By Shermakaye Bass
Green Right Now
It’s The Year of Living Dangerously all over again.
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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.
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Gucci Group commits to protecting Indonesia’s rainforests
[caption id="attachment_6353" align="alignright" width="132" caption="Gucci Group said it plans to implement an industry-leading paper policy."]
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From Green Right Now Reports
Luxury brand Gucci Group said today it is joining forces with Rainforest Action Network and will eliminate all paper made from Indonesian rainforests and plantations and by controversial suppliers such as Asia Pulp and Paper. The company said this is a first step in its plan to implement an industry-leading paper policy.
Rainforest Action Network officials said they are pleased to sign up the famous luxury house in its ongoing effort to protect Indonesian and other endangered forests. Since the beginning of Fall 2009, RAN has been urging the fashion world to more closely examine their paper supply chains and to sever any connection with paper suppliers like Asia Pulp and Paper who are actively destroying Indonesia’s rainforests.
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Tags: · Alexander McQueen, Balenciaga, fashion, Gucci Group, Indonesia’s rainforests, Rainforest Action Network, rainforests, Stella McCartney, Yves Saint Laurent
Cookies, the ‘Dirty 19′ and the palm oil patrol
By Barbara Kessler
Green Right Now
We had a chocolate attack at a store the other day, so we schlepped over to the cookie aisle seeking something sweet and crunchy.
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Tags: · BarbaraKesslerBlog, orangutans, palm oil, products with palm oil, rainforest, Rainforest Action Network, Southeast Asia, stickering products with palm oil
We say we’re green, but…
By Barbara Kessler
Green Right Now
This was a week of news that really illustrated the push and pull between green ideals and the realities of life here on Planet X.
The Obama Administration put logging jobs ahead of forest preservation with its decision to allow a road into an undisturbed forest in the Tongass National Forest outside of Ketchikan, Alaska. The forest, a watershed and recreation area, had been left alone under a Clinton-era rule that protects “roadless” forests.
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Tags: · Alaska, BarbaraKesslerBlog, battlefield, coal, easy being green, forests, Ketchikan, logging, mountaintop mining, Orange County, Rainforest Action Network, roadless forest, sustainable wood, Tongass National Forest, US Forestry Service, Virginia, Wal-Mart, watershed
