Green Options

Judge Juan Nunez has recused himself in the case which focuses around claims that Chevron has been environmentally irresponsible in Ecuador’s Amazonian rainforest. He is the fifth judge to leave the case.

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.

The Canadian government has made good on a promise to protect 15.8 million acres of unique British Columbia rainforest–an area more than twice the size of the entire country of Belgium.

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.

Green plants, trees and their leaves remove noxious carbon dioxide from the air during a process known as Photosynthesis. This is why we are all so upset about the ruination of the rain forests, which act as natural air cleaners in volume due to the density of vegetation.

Depending on how you look at it, Obama’s meeting with Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva this past weekend could be interpreted as either a first step toward cooperating on biofuel trade or a missed opportunity to protect the Amazon rain forest.

For many Malays and Thais, the tourist income generated by bringing people to see animals in their natural habitat doesn’t trickle down as far and as fast as selling bush-meat, skins and organs for traditional medicines, which generates instant cash-in-hand at the expense of the animal population’s future stability.

On Saturday, three people were killed and several injured after a massive landslide in Sarawak, Malaysia. According to one group, the slide could have been prevented if loggers had left the rainforest in the area alone.

World Species Survey details gloomy outlook for many animal species.In early October of 2008, the results of a global species  survey, conducted by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, were released.  The numbers are startling:

• At least a quarter of mammal species are headed toward extinction in the near future.
• Nearly 80 percent of the primate species in southern and southeastern Asia are immediately threatened.
• At least 22 percent of reptile species are at risk of extinction.
• Perhaps 40 percent of North American freshwater fish are threatened.
• In Europe, 45 percent of the most common bird species are rapidly declining, and so are the most common bird species in North America.

But perhaps these figures are a bit too abstract. Here’s a more precise way to look at the present state of bio-diversity on Earth.

With a constant need to look out for the planets ecosystems, it is always saddening to see that some governments simply are not. So when I saw the news that, over the past 12 months, deforestation in the Amazon rain forest had jumped 69%, I was literally shocked.

According to the National Institute for Space Research, or INPE, which monitors destruction of the Amazon, since August 2007 a total of 8,147 square kilometers (3,145 square miles) was destroyed within the Amazon. This is the first such increase in 3 years, and saw a 69% jump over the 4,820 square kilometers (1,861 square miles) felled in the previous 12 months.

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