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Biodiversity / Biodevastation

Stories about Biodiversity and Biodevastation.

If We Bring The Good Life To All, Will We Destroy The Planet?

By: 
Nurith Aizenman/NPR

Only one country comes even close to delivering the good life in a sustainable way: Vietnam succeeds on six social indicators — including a life expectancy above 65 years and providing sufficient nutrition — while staying within its limit on every environmental threshold except carbon emissions.

First Nations Face Off against Open-Pen Salmon Farms in British Columbia

By: 
Ron Johnson

Since last August, protesters have occupied facilities associated with two open-pen fish farming sites, both of which are up for relicensing in June. The facilities, operated by Norwegian company Marine Harvest, are located on Swanson Island and Midsummer Island in the Broughton Archipelago in northern British Columbia, an important wild salmon migratory route. Occupiers are sending a clear message to government they want their rights as Indigenous people upheld and the licenses cancelled.

Dying Ecosystems

By: 
Robert Hunziker

Earth’s ecosystems support all life, though collapsed ecosystems would be like stepping outside of the international space station not wearing a space suit. Pop! Bam! Gone!

A recent academic study about signals of ecosystem collapse throughout history fits the space suit analogy. Terrifying truth is exposed: The all-important biosphere is sending out warning signals of impending crises… worldwide. It does not seem possible that ecosystems collapse and life dies off. That’s too hard to believe… but, what if it does collapse?

India May Ban Petcoke, One of Dirtiest Fossil Fuels Exported by Koch Brothers

By: 
Steve Horn

While U.S. power plants have considered petroleum coke or “petcoke to be too dirty to burn, India, on the other hand, has been importing this coal by-product of tar sands refining for years. However, it may be seeing its last days in the country which has served as its biggest importer.

The Ecosystem is Breaking Down

By: 
Robert Hunziker

The ecosystem is the quintessential essence of life on our planet, and this crucial life system is showing signs of breaking down. It is likely a more pressing problem than climate change. Time will tell but time is short.

The ecosystem consists of all living organisms that interact with nonliving components like air, water, and soil contained within the biosphere, which extends from the bottom of the oceans to the top of the mountains. Although unannounced by authorities or professional orgs, it is already becoming evident that the ecosystem is breaking down. Alas, it’s our only ecosystem.

OECD Fails to Recognize WWF Conservation Abuses

By: 
Stephen Corry

How intertwined are governments and big conservation NGOs? And to what extent do they view fundamental human rights - particularly for powerless minorities - through a lens of self-interest tinted by self-delusion? And what happens when they're challenged?

Survival International is closer to some answers after engaging with a process devised by the Organization for Economic Cooperation & Development (OECD) (a grouping of the world's richer, Western-facing countries). Survival submitted evidence that the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) has colluded with the Cameroonian government in evicting Baka "Pygmies" from their homelands, and in keeping them out.

Organizing on a Sinking Ship: The Future of the Climate Justice Movement

By: 
Kevin Buckland

The climate crisis is the ultimate symptom of the extractivist dynamic, and is an entirely new species of crisis that requires our movements to enact an entirely different logic — including entirely different values, morals, assumptions and strategies — if we are to confront it. Confronting climate change means confronting the system and the culture that has caused it, and providing a scalable alternative. More than merely constructing a new politics to confront the “issue” of climate change, the task of the left in the Capitalocene is to cultivate new processes for engagement in politics. The culture of organizing itself becomes key.

Social Ecology: Communalism Against Climate Chaos

By: 
Brian Tokar

The perspective of social ecology  allows us to see that fossil fuels have long been central to the capitalist mythos of perpetual growth. They have driven ever-increasing concentrations of capital in many economic sectors, and advanced both the regimentation and increasing precarity of human labor worldwide. In Fossil Capital, Andreas Malm explains in detail how early British industrialists opted to switch from abundant water power to coal-fired steam engines to run their mills, despite increased costs and uncertain reliability. The ability to control labor was central to their decision, as the urban poor proved to be vastly more amenable to factory discipline than the more independent-minded rural dwellers who lived along Britain’s rapidly flowing rivers. A century later, massive new oil discoveries in the Middle East and elsewhere would drive previously unfathomable increases in the productivity of human labor and breathe new life into the capitalist myth of unlimited economic expansion.

Rolling Back the Tide of Pesticide Poison, Corruption and Looming Mass Extinction

By: 
Colin Todhunter

An anthropogenic mass extinction is underway that will affect all life on the planet and humans will struggle to survive the phenomenon. So claims Dr Rosemary Mason in a paper (2015) in the Journal of Biological Physics and ChemistryLoss of biodiversity is the most urgent of the environmental problems because this type of diversity is critical to ecosystem services and human health. Mason argues that the modern chemical-intensive industrialised system of food and agriculture is the main culprit.

Have Monsanto and the Biotech Industry Turned Natural Bt Pesticides Into GMO “Super Toxins”?

By: 
Jonathan Latham

Is the supposed safety advantage of GMO crops over conventional chemical pesticides a mirage?

According to biotech lore, the Bt pesticides introduced into many GMO food crops are natural proteins whose toxic activity extends only to narrow groups of insect species. Therefore, says the industry, these pesticides can all be safely eaten, e.g. by humans.

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