He says that, when President Barack Obama announced a “trillion dollar green energy” initiative, “things were looking up.” But Planet looks into and behind the scenes of what happened to that purported push for alternative energy, asking: “Is it possible for industrial machines to save us from industrial machines?”

Along with Green Illusions author Ozzie Zehner, a Planet producer and interviewee, Gibbs alleges that “not one [major] facility in the world is run by alternative energy alone.” 

Pronounced EYE-sox-Ah-FLUTE-ole, isoxaflutole is a highly toxic pesticide the EPA has linked to cancer and liver damage. And much like dicamba, it's well-known for its ability to drift more than a thousand feet from where it's sprayed, creating potential for broad, unintended damage to nearby crops, backyard gardens and native plants.

Governments are now channelling money into the economy in amounts that have not been seen since the Second World War. However, there have been calls to ensure that public rescue packages should only be agreed if major changes are made to the economy, including significant public ownership of business. There should also be legal and financial consequences for socially irresponsible or criminal corporate behaviour. Surely this all makes sense and would have massive public approval?

So far, the omens are not good. Last week, the US approved a $2 trillion ‘financial stimulus package’ largely intended to prop up the corporate economy. 

AGRIBUSINESS KILLS

Capitalist agriculture and Covid-19: A deadly combination

A socialist biologist explains the tight links between new viruses, industrial food production, and the profitability of multinational corporations.

Wanda Culp, of the Chookeneidí clan of Glacier Bay, has battled for the rights of Indigenous people all of her adult life.

For decades, she’s been an outspoken critic of the Alaska Native regional corporations system, borne out of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971. She believes the system wrests direct power from Indigenous people, clans and tribes, and places it in the hands of a third-party, for-profit organization, whose interests may not necessarily lie with the peoples’.

“Our battles for sovereignty have been compromised by ANCSA,” she said. “They have turned our land over to these corporations that have nothing to do with tribes and clans. And I’m not shy about talking about it.”

The world’s tropical forests are no longer carbon sinks because of human activity, and these forests now emit more carbon than these are able to absorb from the atmosphere as a result of the dual effects of deforestation and land degradation, finds a new study.

The study tracking 300,000 trees over a period of 30 years finds: The ability of the world’s tropical forests to remove carbon from the atmosphere is decreasing.

Forests now occupy 11 per cent of Ireland and the country is committed to reaching 18 per cent coverage by 2050 with the hopes of offsetting its growing carbon footprint from dairy farms, vehicles and fossil-fuel power plants.

But most private interests and foresters can’t be bothered to replant what was lost. To date, the vast majority of Ireland’s new tree plantations consist of conifers including Canadian lodgepole pine (Pinus contorta) or Sitka spruce (Picea sitchensis). Why? Because they grow fast.

Yet industrial monocultures of lodgepole pines have acidified soils and waterways while plantations of Sitka spruce have crowded out native wildlife and created what rural residents describe as “load of crap forestry.”