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Earth's Newsdesk
Biocentric Press/Social Media Releases emphasizing ambitious yet attainable ecological sustainability solutions, a project of Ecological Internet
Including critically acclaimed Earth Meanders biocentric essays
June 15, 2013
ESSAY: The Fascist State of America
#IStandWithEdwardSnowden because free nations don't spy on and murder their citizens. Democracies don't terrorize sovereign nations and their peoples with torture, false imprisonment, and drone-based perma-war. It is time to stand up against the oil oligarchy’s police state that is stifling social change required to achieve universal human rights, justice, equity, and global ecological sustainability.
By Dr. Glen Barry, Ecological Internet
Earth Meanders come from Earth's Newsdesk
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.” – Benjamin Franklin
“If living unfreely but comfortably is something you are willing to accept… it is going to get worse with the next generation… The government has granted itself power it is not entitled to. There is no public oversight. The greatest fear I have for the outcome of these disclosures is that nothing will change… [that people] won’t be willing to stand up and take the risks to fight. I am not afraid, because this is the choice I've made.” – Edward Snowden
The Bush administration "puts forward a false choice between the liberties we cherish and the security we provide." – Candidate Barack Obama 2007
"In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act." – George Orwell
“With American spying and drone perma-war we are witnessing the end of democracy, the failure of a fragile experiment that governments are derived from the people.” – Dr. Glen Barry
** The latest Earth Meanders essay looking at issues of green liberty, including:
- Freedom Isn’t Free, Terrorism Is Pervasive
Earth Meanders essay by Dr. Glen Barry
June 15, 2013
“We the People" are not enemies of the state and deserve and need to know what our government is doing. The truth matters – particularly when human freedom is at stake, and our shared environment is collapsing, with both at risk of being lost forever. America’s civil liberties have been trampled on, and sadly, most don’t seem to care, failing to understand the full implications of big brother’s ascendancy. Defending freedom from government tyranny is not a left-or-right, conservative-or-liberal matter; it is the difference between right and wrong, truth and lies, liberty and enslavement, life and death.
Edward Snowden has revealed the extent to which America has become a total surveillance police state – with wholesale spying upon its own citizens – adding to revelations since 9/11 of the murder of U.S. citizens as well as torture, indefinite detention, and pursuit of drone perma-war, terrorizing entire nations. All of these acts are occurring upon the basis of suspicion alone – without due legal process, violating international law and the U.S. Constitution – in an unprecedented expansion of government powers in the name of a war on terror, when in fact they are being used to control dissent and access oil.
Continue reading "ESSAY: The Fascist State of America" »
April 27, 2013
ESSAY: Freedom Isn’t Free, Terrorism Is Pervasive
Enduring occasional acts of random terror is the cost of living in a free society. Giving up civil liberties does not provide security, but rather enslaves you in a state of pervasive terror. The human family is threatened by systematized eco-terrorism and other assaults by the elite upon the poor far more than by infrequent criminal acts which the courts can and should handle.
By Dr. Glen Barry, Ecological Internet
Earth Meanders come from Earth's Newsdesk
Terrorism is the act of inspiring terror in others by harming presumed innocents. For many, unjust postmodern life on a dying planet is full of PERVASIVE TERROR. The term terrorism has been usurped by the nanny military state to mean only politically motivated violence that targets the public. While such murder is never justified, in fact it occurs rarely and is not a high-profile threat to most. It is one of the manageable costs of being free.
Infrequent criminal acts, of the sort that recently occurred in Boston and occur much more frequently around the world, are tragic but best handled by the criminal justice system. America has become such a drama-queen nation that it continues to incautiously react to such dastardly acts with endless pundit pontificating, needlessly giving up hard-earned revolutionary civil liberties, and lashing out militarily in a counterproductive manner. Doing so breeds the next generation of criminal terrorists and ensures further blowback.
America is not special. In fact, many acts of terror occur around the ecologically and socially collapsing Earth for which America is responsible. The far greater threat issues from systematic targeting of the poor and of nature by America’s and other nations’ privileged elite. The rich and their corporations, police, and military routinely practice systematic terrorism that is much grander in scale, with devastating impact.
To name but a few: two billion people live on less than $2 a day, at least 3,000 kids die daily from bad water, and millions of innocents fear random drone attacks. Where are the outrage and the manhunts to bring those responsible for these preventable tragedies to justice? Their terror is no less heartfelt than that of the pampered elite.
Continue reading "ESSAY: Freedom Isn’t Free, Terrorism Is Pervasive" »
April 20, 2013
ESSAY: What Would John Muir Say... About the Sierra Club?
What would Muir say about the Sierra Club being led by Michael Brune, Accountant-in-Chief and old-growth forest logging apologist? On the occasion of Muir's 175th birthday, we are certain he would not be pleased and would say so strongly. As we celebrate Earth Day, will Madison Progressives see through Brune's greenwash of logging ancient, sacred wildlands for toilet paper and books?
"The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness." - John Muir
"Any fool can destroy trees. They cannot run away; and if they could, they would still be destroyed -- chased and hunted down as long as fun or a dollar could be got..." - John Muir
"The battle we have fought, and are still fighting for the forests is a part of the eternal conflict between right and wrong, and we cannot expect to see the end of it." - John Muir
“By choosing to sell FSC-certified wood, The Home Depot is walking its talk.” - Michael Brune, Executive Director, Sierra Club
By Dr. Glen Barry, Ecological Internet
Earth Meanders come from Earth's Newsdesk
John Muir was one of the greatest protectors of forests and nature who ever lived. He was connected to my hometown Madison, Wisconsin, where he attended college. He later went on to drive the creation of the National Park system and to found the Sierra Club.
Most important, Muir took an uncompromising position that old-growth forest wildernesses must be protected for their intrinsic values. He was bold and brash, and he waged verbal and written warfare with the likes of Gifford Pinchot, the founder of the U.S. Forest Service, over the fate of old-growth forest wildernesses. Their battle over the relative merits of preservation versus conservation of natural wildlands continues to rage today as Earth's last remaining naturally evolved primary forests are industrially cleared and diminished.
Given Muir's absolute commitment to not logging primary forests, I am certain he would be deeply troubled over the ascendency of old-growth logging greenwasher extraordinaire Michael Brune as the head of the Sierra Club. Mr. Brune spoke Saturday in Madison, Wisconsin, and was not expected to mention his years promoting old-growth forest logging.
Continue reading "ESSAY: What Would John Muir Say... About the Sierra Club?" »
March 24, 2013
ESSAY: The Green Liberty Party
The "Earth is dying if we let it. Without ecology there can be no economy. Stop burning and cutting, work less and live more. Live free and green, or die" Political Philosophy.
Human growth in population and industry, at the expense of ecosystems is destroying the natural world, causing mass extinction, abrupt climate change, and economic as well as biosphere collapse. The challenge facing humanity, the greatest challenge of all time, is to foster a political, social, and economic transformation that realigns the human project with its ecosystem habitat.
The corporate-owned American two-party duopoly has proven to be corrupt, unethical, and profoundly ecologically unsustainable. It is time for a political agenda that values all species and ecosystems and plans for the long-term well-being of humanity and all life. It is time for global political Earth revolution to sustain land, water, and air and to achieve universal human rights and economic fairness.
Earth Meanders by Dr. Glen Barry
Personal essays from Earth's Newsdesk with Ecological Internet
ECOLOGY CENTRAL
Earth is collapsing and dying. Humanity is systematically destroying the biodiversity, ecosystems, climate, and biosphere upon which all life depends. Earth's ecosystems continue to be plundered for profit as if air, land, water and oceans have no intrinsic value. Climate change is an important yet singular part of a more widespread collapse of the global biosphere – the thin mantle of life arrayed in ecosystems surrounding the planet – as industrial growth destroys nature for stuff.
There remains only a short time to stop the industrial growth machine from irreparably destroying the biosphere. There is NO replacement, no backup biosphere. Either the human family comes together now to cut emissions and protect ecosystems, or being may well end – certainly well-being.
The central tenets of a Green Liberty political philosophy affirm that abrupt climate change, global ecosystem loss, and biosphere collapse threaten the well-being of the entire human family and of all life. This crisis is only survivable if we drastically cut emissions and move at once to protect natural ecosystems. Continued exponential human and industrial growth at the expense of life-giving ecosystems can only end in ecological and social collapse. We have met ecocide, and it is us. Yet not even this ecocidal state of affairs excuses loss of humanity's inherent rights, freedom, and duties.
Continue reading "ESSAY: The Green Liberty Party" »
February 24, 2013
EARTH MEANDERS: Earth Is Dying, Yet Climate and Forest Movements Lack Urgency and Substance
Human industrial growth is systematically liquidating the natural ecosystems that are the habitat for humans and for all life. Earth is dying, one logged old-growth tree and tank of gasoline at a time, yet most environmental groups are shilling solutions that are inadequate and ill-conceived – such as logging old-growth forests to protect them. Nothing shows this better than Greenpeace and the Rainforest Action Network – in an age of mass extinction, abrupt climate change, and ecosystem collapse – wanting us to wipe our asses with toilet paper from "certified" old-growth forest pulp.
Essay by Dr. Glen Barry, Ecological Internet
Earth Meanders come from Earth's Newsdesk
A profound lack of understanding exists, even amid the supposedly radical environmental movement, of the seriousness of merging ecological crises. If Gaia – the Earth System or biosphere – is alive, as science has come to understand, then clearly she can die as key ecosystems are destroyed and biogeochemical processes fail. To survive, much less thrive, humanity must stop scraping Earth's land of life, spewing waste into our air and water, and claiming it can all be certified as sustainably done, while calling it "development."
Industrial growth's destruction of ecosystems is undermining the habitability of the planet, threatening the maintenance of conditions necessary for life, by destroying the ecosystems required for a living planet. As key ecosystems are lost, indications are humanity will soon be going extinct, quite possibly taking the biosphere and all life with us.
February 4, 2013
ECOLOGY SCIENCE: Terrestrial Ecosystem Loss and Biosphere Collapse
By Dr. Glen Barry, scientific journal article under preparation
Abstract
Planetary boundary science defines key thresholds in the Earth System's ecological conditions that precede local or global ecosystem collapse and threaten human well-being. Terrestrial ecosystems enter into the nine originally defined planetary boundaries only indirectly, through boundaries such as biodiversity and land use. This observational study and literature review aggregate what is known regarding the quantity and quality of terrestrial ecosystems - particularly old-growth and primary forests - necessary to sustain the biosphere. The study seeks to answer the question: what extent of landscapes, bioregions, continents, and the global Earth System must remain as connected and intact core ecological areas and agroecological buffers to sustain local ecosystem services as well as the biosphere commons? Two preeminent considerations are connectivity of large ecosystem patches, enabling them to persist as the matrix for the landscape, and critical collapse of the dominant large habitat patch – or "percolating cluster" – into smaller, more isolated habitats, in a sea of human development. This transition, which has been found to occur at about 40% habitat loss in landscapes and bioregions, is likely to be similar at a continental and global scale. An example of the importance of connected ecosystems is illustrated by the effort to maintain Asian elephants as a viable umbrella species in the Western Ghats bioregion of India. Elephants moving across landscapes are emblematic examples of the myriad types of flows on a connected landscape that make life possible.
A new planetary boundary threshold is proposed: that across scales 60% of terrestrial ecosystems must remain, setting the boundary at 66% as a precaution. It is concluded that sustaining the biosphere requires that natural and semi-natural ecosystems, and their biogeochemical flows, must remain the context for human endeavors. This in turn requires large core ecological areas and geographically well-connected ecosystem processes and patterns as the majority of the global and fractal landscape matrix. Further, again based on ecology's percolation theory, two-thirds of the 66% of terrestrial ecosystems to be maintained must be protected as ecological core areas, for the ecological patterns and processes of the other third - composed of human managed ecosystems - to be sustained as buffer and transition zones. Thus strict protection is proposed for 44% of global land, 22% as agro-ecological buffers, and 33% as zones of sustainable human use. Because humanity is now the major force shaping the biosphere, up to 50% of Earth's land surface has already been transformed from mostly wild to mostly anthropocentric; thus the biosphere may already have lost its global percolating cluster. If so, with diminished connectivity, the global ecosystem now exists as islands of nature within a sea of humanity, and it is urgent to protect large, relatively intact terrestrial ecosystems that remain, especially old-growth and primary forests. To ensure global ecological sustainability, it will be necessary to re-connect matrices of intact ecosystems across scales, so that globally the biosphere can percolate back to connected nature as the provider of context to all life. Otherwise, it is hypothesized the global biosphere may collapse, and Earth System perish.
*Version 1.1 making edits to shorten for publication from paper presented at Kerala Eco-Conference.
Continue reading "ECOLOGY SCIENCE: Terrestrial Ecosystem Loss and Biosphere Collapse" »
December 23, 2012
ECOLOGY SCIENCE: Old Forests, Kerala India's Elephants, and the Biosphere
Proposing a planetary boundary for
terrestrial ecosystem loss
By Dr. Glen Barry, December 16, 2012
Paper presented at the Kerala Law Academy International Law Conference on Conservation of Forests, Wildlife and Ecology, December 15-17, 2012
Theme - The Legal Regime and Measures for Conservation of Bio Diversity and Protection of Ecological Balance of Western Ghats
“Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's need, but not every man's greed.” – Mahatma Gandhi
"How
wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to
improve the world." – Anne Frank
*Version
1.0, not
yet peer reviewed, or final edits for publication in conference proceedings. Here is the most recent version entitled "Terrestrial Ecosystem Loss and Biosphere Collapse" being readied for publication.
Review Paper Abstract
Planetary boundary science continues the study of requirements to avoid ecosystem collapse and to achieve global ecological sustainability, by defining key thresholds in the Earth System's ecological conditions that threaten human well-being. Terrestrial ecosystems do not enter into the nine originally defined boundaries ranging from climate change to water availability, except peripherally through other boundaries such as land use and biodiversity. A rigorous research agenda is necessary to determine what quantity and quality of terrestrial ecosystems are required across landscapes so as to sustain the biosphere. This includes a spatially explicit way of indicating what extent of a landscape, bioregion, continent and global Earth System must remain in the form of connected and intact core ecological areas and semi-natural agroecological buffers, in order to sustain local ecosystem services as well as the biosphere commons. Connectivity of large ecosystem patches which remain the matrix for the landscape is a preeminent consideration. When ~60% of a natural ecosystem habitat remains, after just under 40% of the ecosystem has been destroyed, the landscape is said to percolate, and we see critical collapse of the "percolating cluster" – the dominant large habitat patch constituting the matrix of the landscape – into smaller, more distant habitat, in a sea of human development. This critical deterioration of habitat connectivity continues so that at or near 50% loss of a landscape or bioregon's natural vegetation, the natural habitat percolates from people within ecosystems, to natural islands surrounded by human works. This transition is likely to be similar at a continental and global scale.
A new planetary boundary threshold is proposed: that 60% of terrestrial ecosystems must be maintained across scales – with the boundary set at 66% as a precaution – as a safe space not only for humanity but for all life and to maintain the long-term viability of the biosphere. It is thought that loss and diminishment of terrestrial ecosystems aggregates from the local and regional scale, yet disrupts planetary process with this global scale threshold. It is hypothesized that ensuring natural ecosystems and their biogeochemical flows remain the context for human endeavors is a requirement to sustain the biosphere for the long term, and that fundamentally this requires large core ecological areas, and the critical connectivity of ecosystem processes and patterns, as the global and fractal landscape matrix. It is further proposed on the basis of ecology's percolation theory that two-thirds of the 66% of terrestrial ecosystems must be protected as ecological core areas (in total 44% of the global land mass as intact ecological cores, 22% as agroecological, agroforestry and managed forest buffers, and transition zones), to ensure the ecological integrity of the semi-natural agroecological landscapes, to maintain critical ecosystem connectivity across scales, and encompass semi-natural landscapes and bioregions within a matrix of intact nature to ensure that their own ecological patterns and processes are sustainable. Up to 50% of Earth's land surface has already been transformed from mostly wild to mostly anthropocentric, so the biosphere is likely to have already lost its global percolating cluster. If indeed bioregional and global scaled landscapes are similar to landscape and bioregional pattern, terrestrial ecosystem connectivity is already critically lacking, and the global ecosystem now exists as patches of nature within a sea of humanity. It is urgent to protect most of what remains and to begin reconstructing connected ecological landscape matrixes of intact ecosystems across scales, so that globally the biosphere can percolate back to connected nature as the provider of top-down context to human and all life.
To have meaning in guiding global ecological sustainability policy, these continental and global observations – and proposed 66% presence / 44% protected – planetary boundary for terrestrial ecosystem loss must be grounded in real-life landscape and bioregional conservation considerations. An example are efforts to achieve ecological sustainability, including maintaining continued viable populations of Asian elephants in the Western Ghats bioregion of India, particularly within Kerala state, as an umbrella species. The Asian elephant requires extensive and adequate natural habitat for its survival, and the Western monsoon depends upon forest-dependent pressure gradients – and thus the provision of both provides for water, clean air, soil, pollinators, and other ecosystem services for the region, nation, and biosphere. An initial expansive regional ecosystem mapping exercise that seeks to identify natural gradients in ecological importance has taken place in Kerala, but its largely top-down processes have faced organized socio-political resistance, it is not clear the scientifically valid mapping processes have enough understanding and support, and the legal structure is not in place to tie its requirements for local and regional sustainability to laws. As a real-world example, elephants moving across landscapes are emblematic and widely visible examples of the myriad types of flows that continue on a connected landscape, making life possible. It is suggested that as go the Western Ghats' and Kerala's Asian elephants and their habitat, so shall go the biosphere, and that it is crucial to build awareness that healthy ecosystems are essential to both local advancement and global sustainability. On the basis of taking such an ecosystem and landscape approach to the needs of Earth System sustainability, and given pernicious trends of ecosystem loss and decline, it is concluded that more attention is needed to prevent worst-case outcomes including biosphere collapse and a lifeless Earth, particularly because of abrupt climate change and ecosystem loss. A massive and global program to protect and restore natural ecosystems – funded by a carbon tax on fossil fuels – is presented as the sort of policy approach necessary at this time to avoid biosphere collapse. Humanity is now the major force shaping the biosphere, which, if current trends in ecological loss and diminishment continue, may collapse or die as a result.
Continue reading "ECOLOGY SCIENCE: Old Forests, Kerala India's Elephants, and the Biosphere" »
October 14, 2012
EARTH MEANDERS: Mr. President: Earth Does Not Have Forever
With under a month remaining before the U.S. Presidential election, it is not clear whether either candidate will address abrupt climate change and global ecosystem collapse, and related rollbacks of civil liberties and a state of drone-based perma-war. Clearly President Obama's general rhetoric on the environment is more promising, and Governor Romney is avowedly anti-nature, but the President's record on the environment is weak, and we are running out of time to stop abrupt climate change. Unless I hear specific policies from the President on climate, civil liberties, and drone warfare – I will not be voting for him – instead writing in "None of the Above".
War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength. – George Orwell
Ecocide is jobs. God is hate. Fairness is socialism. Science is lying. Education be dumb. Goodness is climate change. Truth is money. Ignorance is strength. – Romney and Republicans
Drones are love. Waiting is hope. Ecosystems are resources. Rhetoric is action. Justice is murder. Climate change is votes. Obama is god-like. War is peace. – Obama and Democrats
By Dr. Glen Barry, Ecological Internet
Earth Meanders come from Earth's Newsdesk
Listening to the US Presidential election, you wouldn't know Earth faces ecological emergencies including abrupt climate change and ecosystem collapse in water, forests, and food. The United States and world are less free, green and peaceful places – largely because human growth has met ecological limits. Ongoing rollbacks of human rights and civil liberties, as well as the state of perma-war waged by drones terrorizing entire populations, is a direct result of environmental decline caused by industrial growth and the resulting scramble for oil and other resources in a globalized world.
The human family faces its greatest planetary emergency ever as Earth, humanity and all life are poised upon the precipice of total ecological, social and economic collapse. Earth's biosphere – the thin mantle of life from underground, through terrestrial ecosystems, to the top of the atmosphere – is being destroyed. Fisheries, soils, the atmosphere, forests, wetlands, water, oceans, food and other ecosystems are uniformly in decline or simply gone. Global ecological crises are destroying conditions necessary for a habitable Earth, and our descent into resource anarchy has begun.
Global change and ecological science are clear that we are near or have surpassed planetary boundaries required to maintain a livable Earth. We know with certainty that endless growth on a finite planet is impossible. Humanity powers down, abandons growth for a steady state economy, learns to live more simply – but well – and share, or the existence of all life, including our own, is threatened.
Continue reading "EARTH MEANDERS: Mr. President: Earth Does Not Have Forever" »
August 18, 2012
EARTH MEANDERS: This I Know to Be Ecological Truth
Abrupt climate change and ecosystem collapse, caused by human industrial growth at expense of ecology, are poised to utterly destroy our one shared biosphere, and thus virtually all life including humanity.
"I'm for truth, no matter who tells it. I'm for justice, no matter who it is for or against. I'm a human being, first and foremost, and as such I'm for whoever and whatever benefits humanity as a whole." – Malcolm X
By Dr. Glen Barry, Ecological Internet
Earth Meanders come from Earth's Newsdesk
Earth is an ancient organism, alive for 3.5 billion years. Only a few hundred years ago the disease of industrial capitalist growth arose, and is killing her by destroying her ecosystems. The current dominant economic paradigm mistakes ecosystem habitats – which are necessary for life – for disposable resources to be logged, mined, and burnt. Ancient, naturally evolved ecosystems are being stripped of life, largely for growth in throw-away consumer junk. As a result, water, soil, climate, and food systems are failing.
Human history can be summarized as the rich screwing the poor, stealing their work's surplus, while trashing ecosystems, at the point of a gun. For millennium, as human civilization developed, destroying ecosystems has been embraced as normal and desirable, particularly for agriculture. Over-population – going from 1.5 to 7 billion inequitable super-consumers in 125 years – has surpassed planetary ecological boundaries.
It has been routinely claimed that growth and liquidating natural habitat is progress and advancement, when in fact ecosystem loss is ecocide, and is killing us all. Ecosystem collapse is already here for one billion people globally without enough food, another billion lacking water, two billion living on less than $2 per day, and those subsisting on industrially over-developed and climate changed lands. Austerity in over-developed countries is in fact largely caused by ecosystem collapse, as jobs and easy growth from once-off harvesting of ecosystems ends. Without intact, healthy ecosystems, this is all our futures.
Continue reading "EARTH MEANDERS: This I Know to Be Ecological Truth" »
July 25, 2012
RELEASE: With Sudden Greenland Ice Melt, Reiterating Declaration of Planetary Ecological Emergency
Given dramatic Greenland ice sheet melt and historic U.S. drought's threat to global food supply, Ecological Internet renews calls for urgent measures to avoid global ecosystem collapse, achieve sustainable development, and sustain global ecosystems and the biosphere
By Ecological Internet, http://www.climateark.org/
Contact: Dr. Glen Barry, glenbarry@ecologicalinternet.org
(Madison, WI) - Nearly the entire massive ice sheet that blankets Greenland suddenly started melting this month, even its coldest places. In just a few days, the amount of thawed ice sheet surface skyrocketed from 40 percent to 97 percent. This continues the shocking heating and melting of the Arctic, which is severely impacting the Northern hemisphere's weather – including contributing to America's dramatic drought and heat wave - through changes in the jet and gulf streams.
According to a NASA press release [1] – which includes a stunning satellite interpretation of the melt –about half of Greenland's surface ice sheet naturally melts during an average summer. But data from three independent satellites this July showed that in that on July 8, about 40 percent of the ice sheet had undergone thawing at or near the surface. In just a few days, the melting dramatically accelerated and an estimated 97 percent of the ice sheet surface had thawed by July 12. Carbon pollution thresholds appear to have been reached whereby the Greenland ice sheet will begin to fully melt, raising sea levels by as much as 7 meters.
July 9, 2012
EARTH MEANDERS: U.S. Abrupt Climate Change 2012: Where Will You Be the Day Earth’s Death Became Unavoidable?
The world’s and especially America’s environment has gone mad during the summer of 2012. Abrupt climate change is clearly upon us, and life-giving ecosystems are visibly failing, portending doom for our shared biosphere, all life, and humanity. Given overshoot of ecological boundaries, and failure to pursue concerted national and global sustainable development and ecological sustainability policy, 2012 may well be the year Earth’s death through collapse of its one shared biosphere becomes inevitable.
By Dr. Glen Barry, Ecological Internet
Earth Meanders come from Earth's Newsdesk
Abrupt Climate Change Is Now
Fundamentally the meaning of life is ecosystems [search]. Without a healthy, intact, diverse and operational environment - humanity and all life simply cannot exist. As a result of the human ecocidal system of industrial growth, local ecosystems are being destroyed globally for insatiable human consumption. Life of every sort – including Gaia, the Earth system herself – is dying.
Earth's biosphere - the thin mantle of life from underground to the top of the atmosphere, which self-regulates the Earth System to keep it habitable - is collapsing. Ecological science knows this with certainty – in disciplines including planetary boundaries, limits to growth, global change and ecology. If nothing is done, massive social and ecological collapse is imminent, and the end of biological being is possible. Earth is burning and the human family is essentially doing nothing.
April 16, 2012
EARTH MEANDERS: The Great Rainforest Heist
How environmental groups gone bad greenwash logging Earth’s last primary old forests
Essay by Dr. Glen Barry, Ecological Internet
Earth Meanders come from Earth's Newsdesk
SummaryMost major environmental NGOs - including Greenpeace and the Rainforest Action Network in particular - are deeply involved with efforts to "sustainably" industrially log Earth's last primary and old-growth forests. Through their membership in the Forest Stewardship Council, which is heavily dependent upon old forest logging to meet market demand, NGOs greenwash old-growth logging across hundreds of millions of acres, and the nascent Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation program will finance a major expansion. As the science indicates (see Terrestrial Ecosystem Loss and Biosphere Collapse for exhaustive review), industrial primary and old-growth forest logging is never ecologically sustainable, and loss of old forests threatens local livelihoods, and local and global ecological sustainability. Old-growth forest logging will never end as long as environmental NGOs continue their greenwash.
The world’s pre-eminent environmental organizations, widely perceived as the leading advocates for rainforests and old growth, have for decades been actively promoting primary forest logging [search]. Groups like Greenpeace, Rainforest Action Network (RAN), The Nature Conservancy, Conservation International, World Wide Fund for Nature/World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and the Environmental Defense Fund actively promote industrially logging Earth’s last old forests. Through their support of the existing “Forest Stewardship Council” (FSC), and/or planned compromised “Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation” (REDD), they are at the forefront of destroying ancient forests for disposable consumer items – claiming it is “sustainable forest management” and “carbon forestry”.
Rainforest movement corruption is rampant as these big bureaucratic, corporatist NGOs conspire to log Earth's last primary rainforests and other old growth forests. Collectively the “NGO Old Forest Sell-Outs” are greenwashing FSC’s destruction of over 300,000,000 acres of old forests, destroying an area of primary rainforests and other old forests the size of South Africa (two times the size of Texas)! FSC and its members have built a massive market for continued business as usual industrially harvested primary forest timbers – with minor, cosmetic changes – certifying as acceptable murdering old forests and their life for consumption of products ranging from toilet paper to lawn furniture. Some 70% of FSC products contain primary forest timbers, and as little as 10% of any product must be from certified sources.
Continue reading "EARTH MEANDERS: The Great Rainforest Heist" »