Eindhoven Airport in the Netherlands has claimed to be the first airport in Europe where passengers as of May 2007 can compensate emissions from their flight by donating for tree plantation projects. Last week however, activist groups in London have criticized this kind of carbon offsetting. So how credible is carbon compensation?
Bulletin articles
On last April 9, the Galician organization APDR (Asociación pola defensa da Ría) issued an official statement regarding the FSC certification of the NORFOR company, a subsidiary branch of the Spanish pulp and paper company ENCE, which had been certified in April 2005.
The case study “Swaziland: The myth of sustainable timber plantations” carried out by Wally Menne and Ricardo Carrere and published in March 2007, aims at unveiling the myth of sustainable plantations in Swaziland and showing that large-scale monoculture tree plantations in this country have similar negative impacts as elsewhere and are no exception to the rule.
No one in their right mind can accuse President George W. Bush of overly concerning himself with climate change. In this respect, his curriculum is spotless and both his unreserved support to the oil industry and his oil wars have implied significant inputs to global warming. And if any doubts were left, his persistent refusal to sign the Kyoto Protocol has made him the undisputed leader of those making the largest contribution to the destruction of Planet Earth’s climate.
The problem of the loss of territories by peasants and indigenous peoples in favour of industrial projects has several aspects in Brazil and the Landless Peasant’s Movement (MST) has been struggling to counteract this process.
We have reported on the successive occupations of land covered with vast monoculture eucalyptus plantations for pulp production – one of such occupations recently involved the women of Via Campesina/MST on the occasion of International Woman’s Day.
Ethanol is a biofuel usually made from maize (corn) or sugar cane, which is being enthusiastically promoted as an alternative fuel which can be blended into ordinary petrol or burned directly in special "flex-fuel" engines.
If we want to curb climate change, carbon trading won't do.
In 1992, an infamous leaked memo from Lawrence Summers, who was at the time Chief Economist of the World Bank, stated that "the economic logic behind dumping a load of toxic waste in the lowest wage country is impeccable, and we should face up to that".
The recently released Stern Review on climate change, written by a man who occupied the same position at the World Bank from 2000 to 2003, applies a similar sort of free market environmentalism to climate change.
The present energy matrix is basically compounded by oil (35%), coal (23%) and natural gas (21%). The nations of the OECD -- the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development -- which account for 56% of the planet’s energy consumption are desperately in need of a liquid fuel replacement for oil. Worldwide petroleum extraction rates are expected to peak this year, and global supply will likely dwindle significantly in the next fifty years.
Southern Cameroon is red and green. Green like the forest of the Congo basin that breathes and has a heartbeat and that offers its inhabitants the biotic resources necessary to subsist; and red like the dusty roads where trucks run, transporting the bodies of forest giants that will be turned into furniture, flooring, doors, etc. Along Cameroon’s open veins flows its vital element to the port of Douala, where the vampire from the North comes to quench its thirst…
The Ministry of the Environment is placing Ecuador’s indigenous territories in danger. Under a new term, that of “co-management” it intends to hand over our ancestral territories and their natural resources to logging, oil palm and mining companies.
Like State governments in many other parts of India, the government of Jharkhand State is planning large-scale industrial expansion across the entire region in the name of “development” and “poverty reduction”. To the dismay and disillusionment of mass movements in Jharkhand, newly elected government officials plan to uphold agreements struck by the previous State government with leading steel and mining companies. In return for 169198 Crore Rupees (c.
We had already shared (see WRM's bulletin Nº 111) what the ‘Operation Climate Change’ -- launched on January 1, 1999 -- did in the Niger Delta: activists shut down oil flow stations and gas flares. In response, many houses were destroyed, people were killed and women were raped. However, the struggle continued and mainly women started a joint campaign to protect life by putting a stop to the depredations of Big Oil. They won a fight: in January 2006 Nigerian courts ordered Shell to stop the flaring of natural gas in Ogoniland.