by | 2012-03-22 · 12:56

Instability in Genetically Engineered Tree Company Indicated with ArborGen Shake Up

New Report: Analysis of the State of GE Trees and Advanced Bioenergy Launched

Last week on March 14, ArborGen, a leader in genetically engineered tree research and development, experienced a major shake up when its Board announced “new leadership changes at its senior executive level,” [1] after the failure of the company to go public on the NASDAQ in 2011. [2] Most significantly, Barbara Wells, their CEO and President since 2002 was replaced.

Today, Global Justice Ecology Project announced their new report, An Analysis of the State of GE Trees and Advanced Bioenergy, which details the evolution of the issue of GE trees from 2010 through 2012 and the global campaign to prohibit the release of GE trees.

The report reveals government, industry, university and research institution collusion to advance development of GE trees specifically designed for bioenergy production in the US and globally.

It also describes the impacts of a 2010 lawsuit against GE trees [3] brought against the USDA by a coalition of environmental organizations [4] that had a chilling effect on the GE trees industry by scaring off investors. [5]

“Global Justice Ecology Project published this new report to inform the public about the problems with genetically engineered trees and to highlight what is going on to stop them,” said Anne Petermann, Executive Director of Global Justice Ecology Project, and Coordinator of the STOP GE Trees Campaign.  “This exposé reveals government-industry backroom deals that are using the crisis of climate change and the need for renewable energy to stack the deck in favor of the mass-release of millions of GE trees to feed bioenergy production,” Petermann added.

The report critiques a recent USDA announcement regarding forthcoming changes to their regulatory procedures for reviewing genetically modified organisms (GMOs) to enable corporations to bring their GE products to market in half the time it used to take–down from three years to 13-16 months. One of the GMO plants that would be included in this rapid review process is ArborGen’s GE eucalyptus tree. [6]

Scot Quaranda, Campaign Director for the North Carolina-based Dogwood Alliance stated, “The USDA can’t possibly review GE eucalyptus trees in 13-16 months. GE eucalyptus trees are non-native, invasive, explosively flammable and deplete ground water.  Developing plantations of them in a region that often suffers from extensive drought would be a disaster.” [7]

“If they rush approval of GE trees, the USDA is risking a huge public backlash and a lengthy legal challenge,” warned Global Justice Ecology Project Board Chair Orin Langelle.

In addition to exposing the rapid, government-supported development of GE trees in the US, the report discusses international strategies used by industry to open markets for GE tree products.  This includes attempts to greenwash GE trees by creating phony sustainability criteria for them.

To download the March 20, 2012 report, go to: Analysis of the Current State of GE Trees and Advanced Bioenergy.

Notes:

1. http://www.rubicon-nz.com/main.cfm?menu=news&itemid=115

2. BIOTECH: Tree developer postpones IPO

3. “Groups Sue Government Over GMO Trees”

4. Global Justice Ecology Project, Dogwood Alliance, Sierra Club, Center for Food Safety,International Center for Technology Assessment and Center for Biological Diversity

5. Lawsuit highlights a barrier to biotechnology advancements in the U.S.

6. Monsanto, Dow Gene-Modified Crops to Get Faster U.S. Reviews

7. So-Called Confined field releases of GM Eucalyptus neither confined nor safe

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Filed under Bioenergy / Agrofuels, Climate Change, Energy, False Solutions to Climate Change, GE Trees, Genetic Engineering, Posts from Anne Petermann

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by | 2012-03-21 · 13:30

Last Week’s Earth Minute: Indigenous Blockade of the Tar Sands–in Colorado

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.

Go to the link below and scroll to minute 30:04 to listen to this week’s Earth Minute:

KPFK Earth Minute Tuesday, March 13, 2012

Text from this week’s Earth Minute:

On March 10th, Members of the Stop Suncor and Tar Sands Coalition, including the American Indian Movement and other groups, occupied the site of a Suncor Energy oil spill on the shore of Colorado’s Sand Creek.

Suncor Energy boasts of being the first corporation to begin extracting the tar sands in Athabasca, leading to the deforestation of thousands of square miles of Boreal forest and the destruction of First Nations cultures. Suncor produces more than 90,000 barrels of oil per day at its refinery in Commerce City, Colorado.

Tessa McLean of the American Indian Movement said, “the oil that’s being spilled here came from Athabasca, a First Nations community. My people up are suffering there because of the oil we’re refining here.”

Deanna Meyer of Deep Green Resistance Colorado added, “Suncor has so poisoned this land that oil is bubbling up through numerous burst sub-surface pipelines.  Benzene levels in this water—that fish, ducks, geese, beavers and other beings depend on—are 100 times the safety limit.”

While the spill was first reported last November 27th, it is believed to have begun in February 2011.

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Filed under Actions / Protest, Climate Change, Earth Minute, Energy, Indigenous Peoples, Pollution, Tar Sands

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by | · 12:18

This Week’s Earth Minute: Chevron Executives Charged Over Oil Spill in Brazil

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.

Go to the link below and scroll to minute 38:42 to listen to this week’s Earth Minute:

KPFK Earth Minute Tuesday, March 20, 2012

Text from this week’s Earth Minute:

On March 10th, Members of the Stop Suncor and Tar Sands Coalition, including the American Indian Movement and other groups, occupied the site of a Suncor Energy oil spill on the shore of Colorado’s Sand Creek.

Suncor Energy boasts of being the first corporation to begin extracting the tar sands in Athabasca, leading to the deforestation of thousands of square miles of Boreal forest and the destruction of First Nations cultures. Suncor produces more than 90,000 barrels of oil per day at its refinery in Commerce City, Colorado.

Tessa McLean of the American Indian Movement said, “the oil that’s being spilled here came from Athabasca, a First Nations community. My people up are suffering there because of the oil we’re refining here.”

Deanna Meyer of Deep Green Resistance Colorado added, “Suncor has so poisoned this land that oil is bubbling up through numerous burst sub-surface pipelines.  Benzene levels in this water—that fish, ducks, geese, beavers and other beings depend on—are 100 times the safety limit.”

While the spill was first reported last November 27th, it is believed to have begun in February 2011.

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Filed under Climate Change, Earth Minute, Energy, Oil, Pollution, Posts from Anne Petermann, Water

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by | 2012-03-15 · 15:00

KPFK Earth Segment Highlights Philippine Activist Lidy Nacpil, on the World Water Forum

Global Justice Ecology Project partners with Margaret Prescod and the Sojourner Truth show at KPFK Pacifica in Los Angeles for weekly Earth Segments and weekly Earth Minutes.

This week’s Earth Segment features an interview with Lidy Nacpil, Regional Coordinator of Jubilee South Asia, reporting on the World Water Forum, taking place this week in Marseille, France.

To listen to the Earth Segment, click the link below and scroll to minute 07:00.

KPFK Earth Segment, March 15, 2012

 

 

 

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Filed under Water

by | 2012-03-09 · 13:00

KPFK Earth Segment Celebrates International Women’s Day with Simone Lovera of GFC

Global Justice Ecology Project partners with Margaret Prescod and the Sojourner Truth show at KPFK Pacifica in Los Angeles for weekly Earth Segments and weekly Earth Minutes.

This week’s Earth Segment features an interview with Global Forest Coalition Executive Director Simone Lovera.

Simone Lovera is the executive director of the Global Forest Coalition, a world-wide coalition of 53 NGOs and Indigenous Peoples’ Organizations from 35 different countries striving for rights-based, socially just and effective forest policies. She also works as a forest campaigner for Sobrevivencia/Friends of the Earth-Paraguay.

Prior to 2006 she worked amongst others as campaign coordinator for Friends of the Earth International. She has worked on gender policy since 2006, particularly analyzing the impacts of market-based conservation mechanisms and agrofuel expansion on women.
She is an active member of the Women’s Major Group Steering Committee for Rio+20 and she was on the Advisory Board of the Gender and Climate Change Cutting Edge Pack Report of the Institute for Development Studies.
To listen to the Earth Segment, click the link below and scroll to minute 14:30.

KPK Earth Segment March 8, 2012

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Filed under Indigenous Peoples, Land Grabs, Media, Women

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by | 2012-03-07 · 10:25

Video: Spontaneous Volunteerism, Waterbury, VT

Hurricane Irene’s Damage and Response

Last week’s devastating tornadoes are the latest example of extreme weather.

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It’s very hard these days to be optimistic about the climate chaos that should be evident to all.  It’s also hard to be optimistic about the mainstream conformists out there in the US who exist in their own mentally unbalanced world, seduced by the wonderland of daily corporate propaganda. Where their idea of “propaganda by the deed” is to buy some needless crap, while voting for rich guys who make wars.
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Sometimes those of us who are paying attention can lose sight of the fact that some people in the United States actually do rise to the occasion of caring and helping when necessary. It’s just unfortunate that It’s just not that common and it just doesn’t happen enough, unfortunately.  But it should.
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Hurricane Irene, tropical storm status when it reached Vermont last August, brought out the best in many people. The video Spontaneous Volunteerism Waterbury, VT is a testimony of how people can and do respond with help when disaster strikes.  People were taking care of each other.
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The description under the YouTube video states: “Students in The University of Vermont’s “Rebuilding Vermont” course spent the Fall 2011 semester volunteering in communities recovering from Tropical Storm Irene. This final project explored the concept of “spontaneous volunteerism” through qualitative interviews with residents and and volunteers in Waterbury, Vermont.”As I watched the video, I was uplifted to see the help and aid of the people who responded to Irene’s aftermath and also the resilience of people forced to bounce back from disaster.  I was however, saddened that more people are not getting involved and preparing for volunteerism as climatic disruption keeps rearing its ugly head more and more frequently.
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Maybe volunteerism isn’t the way to explain what I see as necessary if we are to survive the disasters that appear with little or no warning, be they tornado, hurricane, wildfire, flooding and so on.  Maybe it’s time for real community to come together–not just when disaster hits–but all of the time.  People practicing mutual aid and support instead of “I want my useless piece of shit. I really want it. And I want it now!”  But maybe real community is just a dreamer’s utopia.  Someone has to dream though, or everyone’s dream may become a nightmare.
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-Enjoy Spontaneous Volunteerism, Waterbury, VT. –Jack Roseau
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Note:  There are photos taken by GJEP’s Orin Langelle in the video that were borrowed from his Photo Essay from Vermont: The Recovery from Hurricane Irene Begins that includes commentary by GJEP’s Anne Petermann.

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Filed under Actions / Protest, Climate Change, Natural Disasters

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by | 2012-02-29 · 15:00

GJEP February Photo of the Month: Protests at the World Water Forum in Mexico City

Indigenous Peoples, women and campesinos march in protest of the corporate-controlled World Water Forum in Mexico City. (2006) Photo: Langelle/GJEP

March 8th, 2012 is International Women’s Day.  International Women’s Day has been observed since in the early 1900s, a time of great expansion and turbulence in the industrialized world that saw booming population growth and the rise of radical ideologies.

In 1908, Great unrest and critical debate was occurring amongst women. Women’s oppression and inequality was spurring women to become more vocal and active in campaigning for change. Then in 1908, 15,000 women marched through New York City demanding shorter hours, better pay and voting rights.

The next year, the first National Woman’s Day (NWD) was observed across the US on 28 February. Women continued to celebrate NWD on the last Sunday of February until 1913.

In 1910 an International Conference of Working Women was held in Copenhagen, Denmark. A woman named a Clara Zetkin proposed that every year in every country there should be a celebration on the same day – a Women’s Day – to press for their demands. The conference, which included over 100 women from 17 countries, representing unions, socialist parties, working women’s clubs, and the first three women elected to the Finnish parliament, greeted Zetkin’s suggestion with unanimous approval and thus International Women’s Day was the result.

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The Sixth World Water Forum will take place in Marseilles, France from 12-17 March.  There will be a peoples’ Alternative Water Forum taking place at the same time.   The alternative forum is being organized by associations and movements, trade unions, NGOs, citizens and elected representatives from all over the world.

It will be a meeting place for all people who are fighting for water:

– against the appropriation of land and water,

– against the development of shale gas, which pollutes underground aquifers and rivers;

– against the privatization of water by multinationals around the world…

For more on the alternative water forum, click here

In 2010, GJEP Communications Director Jeff Conant won a Project Censored Award for his reporting from the World Water Forum in Istanbul, Turkey.  You can read his article below:

Activists Slam World Water Forum as a Corporate-Driven Fraud

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Filed under Actions / Protest, Climate Change, Corporate Globalization, Indigenous Peoples, Latin America-Caribbean, Photo Essays by Orin Langelle, Water

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by | 2012-02-17 · 14:16

Video: Fake Forest Day in Durban, South Africa during Conference of Polluters

Fake Forest Day was held on Sunday, December 4th in the University of KwaZulu Natal in Durban, South Africa during the UN Conference of Polluters (COP-17).  Below is a short video summarizing the presentations of this day-long event, organized by Global Forest Coalition and Timberwatch Coalition.

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Filed under Biodiversity, Climate Change, Corporate Globalization, False Solutions to Climate Change, Indigenous Peoples, REDD, UNFCCC

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