This week’s “Earth Watch” segment on KPFK features Dr. Rachel Smolker, Co-director of Biofuelwatch, who weighs in on President Obama’s proposals on climate change in his State of the Union Address.
Category Archives: Green Economy
KPFK Earth Watch interview: On Climate Change and Obama’s State of the Union Address
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Filed under Bioenergy / Agrofuels, Climate Change, Climate Justice, Ending the Era of Extreme Energy, Energy, False Solutions to Climate Change, Forests, GE Trees, Green Economy, Indigenous Peoples, Land Grabs
Genetically engineered trees for bioenergy pose major threat to southern forests
Note: Global Justice Ecology Project coordinates the STOP Genetically Engineered Trees Campaign. Join us in telling the USDA to ban genetically engineered trees by signing the petition here.
-The GJEP Team
February 12, 2013. Source: Global Justice Ecology Project
In response to industry plans to develop eucalyptus plantations across the US South[1], environmental groups[2] are raising serious concerns about the impacts of eucalyptus plantations on forests, rural communities, wildlife and the climate, especially if those trees are genetically engineered.
EcoGen, LLC recently announced plans to develop eucalyptus plantations in southern Florida to feed biomass facilities. Additionally, South Carolina-based ArborGen has requested USDA permission to sell billions of genetically engineered cold tolerant eucalyptus trees for plantations in South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas. The USDA is expected to respond to this request in the coming months.
Eucalyptus trees are documented as an invasive pest in California and Florida. But because they cannot grow in sub-freezing temperatures, they have been engineered to be cold-tolerant, enabling them to survive temperatures down to 20°f – vastly expanding their range.
Besides being highly invasive–the Charlotte Observer called them “the kudzu of the 2010s”–eucalyptus plantations deplete ground water and can even worsen droughts. The US Forest Service opposes GE eucalyptus plantations due to their impact on ground water and streams. [3,4]
“GE eucalyptus trees are a disaster waiting to happen–it is critical the USDA reject them,” said Global Justice Ecology Project Executive Director Anne Petermann. “In addition to being invasive, eucalyptus trees are explosively flammable. In a region that has been plagued by droughts in recent years, developing plantations of an invasive, water-greedy and fire-prone tree is foolhardy and dangerous.”
Petermann coordinates the international STOP GE Trees Campaign [5], which has collected thousands of signatures supporting a ban on GE trees due to their potentially catastrophic impacts on communities and forests.
“The forests of the Southeast are some of the most biodiverse in the world,” said Scot Quaranda, Campaign Director of Asheville, NC-based Dogwood Alliance. “They contain species found nowhere else. Species like the Louisiana Black Bear, the golden-cheeked warbler and the red-cockaded woodpecker are already endangered. Eucalyptus plantations could push these and other species over the edge,” he added.
The Georgia Department of Wildlife opposes GE eucalyptus trees due to these impacts. [6]
The STOP GE Trees Campaign is planning events around the Tree Biotechnology 2013 Conference this May in Asheville, NC, where GE tree industry representatives and researchers will gather to discuss the use of GE trees and their deployment across the US South.
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Filed under Biodiversity, Bioenergy / Agrofuels, Climate Change, Ending the Era of Extreme Energy, Energy, False Solutions to Climate Change, Forests, GE Trees, Genetic Engineering, Green Economy, Greenwashing
2012 Top ten articles on Climate Connections
Note: The following are the top ten articles from Climate Connections from 2012, based on the number of views each story received. Several articles were written by GJEP, or were sent to Climate Connections by the original authors. They are posted in reverse order, from number 10 through number 1. Our blog received a record 270,000 visitors in 2012 from over 200 countries.
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Happy New Year,
-The GJEP Team
10. Three responses to Bill McKibben’s new article, “Global Warming’s Terrifying New Math” (July 24)
By Anne Petermann, Executive Director of GJEP, Rachel Smolker of BiofuelWatch, and Keith Brunner, GJEP Communications Associate
Bill McKibben, in his new Rolling Stone article, “Global Warming’s Terrifying New Math” does an effective job at summarizing the hard and theoretical numbers that warn us of the devastating impacts of continuing to burn the Earth’s remaining fossil fuel reserves–yet it somehow falls short of its stated goal to help mobilize a new movement for climate action. Continue reading here
9. Breaking News: Secret US military testing of radiological materials on poor and minority communities (September 24)
By Anne Petermann, Executive Director of GJEP, and Orin Langelle, GJEP Board Chair
During an interview we conducted last week in St. Louis, MO, Dr. Lisa Martino-Taylor gave us a long description of research she had conducted into a major military cover up of the use of U.S. citizens as test subjects for military experiments related to the Cold War.
Continue reading
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Filed under Actions / Protest, Climate Change, Ending the Era of Extreme Energy, Energy, False Solutions to Climate Change, Green Economy, Greenwashing, Indigenous Peoples, Industrial agriculture, Nuclear power, Oil, Political Repression, Posts from Anne Petermann, Rio+20, Tar Sands
Audio: Climate change resistance with Anne Petermann of Global Justice Ecology Project
Note: Anne Petermann is the Executive Director of Global Justice Ecology Project, and directs the international STOP Genetically Engineered Trees Campaign
-The GJEP Team
December 17, 2012. Source: Clearing the Fog Radio
Anne Petermann of the Global Justice Ecology Project discusses the recent climate conference in Doha, Qatar which is characterized more as a trade show for corporations looking to profit from climate change than a conference about solutions, and the increasing exclusion of non-corporate voices. She says solutions to the climate crisis are coming from the bottom up.
Ramsey Sprague of the Tar Sands Blockade (http://tarsandsblockade.org/) describes the growing resistance to the Keystone XL Pipeline and the upcoming direct action training camp and action Jan. 3 to 8. Co-hosts Margaret and Kevin will participate in that action and urge you to support it or participate as well. And ecology activist Diane Wilson who is on her 19th day of a hunger strike describes why she is risking her life to hold Valero Oil accountable to her community.
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Filed under Carbon Trading, Climate Change, Climate Justice, Coal, Corporate Globalization, Ending the Era of Extreme Energy, False Solutions to Climate Change, GE Trees, Green Economy, Independent Media, UNFCCC
Doha: Forest groups denounce false solutions to forest loss at UN climate summit
From Global Forest Coalition, Biofuelwatch and Global Justice Ecology Project
For immediate release – 6 December 2012
UK alleges it will address drivers of climate change – but aims to subsidise a massive expansion of wood-based biomass industry
Doha, Qatar – As negotiations failed to finalise an agreement on a controversial forest policy called REDD+ [1] during the ongoing UN Framework Convention on Climate Change talks in Doha, Qatar [2], forest groups published a letter challenging claims that the drivers of forest change are being addressed by countries within the REDD+ negotiations.
Negotiations on REDD+ turned sour in Doha as developing countries realised they can expect very little funding for this highly controversial forest scheme over the coming years. “The REDD honeymoon is obviously over” states Simone Lovera, executive director of the Global Forest Coalition, who followed the talks.
Furthermore, at the same time that REDD+ is being promoted within the UNFCCC to supposedly protect forest carbon, there is a massive expansion of the biomass industry underway, which will generate increased international trade in wood. This is being actively supported by governments such as that of the UK, and will dwarf any attempts made to protect forests within the UNFCCC.
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Filed under Biodiversity, Bioenergy / Agrofuels, Carbon Trading, Climate Change, Climate Justice, False Solutions to Climate Change, Forests, GE Trees, Green Economy, Greenwashing, Illegal logging, Indigenous Peoples, Industrial agriculture, Land Grabs, REDD, UNFCCC
Making Contact Radio: Saving or Selling the Planet? REDD, Climate Change and Indigenous Lands | National Radio Project
Note: This episode of Making Contact is based upon the Global Justice Ecology Project DVD “A Darker Shade of Green: REDD Alert and the Future of Forests,” produced earlier this year.
To order a copy of the DVD, which includes two bonus features, email: info@globaljusticeecology.org
To listen to the Making Contact episode, click the link below:
Saving or Selling the Planet? REDD, Climate Change and Indigenous Lands | National Radio Project.
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Filed under Actions / Protest, Carbon Trading, Chiapas, Climate Change, Earth Radio, False Solutions to Climate Change, Forests, Green Economy, Greenwashing, Illegal logging, Indigenous Peoples, Land Grabs, Latin America-Caribbean, REDD, Rights, Resilience, and Restoration
Earth Minute: Why Doha is not where climate justice will happen
Global Justice Ecology Project teams up with the Sojourner Truth show on KPFK Pacifica Los Angeles for a weekly Earth Minute each Tuesday and a weekly Earth Watch interview each Thursday.
This week’s Earth Minute addresses the UN climate talks in Doha, Qatar, and why many climate justice organizations have decided not to attend this year’s climate conference, and are organizing with social movements and communities instead.
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Filed under Carbon Trading, Climate Change, Climate Justice, Corporate Globalization, Earth Minute, Earth Radio, Ending the Era of Extreme Energy, Energy, False Solutions to Climate Change, GE Trees, Genetic Engineering, Geoengineering, Green Economy, Greenwashing, Oil, REDD, Rights, Resilience, and Restoration, Synthetic Biology, UNFCCC
Should Chiapas farmers suffer for California’s carbon?
Note: Jeff Conant is the former Communications Director for Global Justice Ecology Project. In March of 2011, he and Orin Langelle, then Co-Director of GJEP, went to Amador Hernandez in Chiapas, Mexico to investigate the threatened forced relocation of the community and its relation to REDD+ and the California-Chiapas-Acre, Brazil climate deal.
–The GJEP Team
By Jeff Conant, November 13 2012. Source: Yes! Magazine
Photo: Jeff Conant
“We are not responsible for climate change—it’s the big industries that are,” said Abelardo, a young man from the Tseltal Mayan village of Amador Hernández in the Lacandon jungle of Chiapas. “So why should we be held responsible, and even punished for it?”
Abelardo was one of dozens of villagers who had traveled to the city of San Cristóbal de las Casas to protest an international policy meeting on climate change and forest conservation. At a high-end conference center, representatives from the state of California and from states and provinces around the world were working out mechanisms intended to mitigate climate change by protecting tropical forests. The group was called the Governor’s Climate and Forests Task Force (GCF), and California’s interest was in using forest preservation in Chiapas as a carbon offset—a means for meeting climate change goals under the state’s 2006 Global Warming Solutions Act.
Such an agreement among subnational governments is unprecedented, and California officials view it as an important way for the world’s eighth largest economy to help the developing world. But judging from the reaction on the streets of San Cristóbal, Mexican peasants see it differently. The lush, mountainous state of Chiapas has a long history of human rights abuses, and the Mexican government has forcibly evicted indigenous families from their lands in the name of environmental protection. To indigenous peasants in the Lacandon jungle, the pending agreement has all the hallmarks of a land grab.
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Filed under Actions / Protest, Carbon Trading, Chiapas, Climate Change, Ending the Era of Extreme Energy, False Solutions to Climate Change, Green Economy, Indigenous Peoples, Land Grabs, Latin America-Caribbean, REDD
