Disney, recognizing its heavy paper footprint as the world’s largest publisher of children’s books and magazines, has announced it will be changing its paper policies to try to stop the degradation of rainforests in Southeast Asia.
The change comes as a victory for indigenous Indonesians, rainforest wildlife and the atmosphere, which are all being harmed by the vociferous consumption of rainforests by logging in Indonesia.
Tags: · Asia Paper & Pulp, carbon dioxide pollution, Carbon Emissions, children's books, China, deforestation, Disney, Indonesia, Rainforest Action Network, sustainable paper
GE turbines in Brazil (Photo:
Fast-growing Brazil has been criticized for chopping down rainforests to make way for beef cattle, soy and sugar farms.
But those days may be behind us. Brazil is fast becoming an industrial leader with a growing green conscience, as two reports out this week show.
Tags: · Brazil, clean energy, deforestation, GE, Wind Turbines
Brazilian conservation policies were responsible for about half of the 70 percent decline in deforestation within the Amazon rainforest from 2005 to 2009, according to a new study. In an analysis conducted by the Climate Policy Initiative (CPI), resear…
Tags: · Brazil, deforestation, greenrightnow.com
As you might guess, I’m a folder not a crusher. I’ve been delicately sliding gifts out of their festive dress and folding the useable remains for so many years, it’s instinctive.
The bows go in a bag to be reused. Paper gets folded and smoothed, destined to wrap increasingly smaller packages in future years. Gift bags are handled respectfully. Without telltale writing they can soldier on for years. Same for a few sturdy gift boxes, courtesy of a friend who used to send Harry and David. Those come out every year. And we remember our departed friend fondly.
At one time, all this anal retentive fussing made me seem like a nut, a wrapping-paper-saver hoarder, ready for a profile on that reality show about people who stash stuff away until they can’t walk in their house.
Tags: · agri-fibers, BarbaraKesslerBlog, deforestation, forest loss, Forest Preservation, paper conservation, paper consumption, paper from plants, paper from trees, paper waste, Recycled Paper, wrapping paper
A study published by researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison suggests that the link between deforestation and disease—in this case, malaria—may not be as tenuous as some have suggested.
Based on satellite data showing the extent of logging in the Amazon and research from 54 Brazilian health districts, the report concludes that even minimal change to the natural landscape can increase the spread of malaria by up to 50 percent.
Tags: · Amazon rainforest, Brazil, Climate Change, deforestation, malaria, University of Wisconsin study
By Barbara Kessler
Green Right Now
Oil is running out. Clean water sources are dwindling. Next thing you know the very ground beneath our feet will be in jeopardy.
Get ready to worry. It is.
Dirt! The Movie warns us to tread more lightly
Tags: · deforestation, Dirt! The Movie, loss of freshwater, Organic Farming, runoff, sustainable farming, traditional farming
Green Right Now Reports
Groups fighting for a safer, cleaner, more livable Appalachia praised the EPA’s move Thursday to restrict pollution from mountain top removal coal operations in Central Appalachia.
Hobet mountaintop removal site (Photo: Vivian Stockman, ilovemountains.org)
Tags: · Appalachia, coal pollution, deforestation, Drinking Water, ground water contamination, mountain top removal, watersheds
From Green Right Now Reports
A new study involving scientists from 13 organizations, universities and research institutions concludes that forest protection offers one of the most effective, practical, and immediate strategies to combat climate change.
The study, “Indigenous Lands, Protected Areas, and Slowing Climate Change,” was published in PLoS Biology, a peer-reviewed scientific journal, and makes specific recommendations for incorporating protected areas into overall strategies to reduce emissions of greenhouse gasses from deforestation and degradation.
Tags: · and Slowing Climate Change, Brazilian Amazon, deforestation, Indigenous Lands, PLoS Biology, Protected Areas, Taylor Ricketts
They took all the trees and put them in a tree museum. And they charged all the people a dollar and a half just to see ‘em.
By Barbara Kessler
Green Right Now
Joni Mitchell predicted it would come to this. But she had the admission price wrong. Instead of a dollar and a half to get into the tree museum, it will be $15 for adults to visit the tree exhibit opening today in Philadelphia. The interactive Exploring Trees Inside and Out exhibit will debut at Philly’s Please Touch Museum where kids and adults will be able to explore trees and how they help our environment.
The 2,500-foot exhibit, sponsored by Doubletree Hotels and the Arbor Day Foundation, has already been to six other museums and will travel to other locales in 2010 and 2011 (including Los Angeles and Chicago), spreading its message that trees are helpful and fun, and showing kids how they work. Children visiting the exhibit are able to crawl up through the middle of a manufactured tree trunk to see how the plant sustains itself. They can plant a “seed” and watch a simulation of a tree growing, and they can hear the sounds of the animals that live in the forest. Wee folk also can “become” a creature in the woods and “fly” over the tree tops, using the wonders of technology.
Tags: · BarbaraKesslerBlog, deforestation, Exploring Trees Inside and Out, Malaysia, palm oil, Please Touch Museum, rainforest, tropical forest
By Shermakaye Bass
Green Right Now
It’s The Year of Living Dangerously all over again.
Orangutan (Photo: Tom Theodore/Dreamstime)
On Tuesday, two journalists were arrested in Sumatra while covering a politically sensitive topic – palm oil harvesting and the ensuing decimation of Southeast Asia’s old-growth, carbon-capturing rainforests, and the subsequent release of giant CO2 pockets that lie beneath the forests and their peat swamps.
More disturbing than the reporters’ deportation, though, is how little we consumers seem to realize that, not only are we what we eat, but when it comes to palm oil, we are eating our own lifeblood. We’re ‘eating’ our oxygen, we’re ‘eating’ our fellow species. We’re consuming our own future by driving up carbon emissions much faster than we can offset them. We are the snake eating its own tail.
Tags: · Carbon Emissions, carbon pollution, deforestation, Indonesian third largest carbon polluter, orangutans, packaged foods, palm oil, palm planatations, Rainforest Action Network, Rainforest Alliance, Roundtable for Sustainable Palm Oil, RSPO, Southeast Asia, tropical rainforest
By Barbara Kessler
Green Right Now
While the world scrambles to find clean energy solutions, somewhere, every minute of every day, saws buzz through a forest, cutting down one of nature’s antidotes to carbon pollution.
Saving forests in the Congo will help save endangered gorillas (Photo: John Martin)
Tags: · Amazon, Arkansas, Congo, Conservation Fund, Conservation International, deforestation, habitat restoration, Louisiana, Mississippi, Mississippi River Valley, Nature Conservancy, Northern California, rainforest, restoring forests, sustainable forests, The Walt Disney Company, tropical forests
By Ashley Phillips
Green Right Now
In June, Greenpeace released “Slaughtering the Amazon,” a three-year investigation into deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon. Greenpeace found that people were taking over protected lands in order to expand their cattle ranches. This was not only illegal, but large quantities of greenhouse gases were being released into the atmosphere as a result of the rapidly depleting forests.
Adidas, Nike and Timberland have committed to cancel supplier contracts unless their products were guaranteed to be free from Amazon destruction.
Deforestation accounts for around one fifth of global greenhouse gas emissions, more than all the world’s trains, planes and cars combined, and Greenpeace estimates that the cattle industry is responsible for 80 percent of all deforestation.
Now, just four months after the release of “Slaughtering the Amazon,” positive steps are being taken by some of the big companies implicated.
Tags: · Adidas, Bertin, cattle ranches, deforestation, Greenpeace, JBS-Friboi, Marfrig, Minerva, Nike, Slaughtering the Amazon, Timberland
Barbara Kessler
Andrew Winston
Danielle Nierenberg
Anthony Swift