Rainforest Protection Issues

Rainforest analysis by Dr. Glen Barry dedicated to protecting and restoring, and local benefits, from standing primary rainforests


January 31, 2012

EARTH MEANDERS: On Violence and Earth Revolution

Imagining the human family coming together to take well considered, decisive, and minimally or non-violent action to sustain global ecology

By Dr. Glen Barry, Ecological Internet
Earth Meanders come from Earth's Newsdesk

Human Family’s Ecocidal Death Wish

Earth is dying... and a people power Earth uprising is the only way together we surviveThe ecological foundation of being is unraveling before our very eyes. Without ecosystems there is no life. Fiercely loving Earth is the answer. Let's sustain global ecology together like our shared survival and abundance depends upon it. And while we set out using classic civil disobedience tactics, let’s not dismiss out of hand any obstruction, uncivil disobedience, sabotage and targeted insurgency tactics – that are non-terrorist – and that may be necessary to achieve global ecological sustainability. The human family’s shared survival depends upon passionately defending Earth using all means necessary.

Earth's ecosystems are collapsing under the burden of human growth, destroying our one shared biosphere that makes life possible. Industrial growth – frantically destroying ecosystems to feed insatiable, ever-growing appetites – is an aberration, a mistake, a disease. If left untreated, this will be the end of the human family, all life, and Earth's very being. Infinite economic growth at the expense of ecosystems is impossible, and seeking endless and inequitable growth in consumption and population can only lead to collapse and massive die-off.

Humanity’s last best chance to justly and equitably sustain a livable planet is to protect and restore ecosystems, end fossil fuels, and a people's power Earth revolution to utterly destroy the ecocidal industrial growth machine. We are all bloody fools to tolerate and not immediately overthrow a violently ecocidal system that is killing us all. If we all understood the implications of global ecosystem collapse, we would go now, together, and slay the global growth machine. It is too late to escape profound ecological decline, yet complete disastrous social and ecological collapse – and possible end to most or all life – may yet be avoided.

Sustaining ecology must become society’s central organizing principle or humans and all species face horrendous death. Globally it is time for radical change to simply survive converging ecology, food, war, water, inequity, population, climate, jobs, ocean, and extinction crises. It is deeply troubling most "environmentalists" deny the severity of ecosystem collapse, rejecting out of hand revolutionary measures sufficient to sustain ecology.

Continue reading "EARTH MEANDERS: On Violence and Earth Revolution" »

January 25, 2012

ALERT! Stop Peru's Road to Rainforest Ecocide and Genocide of Uncontacted Indigenous Tribes

By Ecological Internet's Rainforest Portal

Please end plans for road through Alto Purus and uncontacted indigenous rainforestlTAKE ACTION HERE NOW!

Plans are to build a highway through Alto Purus - Peru’s largest national park – comprised of vital intact Amazonian rainforest ecosystems and inhabited by at least two 'uncontacted' indigenous tribes [search]. The Alto Purus protected rainforest in south-east Peru is an area of incredible biodiversity covering some of the most pristine forests in the southwestern Amazon and home to jaguars, monkeys and pink dolphins. To cut it with a road would compromise the integrity of the entire Amazonion basin and trigger the swift demise of some of Earth’s last isolated hunting and gathering tribes. One of the 'uncontacted' tribes in the park is known as the 'Mashco-Piro', thought to be the largest group i

January 3, 2012

ALERT! NAMING NAMES: UN REDD+ Forest Carbon Fund to Log Primary Forests with Corporate NGO Greenwash Support

By Ecological Internet's Rainforest Portal and ClimateArk

Time to end primary forest loggingTAKE ACTION HERE NOW!

Earth is facing the twin global ecological emergencies of abrupt climate change and land being scoured of natural ecosystems. Sadly, corporate American NGOs and the United Nations are responding to these crises by further promoting logging ancient forests. The United Nations REDD+ program to protect primary and old growth forests as a climate change and deforestation solution has been hi-jacked by logging interests [search] and their big pro-logging NGO friends, and will instead subsidize primary forest logging for new plantations. REDD has become a gravy train for consultants, greenwashing NGOs and charlatans of many sorts - claiming logging ancient rainforests for the first time protects them! Old standing natural forest ecosystems are key to sustaining climate, ecosystems, biodiversity, local livelihoods humanity and the Earth System. Corporate NGOs supporting REDD+ must be compelled to stop their old forest logging greenwash - or face ridicule, protest, and an end to public support, until they do.

December 22, 2011

ALERT! Brazilian Forest Code Revisions Threaten Amazon Rainforest, National Advancement, and Ecological Sustainability

By Ecological Internet's Rainforest Portal

Destroying rainforests destroys agricultural potentialTAKE ACTION HERE NOW!

Brazil's industrial agriculture lobby has forced through their Congress changes to the forest code [search], the primary legal instrument related to Amazon rainforest protections. It has been done without any scientific inputs, and in a way that will greatly expand industrial agriculture by reducing ecological protections. Newly elected President Dilma Rousseff must be encouraged to veto the bill, something she promised to do during the election. Efforts to address forest code deficiencies must recommence in a manner that incorporates the latest agro-ecological science regarding sustainable agriculture and the importance of large, connected and intact rainforest ecosystems within agricultural landscapes. Without a veto, recent progress in Amazon rainforest protection is at stake just as Brazil is to host the Rio+20 Earth Summit in 2012.

December 13, 2011

RAINFOREST ALERT! Protest Belize National Park Being Opened by Corrupt U.S. Oil Exploration to Illegal Logging

By Ecological Internet's Rainforest Portal

Cleared strips of rainforests for oil production open protected area to illegal loggingTAKE ACTION HERE NOW!

Belize’s renowned rainforests [search], beaches, and Mayan homelands are threatened with a resource rampage by a corrupt government confronted with massive foreign debt. With the Prime Minister's permission, Colorado-based oil company US Capital Energy is drilling seismic testing lines through the ecologically spectacular Sarstoon-Temash national park - against international treaty commitments and a Belizean Supreme Court ruling. These cleared lines are now being used by poachers to ransack the rainforest, with stolen timbers transported to Guatemala and onward to China.

December 8, 2011

EARTH MEANDERS: They Say It’s My Birthday… and I have a few wishes

Support EcoInternet and believe in the wisdom of old trees in ancient forests

Today is my birthday and it’s going to be a good time. So as I craft a day of mirth, free spirit and all my favorite activities, let me ruminate upon what I wish for as gifts on this special day.

I want peace on Earth, real peace, the kind where the armies demobilize and don’t remain standing like it used to be. Peace where trillions aren’t wasted from funding public social needs. I want a real and permanent turning of tanks into ploughshares. War’s obscene waste of energy, materials, human potential and life cannot persist if human and ecological being are to continue. I want it to end now.

The truth is we are one human family, one species, perhaps from different lineages with a crazy uncle, but a family nonetheless. And I want us to start acting like it. Nation state boundaries are a new false construct meant to divide us. As a human family I want our basic universal rights strictly and unconditionally observed. The human condition is absolute freedom as long as we don’t hurt others. I want gods and governments off of and out of my body.

Continue reading "EARTH MEANDERS: They Say It’s My Birthday… and I have a few wishes" »

November 21, 2011

ALERT: Uganda's Protected Mabira Rainforest Threatened Again by Sugar Production

By Ecological Internet's Rainforest Portal

Sugar cane plantations must not threaten protected rainforestsTAKE ACTION HERE NOW!

Plans by Uganda's President to partially destroy the Mabira rainforest - one of the nation's most important rainforest preserves - have surfaced again after being defeated in 2007. Let the Ugandan government know rainforests and their ecological services including water, climate and biodiversity are far more important than sugar which can be grown elsewhere. Together with local opposition Ecological Internet has defeated this project twice before, let's do it again.

October 12, 2011

RELEASE: Today as Rainforest Action Network and Awardee Naomi Klein REVEL, Primary Rainforests Continue to Be Destroyed in Their Names

By Earth's Newsdesk, a project of Ecological Internet
http://www.ecoearth.info/newsdesk/
CONTACT: Dr. Glen Barry, glenbarry@ecologicalinternet.org

FSC is NOT rainforest safe

- Once again Ecological Internet’s true global rainforest action network questions the dominate paradigm that primary rainforests exist to be industrially logged [search]. The Rainforest Action Network and Forest Stewardship Council are first time industrial primary forest logging which must end immediately. Standing, intact primary rainforests and all old forests must be fully protected from certified and carbon forestry, and restored to continue powering global ecosystems and advance local communities.


(Earth) - Today San Francisco based Rainforest Action Network (RAN) will throw yet another swanky celebrity filled party to REVEL and congratulate themselves for logging primary forests to protect them, and to raise further money for such "rainforest protection". RAN continues to hold to the myth that primary rainforests - 500 year old trees in millions of year old ecosystems - should be "sustainably managed" for consumption such as toilet paper and lawn furniture. Noted author Naomi Klein will be RAN's guest of honor, receive an award, and has been vocal in defending the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) brand of disaster capitalism.

Continue reading "RELEASE: Today as Rainforest Action Network and Awardee Naomi Klein REVEL, Primary Rainforests Continue to Be Destroyed in Their Names" »

October 9, 2011

ACTION ALERT! FSC Rainforest Logging is Disaster Capitalism: Tell RAN and Naomi Klein, No Such Thing as "Ethical Primary Forest Timbers"

By Ecological Internet's Rainforest Portal

Demand RAN stop supporting primary forest logging and immediately resign from FSCTAKE ACTION HERE NOW!

SHAME! Rainforest Action Network (RAN) is one of the primary obstacles to protecting ancient rainforests [search] as they promote their first time industrial logging. RAN founded and ardently supports the Forest Stewardship Council's (FSC) [search] destruction of 320,000,000 acres of primary forests (the size of South Africa), including for toilet paper and lawn furniture. This week RAN throws another swanky celebrity filled party to congratulate themselves for logging primary forests to protect them, and to raise further money for more such "rainforest protection". Noted author Naomi Klein will be their guest of honor and receive an award from RAN. Please make Naomi aware of this greenwash, ask that she decline the award to protest RAN's disaster capitalism, and demand that RAN resign from FSC.

September 11, 2011

EARTH MEANDERS: 9/11/01 – The Day America Died

The 9/11 attacks were inhumane barbarity that brutally destroyed thousands. Yet America squandered the opportunity to unite the world against terrorism, instead going it alone to wage perma-war for a decade (permanent war, still on-going), causing tremendous lasting damage to life in America, our ideals, and world standing. In policies that can best be described as grotesque acts of revenge, hundreds of times the original victims of 9/11 were murdered by U.S. troops given illegal orders. Many if not most of the 300,000 to 1,000,000 killed were innocents – just as in the twin tower attacks. This is not the America where I was born and raised. If these militarist, fascist, morally and financially bankrupt policies and resultant collapse of ecology continue; the simpler, more honorable America has died, perhaps forever.

By Dr. Glen Barry, Ecological Internet
Earth Meanders come from Earth's Newsdesk

Introduction
This is not the America I know and love

On the tenth anniversary of 9/11 attacks upon America, I too mourn 3,000 victims of a monstrous criminal evil. Yet as a politically unaffiliated free thinker and global citizen, I am acutely aware that this was only the beginning of the decade’s violent criminal atrocities. I will not and cannot forget America’s dramatic and incautious over-reaction, as mostly decent countrymen and women lashed out with a murderous vengeance. Some 250,000 to one million have been killed in Iraq and about 50,000 in Afghanistan by America’s illegal wars and military aggression (some estimates run much higher). Why bring this up today? Because those that write history control our future, and the true story of American war crimes has not been told.

Post-911, America’s political leaders with vast public support, turned loose its vengeful legions and killing machines, in effect murdering – as occurs with all war deaths – at least 100 to 350 times as many innocents in Persia and Arabia as were lost in the twin towers. The vast majority of these casualties are innocent civilians that loved their children, worked, and prayed to their god just like their New York brethren. Given that several hundred thousand to a million innocent Middle East civilians have been murdered in a decade of American cold-blooded revenge for 9/11, this essay will ask whether this is enough and the wars of murderous vengeance can end now.

Continue reading "EARTH MEANDERS: 9/11/01 – The Day America Died" »

September 1, 2011

RELEASE/VICTORY: Papua New Guinea Begins Commission of Inquiry into Rainforest Land Grabs

By Earth's Newsdesk and the Rainforest Portal, projects of Ecological Internet
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CONTACT: Dr. Glen Barry, glenbarry@ecologicalinternet.org

Time to end rainforest logging in Papua New Guinea and the world

Once again Ecological Internet’s true global rainforest action network contributes to questioning and obstructing the dominate paradigm that primary rainforests exist to be industrially logged


Papua New Guinea has launched a Commission of Inquiry into foreign land grabs of pristine, indigenous owned primary rainforests for clearcut logging and supposed oil palm development. PNG has the world’s third largest rainforests [search], but sadly industrial logging and oil palm are booming, and large, intact old rainforest ecosystems are dwindling fast. An entrenched and voracious Malaysian timber-mafia has until now virtually owned the government and the nation’s rainforests.

“Special Agriculture and Business Leases” (SABL) covering 5.2 million hectares (12.8 million acres) were granted 74 times in recent years by former Prime Minister Michael Somare. These agriculture projects skirted forestry laws and customary land ownership, allowing clearcuts of primary rainforests on customary land without consent, for oil palm which may or may not get planted. Local national led NGOs such as the highly successful ACT NOW![1] and others expressed concern that SABL leases were improperly executed and would result in large scale logging without providing agricultural development.

Continue reading "RELEASE/VICTORY: Papua New Guinea Begins Commission of Inquiry into Rainforest Land Grabs" »

August 10, 2011

EARTH MEANDERS: The Great Rainforest Heist: Greenpeace, WWF, RAN, FSC and REDD+ Conspiracy to Log Earth’s Last Primary Forests for Their Protection

By Earth Meanders, a project of Ecological Internet

CONTACT: Dr. Glen Barry, glenbarry@ecologicalinternet.org

FSC is NOT rainforest safe

WHEN GOOD RAINFOREST GROUPS GO BAD you get monoculture and secondary forest plantations where ancient intact primary rainforests once stood, called sustainable forest management and carbon forestry, by BINGO’s (big NGOs) and United Nations greenwashers, paid for with your membership fees and taxes. Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) is primary forest logging greenwash by money-sucking environmental bureaucracies. Rainforests and other old forest must be protected and restored for local and global ecology and local eco-development from standing forests.

Please donate now to Ecological Internet’s “End Primary Forest Logging Campaign” at http://www.rainforestportal.org/shared/donate/end_primary_forest_logging/ in order to help turn this draft document into a polished, photogenic, researched and footnoted report on BINGO’s Increased Old Forest Greenwash. Relax, there are typos, but wanted to get this out right now in draft.


INTRODUCTION
What would you say to me if I told you the world’s pre-eminent environmental organizations, widely perceived as the leading advocates for rainforests and old growth, have for decades been actively, indeed intimately, involved in logging the world’s last old forests. Would you call me a liar? Tell me I am mentally ill? Or because of the cognitive dissonance would you simply ignore me, thinking it impossible? Well here goes nothing…

There is a global conspiracy to log the Earth’s last primary forests – destroying ancient forests for disposable consumer items – while claiming it is “sustainable forest management” and “carbon forestry”. A number of public forest advocacy groups are going so far as to actually claim that industrial first-time primary forest logging is good for climate, ecosystems and local peoples.

Continue reading "EARTH MEANDERS: The Great Rainforest Heist: Greenpeace, WWF, RAN, FSC and REDD+ Conspiracy to Log Earth’s Last Primary Forests for Their Protection" »