Category Archives: Earth Minute

by | 2011-09-28 · 13:46

Earth Minute for September 27: World Bank-Supported “Forest Protection” in Indonesia

Global Justice Ecology Project partners with Margaret Prescod’s Sojourner Truth show on KPFK–Pacifica Los Angeles radio show for a weekly Earth Minute on Tuesdays and a weekly 12 minute Environment Segment every Thursday.

This week’s Earth Minute discusses the workshop on REDD at the World Bank’s annual meetings in Washington, DC.  To listen to the show, click here.

Text from this week’s Earth Minute:

At the annual meetings of the World Bank in Washington, DC, last weekend, I attended a workshop organized by activists from Indonesia about the impacts of World Bank-supported forest conservation projects like REDD.  REDD is the scheme to Reduce Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation that is specifically designed to supposedly “offset” carbon emissions from Industrialized countries like the US by protecting forests in developing countries.

One of the presenters explained that unjust forest conservation projects in Indonesia are leading to violence that rivals the atrocities that occurred under the Suharto dictatorship.

Thousands of forest-based communities are being evicted from their lands by heavily armed forest rangers, paramilitaries and police, who force people to leave at gunpoint while their homes are burned to the ground.

But as one of the speakers pointed out, what is happening in Indonesia is not unique; these strong-arm tactics are happening around the world in the name of “protecting” forests for the purpose of offsetting pollution in Industrialized countries like the US

For the Earth Minute and the Sojourner Truth show, this is Anne Petermann from Global Justice Ecology Project.

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by | 2011-09-21 · 17:04

KPFK Earth Minute on International Day Against Monoculture Tree Plantations

Global Justice Ecology Project partners with Margaret Prescod’s Sojourner Truth show on KPFK–Pacifica Los Angeles radio show for a weekly Earth Minute on Tuesdays and a weekly 12 minute Environment Segment every Thursday.

This week’s Earth Minute discusses the International Day Against Monoculture Tree Plantations.  To listen to the show, go to: http://bit.ly/q6ItPO

Earth Minute September 21, 2011

Wednesday September 21st is the International Day of Action Against Monocultures Tree Plantations–when organizations globally denounce industrial tree plantations, which have had tremendous destructive impacts.

The United Nations allows timber plantations to be called “forests,” despite the fact that tree plantations and forests have nothing in common besides trees.

Timber plantations deplete water and soils; provide no habitat for wildlife; and cause rising rates of sickness from the toxic chemicals used on them.

Forests, on the other hand, provide shelter, medicines, food and clean water to forest dependent communities; give life to countless species that exist nowhere else; and are known as the lungs of the earth because they cleanse the air and regulate the climate.

Conversely, the destruction of forests releases about 20% of global climate emissions annually.

For these and other reasons, scientists around the world issued an open letter demanding the UN distinguish between forests and timber plantations.

To read the letter or for more information, go to our website at globaljusticeecology.org

For the Earth Minute and the Sojourner Truth show, this is Anne Petermann from Global Justice Ecology Project.

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by | 2011-09-01 · 13:40

Earth Minute 8/30/11: Climate Change, the Tar Sands and Hurricane Irene

Global Justice Ecology Project teams up with the Sojourner Truth show on KPFK Los Angeles every Tuesday for an Earth Minute written and recorded by GJEP Executive Director Anne Petermann.

To listen to this week’s Earth Minute, click here and scroll to minute 38:41

Earth Minute 8/30/11

As I sat home yesterday listening to the remnants of Hurricane Irene whipping the trees outside, I thought about the intensifying effect the warming globe is having on the world’s weather; and about the corporations that ignore or deny it, continuing business as usual to the detriment of us all.

The tar sands gigaproject in Northern Alberta is one glaring example. The Indigenous Environmental Network has campaigned to stop the tar sands project for years.  Tar sands oil production poisons Indigenous communities, levels boreal forests, and releases three times the greenhouse gases of conventional oil. But rather than banning this devastating project, a new pipeline is planned, to carry this toxic oil through the US to the Gulf of Mexico.

Hurricane Irene caused billions in damages. Burning tar sands oil will further worsen climate change, causing more extreme weather in the future.

The Indigenous Environmental Network will be holding an Indigenous Day of Action against the tar sands this Friday at the gates of the White House.  To learn more, go to: www.ienearth.org/

For the Earth Minute and the Sojourner Truth show, this is Anne Petermann from Global Justice Ecology Project.

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by | 2011-08-09 · 15:30

Earth Minute Remembers Nuclear Disasters in Japan

This week’s Earth Minute, a collaboration between Global Justice Ecology Project and the Sojourner Truth show on KPFK Los Angeles Pacifica radio, commemorates the 66th anniversary of the bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima and ties them to the current nuclear crisis going on at the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan.

To listen, go to: http://archive.kpfk.org/parchive/mp3/kpfk_110809_070010sojourner.MP3 and scroll to minute 33:40.

Also on the program is nuclear power expert Arne Gunderson about the ongoing nuclear crisis in Japan at minute 19:30.

This week’s Earth Minute transcript:

On this day, sixty-six years ago, the Japanese city of Nagasaki was devastated by an atomic bomb, dropped by the United States.  Three days earlier, Hiroshima was similarly bombed.  Today these cities lead the nuclear disarmament movement.

And since the ongoing disaster at Fukushima, the mayors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are also calling for a ban on nuclear energy.

To the Japan-based World Peace Appeal group, the Fukushima meltdown is the fourth nuclear disaster suffered by the Japanese people, after Hiroshima, Nagasaki and the atomic tests on the Bikini Islands. They explain:

“The human tragedy of the past disasters that included fatalities, cancer and other radiation induced diseases, illustrates the hidden and lingering problems of nuclear power.  We must sustain the awareness raised by Fukushima and speak out about the dangers we face if we continue to pursue nuclear energy.”

“We must never again repeat the mistake of forgetting.”

For the Earth Minute and the Sojourner Truth show, this is Anne Petermann from Global Justice Ecology Project.

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by | 2011-07-26 · 17:00

KPFK Earth Minute on USDA Attempt to Deregulate GMO Plants

To Listen to this week’s Earth Minute on the Sojourner Truth show on KPFK Los Angeles, click on:

http://archive.kpfk.org/parchive/mp3/kpfk_110726_070010sojourner.MP3

And forward to minute 26:00

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by | 2011-07-20 · 15:13

KPFK-GJEP Earth Minute Radio Segment: France Outlaws Fracking

http://archive.kpfk.org/parchive/mp3/kpfk_110719_070010sojourner.MP3

and forward to Minute 35:13

Earlier this month, France made the historic decision to outlaw hydraulic fracturing, also called fracking.  In doing so, France became the first country to pass a law banning the dangerous industrial  practice.

Fracking is a technique used to extract natural gas and oil by using intense pressure to inject water, sand and chemicals into dense rock to release the trapped oil and gas.

Under France’s law, energy companies use fracking in France will have their permits revoked.

In the US, fracking has led to the contamination of ground water, with some residents near fracking sites reporting that they can actually light their tap water on fire.

Anti-fracking campaigns have risen up across the US, and cities including Buffalo, NY and Pittsburgh, PA have also banned the practice.

As with off-shore drilling, stripmining the tarsands, and arctic oil exploration, fracking is moving in the wrong direction.  With the spectre of climate chaos looming, we need to be creating strategies to live without fossil fuels, not creating additional pollution through more extreme fossil fuel extraction techniques.

For the earth minute and the SoJourner Truth show, this is Anne Petermann, from Global Justice Ecology Project.

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by | 2011-07-13 · 11:19

Listen to This Week’s Earth Minute on KPFK Los Angeles: GE Rice Contamination Settlement

Genetic rice lawsuit in St. Louis settled for $750 million

Listen to the Earth Minute on KPFK by going to the following link and forwarding to minute 35:06.

http://archive.kpfk.org/parchive/mp3/kpfk_110712_070010sojourner.MP3

Late in the afternoon of Friday July 1st, just before the holiday weekend, Bayer CropScience agreed to pay $750 million to farmers in five states due to the contamination of the U.S. rice supply with Bayer’s LibertyLink GMO rice in 2006.  This GMO rice had not been approved for human consumption, yet somehow found its way into the rice supply.

Because of the rice contamination scandal, Rice futures plunged, and Europe and Japan banned the import of U.S. rice, which devastated US rice farmers. Many farmers had to leave fields fallow, plant lower-value crops or spend money cleaning equipment of contaminated rice.

The first of what would eventually grow to more than 400 lawsuits representing 11,000 plaintiffs were filed within weeks. Many were eventually consolidated in federal court in Saint Louis Missouri.

The attorney for the farmers believes the outcome sends a signal to those who develop genetically modified seeds that they need to keep those seeds very carefully contained…”

Other groups, like ours, believe that GMOs just shouldn’t be grown in the first place.

For the Earth Minute and the Sojourner Truth Show this is Anne Petermann from Global Justice Ecology Project

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by | 2011-06-22 · 17:21

This Week’s Earth Minute: Indigenous Resistance in Guatemala

To listen to this week’s Earth Minute, written and recorded by Global Justice Ecology Project and aired on the Sojourner Truth show on KPFK Los Angeles, go to minute 40:24 at:

http://archive.kpfk.org/parchive/mp3/kpfk_110621_070010sojourner.MP3

This week’s Earth Minute talks about the resistance of Indigenous Q’eqchi People in Guatemala against plans to take their lands to grow feedstocks for agrofuels (industrial-scale biofuels).

 

 

 

 

 

 

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