Stories about Biodiversity and Biodevastation.
Ian Angus’ Facing the Anthropocene: Fossil Capitalism and the Crisis of the Earth System is required reading. Why? Angus weds natural and social processes of planetary import in 2016. To this end, his “essential background and context” advances a vital discussion.
Western resource politics are a reason for flight and migration in Nigeria
Across Guatemala, indigenous communities are organizing to challenge logging in the country’s vast forests. These communities are concerned with the impact that both legal and illegal logging will have on their watersheds and on the environment.
Across the USA, people from all types of backgrounds marinate for hours each day in the glow of nationalistic and militaristic news reports and entertainment. From the reverence directed toward its historical wars, to the imaginary wars featured in the entertainment industry, to the virtual wars of drone strikes (which blend politics and entertainment into ideological indistinction), glorification of war is ubiquitous. But though it may be amplified by the pervasiveness and invasiveness of social media, this philopolemia is hardly new.
Forests in the Ukrainian Carpathians are on the verge of extinction as the country faces an ecological disaster of unprecedented proportions, environmentalists say. Illegal loggers are illegally trafficking abroad entire trains of fir trees, earning millions of dollars. According to local residents, deforestation has dramatically intensified over the past two years.
The scale of the disaster can be seen in shocking photos of bird’s eye views of cleared mountain slopes which have been were published on the Internet. One of these photos is the southern slope of the Popadia Mountain at the junction of the Zakarpattia and Ivano-Frankivsk regions of the country, where logging is strictly prohibited by law.
Piecemeal, and at long last, chemical manufacturers have begun removing the endocrine-disrupting plastic bisphenol-A (BPA) from products they sell. Sunoco no longer sells BPA for products that might be used by children under three. France has a national ban on BPA food packaging. The EU has banned BPA from baby bottles. These bans and associated product withdrawals are the result of epic scientific research and some intensive environmental campaigning. But in truth these restrictions are not victories for human health. Nor are they even losses for the chemical industry.
As the National Park Service enters its second century, it made me consider: What is the impact of millions of vehicles on our nation’s “best idea” and how does it compromise our experience of these grand places? What is being done to minimize auto traffic in national parks? Which parks are accessible via alternative transportation?
Are you ready for mechanized vehicles on every wilderness trail in the United States? That's what you'll get if a deceptive piece of federal legislation becomes law. Portrayed as a “modest” proposal for mountain bike access, the legislation is a Trojan horse that would throw open all designated wilderness areas to bikes and prevent federal land managers from later excluding them.
Is organic-based farming merely a niche model of agriculture that is not capable of feeding the global population? Or does it have a major role to play?
In addressing these questions, it would be useful to consider a selection of relevant literature to see what it says about the role of organic farming, how this model of agriculture impacts farmers and whether or not it can actually feed the global population.
