We have so much in America. Yet we suffer epidemic levels of depression, not because of the guilt of having as much as we do, but rather from the pressures driving us to have even more. Ms. Leonard’s video shows this wheel of cyclical subservience, which forces people into the absurd state of credit card debt, creating unnecessary levels of insecurity and all kinds of self-loathing. This messge is reinforced by the media, which keeps telling us that we’re just not good enough.

Some might say that Stuff has always been here – an intrinsic part of the complex web of being human, a condition of living in a material world created when we out that extra sticky stuff within. Or maybe, stuff is just a mirror, reflecting our limitless potential and uniquely human creative genius.

Whatever the cause, we're now at the point where imbalance is being felt in all corners of the planet. Our lust for Stuff is so strong that poor nations can only rise out of poverty according to the rules defined by the Have-Mores. We promise, like all good salespeople, that they won’t be disappointed if they sell off their natural resources, contaminate their environments and corrupt their traditions and values – because the American Dream is even more precious than anyone could ever imagine!

Ironically, America is enchanted by the quaintness of tribal cultures. We place a certain amount of trust in the frail, indigenous elder espousing a mysticism and ancient wisdom that has all but vanished from modernity. But who is ready to see the actual state of a clear-cut forest in the Amazon, or mono-crop destruction in India, or the oil drained guts of the Middle East or diamond mines in Africa? These harsh realities are transforming the last places on Earth where a discernable connection to our ancestors still exists.

National Geographic’s Explorer-in-Residence Wade Davis puts it like this: “When asked the meaning of being human, all the diverse cultures of the world respond with 10,000 different voices. Distinct cultures represent unique visions of life itself, morally inspired and inherently right. And those different voices become part of the overall repertoire of humanity for coping with challenges confronting us in the future. As we drift toward a blandly amorphous, generic world, as cultures disappear and life becomes more uniform, we as a people and a species, and Earth itself, will be deeply impoverished.”

This is something no one in the world can afford, not even on sale.

[Photo courtesy of timparkenson, used through a creativecommons license.]

Monkey gets big-screen tea break

Monkey gets big-screen tea break

Monkey, the star of the fondly-remembered ITV Digital ad campaigns and the current face of PG Tips, is to appear in a Michael Palin-esque cinema extravaganza this Easter.

In a film called ""A Tale of Two Continents"", Monkey gets to have his first big-screen kiss as he embarks on a light-hearted romp through the history of tea.

"What the world needed was a hero," opens the voiceover for the trailer for the five-minute cinema advert by advertising agency Mother. "What the world got was a monkey".

The film, which features Monkey playing roles including tea-drinking Chinese Emperor Shennong, a jungle explorer and captain of a tea clipper, will run in cinemas from March 21 to April 10.

A trailer for the short film has been released to MediaGuardian.co.uk.

"Inspiration for the style of the film came from the old public information films that used to run where a central character is used to portray a message in an engaging way," said Nicola Waymark, the senior brand manager at PG Tips.

PG Tips has negotiated to take a five-minute slot of advertising space to run the mini-adventure before family films including the Spiderwick Chronicles, Horton Hears a Who, Gameplan and Hannah Montana.

The short film forms part of a wider PG Tips campaign to raise awareness of its tie-up with the sustainability organisation Rainforest Alliance to source its tea.

In the film, which credits Monkey as both writer and director, "Britain's favourite knitted chimp" says his intention is to "change the world one cup at a time".

The tie-up with Rainforest Alliance will eventually see all of PG Tips tea sourced from certified growers by 2010. It will be promoted by a more traditional TV and press campaign starting on Wednesday.

"While we are running a standard campaign we also wanted to find a different way to entertain and engage," Waymark said. "The cinema is a great environment with a captive audience that will respond to you as long as you get it right and Monkey has great appeal."

Monkey made a return to TV after almost six years last January when he was reunited with Johnny Vegas to star in PG Tips advertising. The duo rose to fame as the faces of the ill-fated ITV Digital service that closed in 2002.

 

 

Elite Flowers: Growing a Better Bloom

 

Robert Goodier is a communications coordinator for the Rainforest Alliance, based in our Guatemala City office. In February 2008, he traveled to Facatativá, Colombia to visit Elite, a flower farm that was recently awarded Rainforest Alliance certification. Here, he recounts the experience.

 

The highway out of Bogotá toward Facatativá, a town as small as the name is clunky, is lined with duplexes and housing developments. They are sandwiched between the highway and miles of fields and patchy forests. Where were the legion of people who lived in these, I wondered as we drove past. No one was sunning in the fields, there were no high-rise office buildings in sight, or even good hiding places.

 

Oscar Nausa, the farm auditor with Fundación Natura, our partner in Colombia, provided an answer. These are the new suburbs outside Bogotá, the middle-class solution to rising property rates in the city for those who don’t mind a commute. But that didn’t seem to account for all those homes. It turns out there are a lot of jobs available in the boonies, something we saw pulling up to the gate of Elite Flowers. Hundreds of men and women milled past in the morning cold, through the security gates and into the complexes of offices, warehouses, workshops and greenhouses in the immense group of flower farms.

 

Elite is one of the Rainforest Alliance’s newly certified flower farms in Latin America – others are in Costa Rica and Guatemala. Acres of roses and exotic astromelias in colors like the sun are tended and collected on the immense grounds of this group of 10 farms.

 

While Colombian newspaper headlines were fuming about the latest manifestations of the collapse in relations with Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez and tallying the crimes of the rebel groups, the flower farms were in full bloom and full-tilt production for Valentine’s Day. Nearly all the commercially grown flowers in Colombia are exported -- though Colombians celebrate el Dia de San Valentín or the Dia de Amistad -- only about five percent of the commercially grown flowers stay in the country.

 

The country exported its first flowers to the United States in 1968, and in the ensuing 40 years the cut flower industry has grown to nearly US$673 million, almost six percent of all of Colombia’s exports, including coffee and oil. Colombia is better known for its coffee, maybe even its emeralds, definitely its beaches and soap operas (Colombians are the geniuses behind Yo Soy Betty, la Fea, a sensation that emptied streets from Mexico to Peru the evenings it aired and has now been remade in the States as Ugly Betty.) but, according to the Colombian Flower Exporters Association, it is also the world’s biggest carnation exporter.

 

I asked Aracely Morales, a certification administration assistant at Fundación Interamericana de Investigación Tropical, our partner in Guatemala, for a breakdown of the problems typically plaguing flower farms and how they correct them to meet our standards. She listed three major areas of concern: waste disposal, chemical use and the treatment of workers. Elite, like most flower farms, roofs its greenhouses with plastic sheets, and when they wear out, they are replaced. Unlike other flower farms that toss aside the massive wads of plastic, Elite hires a recycling company to cart it off and turn it into something usable. Elite farms also generate massive mounds of plant waste, due in part to their exacting standards for exportation. Funny looking Siamese twin flowers, runts and other misfits are thrown out, not fit for lovers or the apologetic. Together with cuttings from the flower arrangements and other plant material they are heaped under a roof, turned by front loaders, mixed with biological catalysts and left to decompose into compost.

 

The second big problem on flower farms, Aracely identified, was chemical use. No certified farms are allowed to use the “dirty dozen” chemicals, defined by the Pesticide Action Network, and Elite takes an extra step developing organic repellents and fungicides. There is a garden cordoned off on each farm in Elite’s complex where plants such as chamomile, marigold and nettles are cultivated for their potent extracts and later sprayed on the flowers in place of commercial chemicals.

 

The third hurdle flower farms need to clear before obtaining certification is the treatment of their employees, Aracely informed me. Elite already had an exemplary education program in place for employee’s children – a private, high quality pre-kindergarten through fifth grade school available for free to children of permanent employees. To meet the standard, they improved their job and safety training programs for workers, established procedures for accidents and safe meeting areas and, notably, reduced the work day to six hours.

 

I saw clean, orderly grounds, immaculate upkeep in the offices and arrangement facilities and, something I think is important, people smiling while they worked among the flowers. I had intended to stay only a few hours in the morning, but the size of the farms and the long list of programs underway and people involved in training and helping other workers and caring for the environment, not to mention the home-cooked lunch served at the pre-school, kept me into the afternoon. Elite will export flowers with our seal on them in time for Mother’s Day in the States.