Green Options

Photo by David Gilbert, http://www.uncontacted.com/

A documentary or any feature film, like a good dessert, needs good texture. Some docs offer light delicate flavors, while others serve up crisp tawdry offerings but Crude, the latest feature documentary from director Joe Berlinger (Brother’s Keeper, Metallica: Some Kind of Monster) brings a feel so viscous its some wonder that the film and the emotions within it don’t just ooze into the theater.

And why wouldn’t the film be viscous with center of the film swirling around a legal case about the black gold being pumped out of the jungles of Ecuador. Some have called the case the “Amazon Chernobyl” but whatever the name, Berlinger delves head first into this the David versus Goliath story that circles around one of the longest and most controversial legal (not to mention environmental and human rights) cases ever.

For years, green activists were “anti-technology”, claiming that technological advances were largely responsible for the polluted state of Mother Earth. This was a fair claim, as yesterday’s technologies only looked at the bottom line, and not the resulting mess. In today’s reality, the words “green” and “technology” no longer constitute an oxymoron, as technologists have turned their attention to cleaning up the mess previous generations have made.

The Xingu River — home to some 600 species of fish — is one of the largest tributaries running through the Amazon. But not if the Brazilian state power company has their way.

What would be the world’s third largest dam, called the Belo Monte, would flood over 200 square miles of tropical rainforest; about the size of Tucson, AZ. It would also flood the homes of 19,000 people.

By Lester R. Brown

Protecting the earth’s nearly 4 billion hectares of remaining forests and replanting those already lost are both essential for restoring the earth’s health, an important foundation for the new economy. Reducing rainfall runoff and the associated flooding and soil erosion, recycling rainfall inland, and restoring aquifer recharge depend on simultaneously reducing pressure on forests and on reforestation.

There is a vast unrealized potential in all countries to lessen the demands that are shrinking the earth’s forest cover. In industrial nations the greatest opportunity lies in reducing the quantity of wood used to make paper, and in developing countries it depends on reducing fuelwood use.

The rates of paper recycling in the top 10 paper-producing countries range widely, from China and Finland on the low end, recycling 33 and 38 percent of the paper they use, to South Korea and Germany on the high end, at 77 and 66 percent. The United States, the world’s largest paper consumer, is far behind South Korea, but it has raised the share of paper recycled from roughly one fourth in the early 1980s to 50 percent in 2005. If every country recycled as much of its paper as South Korea does, the amount of wood pulp used to produce paper worldwide would drop by one third.

The use of paper, perhaps more than any other single product, reflects the throwaway mentality that evolved during the last century. There is an enormous possibility for reducing paper use simply by replacing facial tissues, paper napkins, disposable diapers, and paper shopping bags with reusable cloth alternatives.

The Rio state government will build concrete walls around some of the city’s biggest slums (pictured on the hillside above) in an attempt to halt deforestation of the surrounding jungle, officials said.

Seven miles of walls, reaching a height of three metres (10ft) will be built around sections of at least 11 slums this year, Icaro Moreno, the president of the state’s public works department, said.

Next Wednesday night, March 25th, tune into HBO2’s premiere of the documentary They Killed Sister Dorothy at 8 pm if you want to begin to understand the violence and injustice that surrounds the destruction of the Amazon rainforest. If you aren’t going to be home, then set your Tivo.

I was fortunate enough to see Daniel Junge’s film last month at the City of the Angels Film Festival in Los Angeles. The documentary follows the aftermath of the murder of 73 year-old Sister Dorothy Stang, known as the Angel of the Amazon, a Catholic nun and rainforest activist shot in the back while trying to empower local communities to set up sustainable farms while fighting illegal logging and land grabs.

A large network of Brazilians illegally trafficking in wild animals has been arrested. The network included smugglers, hunters, sellers, and middle men.

Though 72 have been arrested, 102 arrest warrants were issued and the investigation is ongoing. Federal polize in Brazil used 450 agents in a coordinated sting operation. Several suspects may currently be in Europe. The police raid was the largest anti-animal trafficking effort in ten years there.

The World Bank approved a loan to the Brazilian government for the improvement of environmental management programs.

Focus areas for the programs are forests, water conservation, and energy efficiency. (Climate change will be addressed with an integrated approach that includes all aspects of the programs.) For example, destruction of the Amazon rainforest causes biodiversity loss and contributes to climate change, so decreasing deforestation protects biodiversity and prevents additional global warming.

In the Napo region of northeast Ecuador, the nation’s second largest oil pipeline leaked tens of thousands of gallons of crude oil.

The pipepline company’s website described the leak as being due to ‘natural causes’.

American environmental scientist Douglas Beltman witnessed the amount of oil in the Santa Rosa river in the area and was quoted in a Reuters update, “The river was completely covered with oil from bank to bank.” (Mr. Beltman was generous enough to provide some photos taken of the spill for this story.) About 100 workers are cleaning up the area and a spokesperson for the pipeline company, Oleoducto de Crudos Pesados Ecuador, said the leak had been contained.

Over 1,000 indigenous rights activists formed human banners across a stretch of deforested Amazon rain forest this week at the World Social Forum in Brazil.

“We are the guardians of the forest,” said Marco Apurina, vice-coordinator of Coordenação das Organizações Indígenas da Amazônia Brasileira. “This is a critical moment for indigenous peoples to unite with non-indigenous, activists, teachers, environmentalists, unions, government. The Amazon rainforest needs everyone to work together now to defend it before it’s too late.”

Amazon has launched the second version of the popular XO Laptop campaign. The what campaign? Basically, this:

• Buy an award-winning laptop for $199, which is donated directly to a child in the developing world; or
• Buy two for $399, and keep one.

Why a laptop? Well, the very impressive mission statement says it all:

To create educational opportunities for the world’s poorest children by providing each child with a rugged, low-cost, low-power, connected laptop with content and software designed for collaborative, joyful, self-empowered learning. When children have access to this type of tool they get engaged in their own education. They learn, share, create, and collaborate. They become connected to each other, to the world and to a brighter future.