Category Archives: Uncategorized

by | 2015-02-05 · 10:45

Climate Connections Update

As mentioned in the previous post, Global Justice Ecology Project has decided to shift our energies from Climate Connections to providing news and information through our website and social media platforms. We encourage you to

However, you can still access archived articles on Climate Connections by scrolling below or using the search field.

Below please find an informal list of sources (let us know what we missed!) that have been important to Climate Connections over the years. We only include media sources — it would be too much to list all of the organizations we also follow on social media! We will continue to post on our social media any alerts from those movement sources.  Thanks for your patience in our evolution.

Biofuelwatch

https://www.biofuelwatch.net/

Indigenous Environmental Network

http://www.ienearth.org/

ClimateProgress, by ThinkProgress

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/issue/

Common Dreams

http://www.commondreams.org

Counterpunch

http://www.counterpunch.org/

DeSmogBlog

http://www.desmogblog.com/

Earth First! Newswire

http://earthfirstjournal.org/newswire/

The Ecologist

http://www.theecologist.org

EcoWatch

http://ecowatch.com/

Environmental Health News

http://www.environmentalhealthnews.org/

Grist

http://grist.org/

Indian Country Today Media Network

http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com

Inter Press Service

http://www.ipsnews.net/

InterContinental Cry

https://intercontinentalcry.org/

Mongabay Environmental News

http://news.mongabay.com/

OtherWords

http://otherwords.org

Popular Resistance

 http://www.popularresistance.org

REDD Monitor

http://www.redd-monitor.org/

Truthout

truth-out.org

Toward Freedom

http://www.towardfreedom.com/

Upside Down World

http://upsidedownworld.org/main/

Waging NonViolence

http://wagingnonviolence.org/

WW4 Report

http://ww4report.com/

Z Commentaries

http://zcomm.org/commentaries/

 

 

 

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by | 2015-01-06 · 12:00

Global Justice Ecology Project Executive Director Anne Peterman on the GE American Chestnut

Protesters denounce GE trees at a meeting of the Sustainable Forestry Initiative in 2011 (image by Anne Petermann/Global Justice Ecology Project)

Protesters denounce GE trees at a meeting of the Sustainable Forestry Initiative in 2011
(image by Anne Petermann/Global Justice Ecology Project)

The Global Justice Ecology Project’s Executive Director Anne Peterman was interviewed by Joan Brunwasser on OpEdNews yesterday on the dangers and drawbacks of the GE American chestnut tree being developed by researchers at SUNY Syracuse.

Is GMO Chestnut Tree Monsanto’s Trojan Horse?

Interview by Joan Brunwasser, OpEdNews. 5 January 2015

JB: You’re up in arms against the humble chestnut tree. You recently wrote This Holiday Season say NO to GMO Chestnuts , a strong OpEd piece against it. I admit that I don’t know much about this subject and many of our readers are probably in the same boat. Would you educate us on the subject, please?

AP: Let me be clear first that my background is in forest protection. I have been working to protect the forests of the Northeast US and the world for the last 25 years. I started working on the threats posed by GE trees in 1999 because I worried about their impact on forests. The further I dug, the more concerned I became. So when we talk about the American chestnut tree, we need to understand that this tree was once a key part of the forest ecosystem in the Eastern US. There is an understandably strong desire to return it to that ecosystem. However, I do not agree with replacing wild American chestnut trees with genetically engineered facsimiles.

The reasons for concern about the GE chestnut are many, but one of the main problems is that the GE chestnut has been engineered with foreign DNA from wheat, a process which damages the genome and leads to numerous mutations. This means the engineered tree will likely have unanticipated and unpredictable consequences when released into a forest ecosystem. As we’ve seen time and again with GMO crops, these unanticipated consequences can be very damaging to biodiversity and wildlife, not to mention people. Just take a look at the iconic Monarch butterfly–it’s population is crashing due to the chemicals applied in abundance to herbicide resistant GMO crops. These herbicides are killing off the main food of the butterflies.

Read the entire interview here

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Filed under Biiotechnology, Biodiversity, Bioenergy / Agrofuels, Forests, GE Chestnut, GE Trees, Genetic Engineering, GMOs, Uncategorized

by | 2014-12-25 · 12:10

GE Trees for Conservation? What are you Nuts?

Happy Holidays from the crew at Global Justice Ecology Project.  Below is a very informative piece about the follies of attempting to use genetically engineered trees for conservation, by Rachel Smolker, co-Director of Biofuelwatch and Steering Committee member of the Campaign to STOP GE Trees.

Engineering Chestnut Trees? Biotechnology Takes a Walk in the Woods

By Rachel Smolker, Thursday, 25 December 2014 , Truthout | Op-Ed 

As the holiday season approaches, I just can’t keep those traditional Christmas tunes out of my head: “Jingle Bells,” “Silent Night,” “12 Days of Christmas,” and of course “The Christmas Song,” with its famous opening line, “chestnuts roasting on an open fire.”I grew up in New York. My family used to venture into the city during the Christmas season, and we really did purchase little bags of roasted chestnuts from street vendors. I just love the smell and the sweet, earthy flavor of chestnuts. Reminiscing about that led me to think about food, forests and GMOs.

 To read the entire article, click here

 

 

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Filed under Biiotechnology, Forests, GE Trees, Genetic Engineering, Greenwashing, Monsanto, Tree Plantations, Uncategorized

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by | 2014-12-19 · 16:00

GMO Chestnuts Draw Scrutiny this Holiday

Roasting-2

During the holidays, a time of the iconic roasting of chestnuts, scientists and activists are raising alarms about these efforts to genetically engineer and widely release GE American chestnuts into U.S. forests. Syracuse.com recently reported in “Breakthrough at SUNY-ESF” that researchers at the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry are growing 10,000 genetically engineered (GE) American chestnut trees to be distributed widely when approved.

The GMO chestnuts produced by these trees would be a new GMO food when concerns about GMOs and labeling are mounting.

Continue reading →

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Filed under Biiotechnology, Bioenergy / Agrofuels, Biofuelwatch, Climate Justice, False Solutions to Climate Change, Forests, GE Trees, Genetic Engineering, GMOs, Greenwashing, Uncategorized

by | 2014-12-01 · 15:20

CLIMATE CHANGE: FACES PLACES & PROTEST Exhibit

Durban Climate March, 2011. Photolangelle.org

Durban Climate March, 2011. Photolangelle.org

Photos from the Front Lines

This exhibit went live on the Langelle Photography website on Saturday 30 November 2014, in time for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Lima, Peru that opened 1 December 2014.

The photographs document impacts of and resistance to climate change and false solutions, spanning five continents over more than 25 years.

A review of the exhibit by Jack Foran from The Public began:

Photojournalist Orin Langelle’s exhibit at his new ¡Buen Vivir! gallery at 148 Elmwood in Allentown takes on two enormous issues: world climate change—along with the criminality of its associated corporate denial and delay tactics—and the official media’s so-called “objectivity.”

To view the exhibit online: http://wp.me/p592R1-YI

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Filed under Actions / Protest, Climate Change, Climate Justice, False Solutions to Climate Change, Indigenous Peoples, Photo Essays by Orin Langelle, UN, Uncategorized, UNFCCC

by | 2014-11-19 · 15:00

Impressions from Paraguay: Day one in the tropics

By Anne Petermann, Executive Director, Global Justice Ecology Project

Ayoreo family in the Gran Chaco in Paraguay. This family and their community were forcibly relocated from their homeland by groups who want to exploit the Chaco. Photolangelle.org

Ayoreo family in the Gran Chaco in Paraguay. This family and their community were relocated from their homeland by groups who want to exploit the Chaco. Photolangelle.org

Global Justice Ecology Project just arrived in Paraguay for two weeks of meetings on the themes of wood-based bioenergy, genetically engineered trees, the impacts of livestock and GMO soy production on global deforestation levels, and the solutions to climate change and deforestation provided by local communities maintaining and caring for their traditional lands.

Looking out of the Asunción hotel room at the wide majestic Paraguay river, and the expanse of forest on the other side, feeling the tropical humidity and listening to the rumble of distant thunder, it is hard to imagine that yesterday my GJEP colleague and I woke up in the midst of a major snowstorm in Buffalo, NY.

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Filed under Biodiversity, Bioenergy / Agrofuels, Corporate Globalization, Ending the Era of Extreme Energy, Forests, GE Trees, Indigenous Peoples, Tree Plantations, Uncategorized

by | 2014-09-26 · 10:00

Rev. Billy rejects corporate media, wants to connect directly with you!

If you have not experienced the wisdom and power of Rev. Billy and the Stop Shopping Gospel Choir, be prepared to be amazed. This group of radical activist performance artists are brave, intelligent, and yes “Heavenly” warriors for system change. For years, under the guidance of Rev. Billy and Savitri D., they have been a non-stop force rallying against the insidious systems that are destroying the planet. Their top priority is the consumer society, contemporary trends in greenwashing,  and a reveal of the hidden hand. They have made some loud noises. They have been hit hard. They need, want, and deserve our support.

The group has now decided to flee the Facebook, YouTube and Twitter worlds.  This flight has been incentivized by the group being censored, chased, and in some instances, banished, from those worlds. This as they take on with direct actions, Monsanto, DARPA, JP Morgan Chase, UBS, Koch, and the underlying forces of corporatized society. Now they seek new media opportunities to connect with us,  it is important to know that Rev. Billy and the Choir are the canaries in the increasingly poisoned atmosphere that characterizes modern culture. They are constantly helping to lead the way to search for solutions for us all to survive.    You should know know that this form of media blackout from which they are moving away from, is coming for us all soon.

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Filed under Actions / Protest, Corporate Globalization, False Solutions to Climate Change, Greenwashing, Independent Media, Uncategorized

by | 2014-09-25 · 16:42

Chris Hedges on the coming climate revolt

Chris Hedges has a weekly column at Truthdig.  Last Monday after participating in a variety of events and talks during the activist weekend in NYC including participation in a panel discussion titled “The Climate Crisis: Which Way Out?” with Bernie Sanders, Bill McKibben,  Naomi Klein and Ksama Stewart.  The Real News Network and Producer Jaisal Noor posted a piece about it HERE. Hedges made the remarks partially posted below at that panel discussion.  The full Truthdig piece “The Coming Climate Revolt”  can be found here.

Photo by Ruddy Turnstone at Flood Wall Street, 21 September 2014 as the people wash pepper spray out of their eyes.

Street medics wash pepper spray out of the eyes of protesters during the Flood Wall Street actions on Monday, 22 September.  Photo by Ruddy Turnstone

 The Coming Climate Revolt

by Chris Hedges   Truthdig    21 September 2014

We have undergone a transformation during the last few decades—what John Ralston Saul calls a corporate coup d’état in slow motion. We are no longer a capitalist democracy endowed with a functioning liberal class that once made piecemeal and incremental reform possible. Liberals in the old Democratic Party such as the senators Gaylord Nelson, Birch Bayh and George McGovern—who worked with Ralph Nader to make the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the Mine Safety and Health Act, the Freedom of Information Act and the OSHA law, who made common cause with labor unions to protect workers, who stood up to the arms industry and a bloated military—no longer exist within the Democratic Party, as Nader has been lamenting for several years. They were pushed out as corporate donors began to transform the political landscape with the election of Ronald Reagan. And this is why the Democrats have not, as Bill Curry points out, enacted any major social or economic reforms since the historic environmental laws of the early ’70s.

We are governed, rather, by a species of corporate totalitarianism, or what the political philosopher Sheldon Wolin describes as “inverted totalitarianism.” By this Wolin means a system where corporate power, while it purports to pay fealty to electoral politics, the Constitution, the three branches of government and a free press, along with the iconography and language of American patriotism, has in fact seized all the important levers of power to render the citizen impotent.

The full Truthdig piece “The Coming Climate Revolt”  can be found here.

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Filed under Actions / Protest, Biodiversity, Bioenergy / Agrofuels, Carbon Trading, Climate Justice, Corporate Globalization, Events, False Solutions to Climate Change, Greenwashing, Uncategorized