Green Options

Editor’s Note: This is a guest post by filmmaker Joe Berlinger, director of Crude. For more information visit the Crude film website.

During the summer of 2005, a charismatic American environmental lawyer named Steven Donziger knocked on my Manhattan office door. He was running a $27 billion class-action lawsuit on behalf of 30,000 Ecuadorean inhabitants of the Amazon rainforest and was looking for a filmmaker to tell his clients’ story.

Since I am not known as an environmental filmmaker — my last film, “Metallica: Some Kind of Monster,” was a warts-and-all portrait of a heavy metal band in crisis — I was a little surprised that Donziger had sought me out to me to make his pitch.

The story the lawyer told me was indeed shocking: From the mid-1960s until the early 1990s, Texaco (now Chevron) dumped 18 billion gallons of oil and toxic waste into the Amazon rainforest of Ecuador, creating a 1,700-square-mile “cancer death zone” the size of Rhode Island. The plaintiffs he represented alleged that birth defects, leukemia, miscarriages and other ailments were plaguing the people of the region, and the Amazon itself — one of the few places on Earth to survive the last ice age — was gasping for breath under the strain of oil exploitation.

Japan has agreed to supply Peru with a $120 million loan to help protect approximately 136 million acres of the Amazon Rainforest from deforestation.

The loan will have an annual interest rate of 0.1% and won’t need to be repaid for 40 years. It is part of a plan to help Peru reach a rate of zero deforestation in the next 10 years. Peru’s Minister of the Environment says that the amount of forest that will be protected help store 20 million tons of carbon dioxide each year, aiding in efforts to combat global climate change.

This week, U.S. President Barack Obama will head to Trinidad and Tobago for the 5th Summit of the Americas. He will meet with leaders from Western Hemisphere Nations and discuss a number of pressing issues such as the worldwide economic crisis, U.S. relations with Cuba, trade, energy, conservation, illegal immigration, poverty, and drugs.

Should we expect anything meaningful to happen on the conservation front as a result of the summit and Obama’s new approach toward international relations?

Peru is sponsoring a project to divert river water from one region to another by constructing a 12.5 mile long tunnel through a 6000 foot high mountain. Is this a crazy abuse of human power, or a wonderful use of our capabilities?

The tunnel is part of the Olmos-Tinajones Hydroelectric-Irrigation Project and will divert water from the Huancabamba River of Peru’s Cajamarca region to the neighboring region of Lambayeque. It will be completed by year’s end, and will irrigate approximately 150,000 hectares of land (~ 375,000 acres) and generate up to 600 MW of electricity.

A Peruvian company that makes beer from coca leaves now has plans to export its product to countries like China, Venezuela, and South Africa.

The company making the beer is a supporter of the National Confederation of Coca Farmers, a group that advocates for more organized production of coca plants. The beer is named Apu, and is already sold in southeastern cities of Peru like Cusco, the well-known gateway city to legendary Machu Picchu.

But wait… don’t draw any conclusions yet. According to the source of this information, the online news source Living in Peru, spokespeople for the group say “The goal is to demonstrate that coca leaves are not cocaine…the plant should be industrialized to avoid the production of cocaine.”

Peru’s Ministry of Agriculture has launched an ambitious project. The goal: plant 40 million trees in 3 months to help deter the effects of climate change.

According to Peruvian news source Andina, the Ministry hopes to complete the project by February 20th of this year. They started working on December 13th of last year. That will mean that an average of 512,820 trees will be planted each day over a three month period– an astounding and inspiring example for other countries to follow around the world.

Brazil’s government has announced plans to increase their soldiers in the Amazon Rainforest from 17,000 to 30,000 over the next 9 years, as well as build new forts and improve others. Why have they chosen to invest $488.6 million in this plan?

Thousands of people rioted on Sunday in Paragominas, Brazil, protesting the government’s crackdown on illegal logging in the Amazon rainforest. The protesters burned vehicles, set the offices of the environmental agency Ibama on fire, and stole 14 trucks carrying 400 cubic meters of logs seized from illegal logging activities in the Amazon.

The rioters chased government officials into a hotel and attempted to smash their way in with a tractor, but were forced back by the use of tear gas. Nobody was injured in the attack.

The mission of Amazon Watch is: “to work with indigenous and environmental organizations in the Amazon Basin to defend the environment and advance indigenous peoples’ rights in the face of large-scale industrial development-oil and gas pipelines, power lines, roads, and other mega-projects.”

If you work in San Francisco and want to take an inspirational lunch break tomorrow, pounce on over to the Amazon Watch Celebration Luncheon from 12 noon - 1:30 pm at the Green Room, War Memorial Veterans Building, 401 Van Ness Avenue, Second Floor. Entry is complimentary, but just to be sure call and reserve a spot: 415-487-9600. The hour and a half lunch will celebrate recent victories in the Amazon and protecting the wildlife and indigenous peoples inhabit it. Luis Yanza (the Goldman Environmental Prize winner from Ecuador) will be speaking.

Looking for something to do? At an awkward party? Did your boyfriend or girlfriend just dump you?

Or do you think you’re sophisticated because you read a bunch of books and pay attention to world news? Then test your knowledge of geography with these quick and fun online games, you nerd!

“We often hear of environmental catastophes but almost never meet the people who suffer the consequences.”

Those are some of the introductory words of Lou Dematteis, one of the authors and photographers of the new photo book Crude Reflections: Oil, Ruin, and Resistance in the Amazon Rainforest.