Palm oil companies operating in Indonesia have pledged to stop expanding plantations into rainforests [ark]. In late 2006 Ecological Internet was the first to launch a large international protest campaign on this matter -- bringing to the world's attention how oil palm plantations on carbon rich tropical rainforest peatlands were destroying biodiversity, global climate and orangutan habitat. Over 11,000 protestors from 114 countries sent one quarter of a million protest emails to the Indonesian government. On another occasion similar numbers brought the matter to the attention of every UN climate change national focal point. Others including Greenpeace later followed our lead [ark | search].

Together we -- including EI Earth Action Network members -- have achieved these pledges to keep oil palm out of rainforests, and this is a tremendous victory for rainforest and climate protection movement. Certainly more remains to be done. It is still questionable to use food for fuel. Indigenous and other local peoples may still lose their land to corporations. Already cleared peat soils that should be reflooded and restored to hold their carbon are likely to be developed. And the Indonesian government is notoriously fast and loose with promises to disarm environmental campaigns, and enforcement may well lag. Without continued monitoring, this pledge will be disregarded and oil palm will continue to expand even into protected areas [ark] and orangutan habitat [ark]. Yet what makes this victory so savory is that it is the companies buying the palm oil themselves that have made the pledge -- it will be hard for them to renege.

Continue reading "VICTORY! Oil Palm Companies Pledge to Stay Out of Indonesian Rainforests" »

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Support Ecological Internet in Our Fight to Defend the Earth
Please Donate Now

Dear colleagues,

Ecological Internet (EI) is launching our 2008 mid-year fund-raiser during which we must raise $70,000 to remain in operation. Please make your tax-deductible donation now at http://www.climateark.org/donate/. Doing so now is best as the first $15,000 in donations will be doubled by a matching grant, and once you have donated, we promise not to bother you again during this fund-raiser. Every May and November we launch a six week donation campaign that meets most of our modest costs for computers, bandwidth and salaries. Tax-deductible gifts and tithes can be made with credit cards and by mail. EI depends upon YOU and others that love the Earth to continue to succeed.

The Earth system and all life are under threat as never before -- forest decimation, climate change, water scarcity and ocean decline are some of the threats destroying our planet. Non-profit Ecological Internet specializes in the use of the Internet to defend the Earth from these threats. EI's mission is to empower the global movement for environmental sustainability by providing information retrieval tools, portal services, analysis that aid in the conservation of global ecosystems.

Continue reading "New Earth Rising 2008" »

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Bill McKibben [search] writes in "Civilization's last chance" [ark] the best summing up of the known threats facing humanity now from climate change if major emission cuts are not pursued immediately. His latest campaign efforts highlight the number 350, which he calls "the most important number on Earth" because of scientific understanding that if carbon emissions are not stablized at 350 ppm, it will not be possible "to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed."

It has been noted here that at 383 ppm we are already well past this threshold, and thus achieving 350 ppm will require gargantuan efforts if we are to survive much less prosper. The piece is a clarion call that long predicted limits to growth have arrived and the fate of civilization depends upon urgent massive emission cuts now, tomorrow, next year and certainly for the years and decades well before 2050 as is being proposed [ark | search].

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Much ado has been made [ark | more\ark] regarding a study last week in Nature which found that global warming may slow or even temporarily cool over the coming decade. This was seized upon by all sorts of climate skeptics [search] and charlatans to suggest climate change is not so important after all. I have three brief responses.

Firstly, the rise in average global temperature is only one way to characterize change in atmospheric patterns and processes. It is becoming apparent that broader extremes around temperature averages -- as demonstrated by unusual weather events, including quite possibly the cyclone in Myanmar [ark] -- may be the greater harm. This is why "climate change" has long been recognized as a better term than "global warming" to communicate these dynamics.

Continue reading "Global Warming and Cooling, Climate Change Versus Weather" »

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It is gravely unethical and ecologically devastating to expand production of biofuels by allowing land to be stolen from local Afro-Colombian communities; and at the expense of Colombia's ancient primary rainforests, food security, water resources and regional climate

TAKE ACTION! Plantation expansion for agrofuels remains a major threat to the lives, livelihoods and the environment of Afro-Colombian and other peasant communities in Chocó, Colombia. This is one of the world's most biodiverse regions, with large areas of rainforest now facing destruction. The Chocó rainforests [search] are home to 7,000 to 8,000 species, including 2,000 endemic plant species and 100 endemic bird species. Even before the current palm oil and agrofuel expansion, 66% had been destroyed. Communities and rainforests are under threat from palm oil and sugar cane expansion for agrofuels in other parts of Colombia, too, for example around Tumaco, near the border with Ecuador, in Santander and in Magdalena. If agrofuels -- growing food for fuel -- continue to expand in Colombia, food prices are bound to rise and the nation's food security erode as is happening around the world. Please ask the government to stop and reverse those policies and to protect Colombia's communities and rich environment from further destruction for agrofuels. TAKE ACTION!

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Over 110 global environmental groups have came out against chimerical coal industry plans to bury carbon emissions [ark]. This coincides with Greenpeace's release of a new report entitled "False Hope" which correctly concludes that false promises of carbon capture and storage (CCS) [search] prolong the agony of coal dependence. CCS is revealed to be an untested myth that threatens to lock us into antiquated coal energy [search] and an obliterated atmosphere. CCS will not be ready in time (or maybe ever), wastes climate resources, is risky and undermines more rigorous approaches focused upon renewable energy.

It is pleasing to see Greenpeace join other biocentric groups in understanding ending the use of coal is essential to save the climate. Yet as with ancient forests, the question of "clean coal" splits the environmental movement. What is so mystifying is why generally rigorous environmental groups like Greenpeace -- along with so many other groups including Rainforest Action Network -- are so visionary on coal while continuing to insist that logging of ancient forests, equally antiquated and damaging to not only the climate but also biodiversity, can be certified as being environmentally acceptable. The economic dislocation caused by ending ancient forest logging [search] would be much less than ending use of coal. Centuries of both over-burning and over-cutting are the fundamental underpinnings of contemporary ecological decline.

Continue reading "Environmentalists Reject "Clean" Coal Greenwash (but not "Certified" Ancient Forest Logging)" »

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Russia has indicated it opposes further international efforts to negotiate reductions in greenhouse gas emissions [ark]. It joins the United States, China, and India as the top polluting nations [search] obstructing international cooperative measures to cut carbon emissions by at least 80% [ark], necessary to address climate change. What is it about these filthy, addicted to economic growth and rapidly over-developing countries that make them unable to act to avert a very serious crisis of their own making?

In the face of unprecedented global ecological crises, the nation state system of government setup under the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 has proven unwieldy and ineffective. It may well be that the necessary social change to protect against global heating, water shortages, ecosystem loss and related crises of militarism and hunger cannot be addressed under the current system. Given leading nations' failure to lead when it is needed most, saving ourselves and the Earth may require changing both our lifestyles and our governments.

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It is easy to rail against "illegal" logging [search], when in fact typical "legal" commercial logging is far more extensive and destructive in total to the world's biodiversity [search], climate [search], water [search] and biosphere [search]. Both liquidate life giving natural habitats, and more people are realizing they are mostly ecologically indistinguishable [ark]. Ancient primary forests industrially harvested for the first time are in fact destroyed -- in terms of being a fully intact ecological system with a unique, unimpaired evolutionary trajectory -- regardless if society considers it legal or illegal. Natural and planted secondary forest ecosystems managed industrially as tree farms become further ecologically diminished with each successive harvest including continued toxification, soil diminishment, species and genetic loss, reduced carbon and water holding potential, and so many other symptoms of ongoing biological homogenization.

Humanity's relationship with all forests must be transformed if we are to stop the hemorrhaging of lost species and halt transformation of the atmosphere. Industrial forestry [search] is incompatible with sustaining the full range of natural forest values [search] -- from species to genes, from soil microbes to local microclimates, from a forest stand to the Earth system and everything in between. Solving the biodiversity [search], climate [search] and water [search] crises requires a new forest protection paradigm that optimizes ecosystem, biodiversity and climate values while ecologically sustainably harvesting the annual growth increment (minus ecological restoration of natural capital to account in the future for past damage).

Continue reading "Legal Logging Destroying the Earth's Biodiversity, Climate, Water and Biosphere" »

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A new study indicates the degree to which humanity has overwhelmed the atmosphere's ancient carbon cycle [ark]. Human activities are putting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere 14,000 times as fast as historic natural processes. Global change [search] at this rate and scale is utterly unprecedented and devastating. Feedbacks such as mountain weathering [search] that historically removed carbon dioxide are being inundated and are unable to continue maintaining relatively constant atmospheric balances and thus climatic patterns.

As humans have become a force of nature, the Earth system's atmosphere is now entirely out of equilibrium. All this energy must go somewhere. In addition to global warming -- increases in average global temperature -- more troublingly we are set to experience spiraling chaotic climate changes. The Earth is already, and will continue, experiencing a complete break down in seasonality, extreme weather events and generally unreliable climatic patterns and oscillations. This is why "climate change" is the more accurate, powerful term to describe the forces that have been released and will impact the Earth for the rest of human history.

Continue reading "Humans Overwhelm Climate Equilibrium" »

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Last year atmospheric carbon dioxide levels increased [ ark | more\ark] by 0.6 percent or 19 billion tonnes. Methane which is twenty-five times as damaging [ark] rose by 0.5 percent or 27 million tonnes after a decade of virtually no increase. Rising carbon dioxide concentrations [search], the primary driver of anthropogenic climate change, have now gone from 280 parts per million (ppm) in 1850 to 385 ppm. As we have pointed out, this is problematic given recent indications are 350 ppm is a critical threshold beyond which impacts are permanent and not fully known. Valuable time is being lost and the lack of serious attention to the global climate change planetary emergency is most troubling.

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