Tag Archives: destruction

Want to become a Palm Oil Action Leader and help stop cookies from destroying our world?

Conflict palm oil destructionI know it seems crazy, but the way some our favorite foods are grown and manufactured is doing fantastic harm to our world. Conflict palm oil is one product that harms the environment and is widely used in mass produced baked goods including crackers and GirlScout cookies … so the Rainforest Action Network (RAN) is putting together a coalition of leaders who will learn to lead a movement to protect rainforests, the ecosystems they are home to, the air they clean and orangutans. Maybe you’d like to sign on.

CONFLICT PALM OIL: Are your cookies causing orangutan extinction?

We may not be able to see it, but Conflict Palm Oil has become ubiquitous in our everyday lives. It is found in roughly half the packaged products sold in US grocery stores, including favorite snack foods like ice cream, cookies, crackers, chocolate products, cereals, doughnuts and potato chips. In fact, palm oil is likely present in some form in nearly every room of your home.

Demand for palm oil is skyrocketing worldwide. The recent spike in use by the US snack food industry is due in large part to Conflict Palm Oil being used as a replacement for controversial trans fats. The oil is extracted from the fruit of oil palms native to Africa, now grown primarily in Indonesia and Malaysia.

Conflict Palm Oil production is now one of the world’s leading causes of rainforest destruction. Unchecked expansion is pushing new plantations deep into the heart of some of the world’s most culturally and biologically diverse ecosystems. Irreplaceable wildlife species like the Sumatran Rhino, Sumatran Elephant and the Sumatran and Borneo orangutan are being driven to the brink of extinction.

But Conflict Palm Oil is not only a local problem. The clearing of rainforests and carbon-rich peatlands for new plantations is releasing globally significant carbon pollution, making Conflict Palm Oil a major driver of human induced climate change.

If this issue concerns you, maybe you’d like join RAN’s Palm Oil Action Team and learn how to take the lead in stopping rainforest destruction by the snack food industry.

Palm Oil Action Leaders: Building a Movement to Cut Conflict P…

Ever wonder how you can fight deforestation, human rights abuses, child and forced labor, and the extinction of iconic species like the orangutan in YOUR community? RAN's Palm Oil Action Team organizes in their communities and online, around the world, to pressure the biggest corporations on the world to cut Conflict Palm Oil. The Snack Food 20 corporations would hate it – and we would love it – if you joined the Palm Oil Action Team. Check out the video of some of our local leaders, then get involved at http://a.ran.org/a2N

Posted by Rainforest Action Network on Tuesday, 4 August 2015

An animal friend speaking through sign language to tell about his home needing protection from conflict palm oil destruction is Strawberry the Orangutan. There are only about 60,000 wild orangutans left.

Ashéninka activists killed protecting Peru’s forests

A naturalist and expedition guide stands on a pile of timber illegally logged from the rainforest.
Anti-logging native Peruvian activists Edwin Chota Valera, Jorge Ríos Pérez, Leoncio Quinticima Meléndez were killed 01 September 2014 by illegal loggers. Take Part comments:

National Geographic described Chota as “a charismatic activist who opposed drug traffickers and criminal timber syndicates that have come to operate with a sense of near-total impunity across broad swaths of Peru’s isolated borderlands.” All four men were leaders in Alto Tamaya–Saweto, a community of the Ashéninka indigenous Amazonian tribe. Although the Peruvian government has made three arrests in the case, other Ashéninka activists have told reporters of receiving death threats in the wake of the assassinations.

In The Guardian, Alex Soros shares more about this story and tells of an important financial assistance program being offered to Peru by Norway. After the Ashéninka activists’ deaths, Norway signed a contract with the Peruvian government to pay USD$300 million over 6 years if deforestation is “curbed”. The annual Alexander Soros Foundation Environmental Defenders prize was awarded to the activists in 2014.

CUATRO ASHANINKAS ASESINADOS EN PERU POR MADEREROS ILEGALES
El pasado 01 de setiembre se murieron cuatro activistas indígenas Peruanos protegiendo al territorio de su gente y país.

Edwin Chota Valera, Jorge Ríos Pérez, Leoncio Quinticima Meléndez y Francisco Pinedo, asháninkas pertenecientes a la comunidad de Alto Tamaya-Saweto en la región Ucayali, fueron asesinados la semana pasada. Los presuntos autores del crimen serían madereros ilegales de la zona … el líder indígena Edwin Chota y otros dirigentes de su comunidad han denunciado en repetidas oportunidades la presencia de madereros ilegales en sus tierras.

CALL TO ACTION
Sign petition to Attorney General of Peru calling for protection of indigenous community from violence and investigation of the murders of four native anti-logging activists.

LLAMADA A LA ACCION
Firmar petición de Amnistía Internacional pidiendo al Fiscal de la Nación y al Ministro del Interior Peruanos que aseguren una investigación imparcial e inmediata de los asesinatos de los activistas asháninkas … y exigiendo protección para los demás miembros de su comunidad.

Your food is destroying my home.

A girl tells Strawberry the orangutan that she eats peanut butter. Its ingredients are peanuts, sugar, salt, palm oil. Strawberry looks sad, signs to girl, “Your food is destroying my home.” Palm oil is used in cookies and crackers (including Girl Scout Cookies), peanut butter and many other foods. Irreplaceable rainforests and orangutan habitat are being destroyed to produce it. Vote with your dollars – stop buying any products made with palm oil.

Girl Scouts Madi & Rhiannon have been fighting to rid Girl Scout Cookies of Palm Oil since 2007 when they were 11 years old.

Madi and Rhiannon’s inspiring story began catching on with articles appearing in online versions of AnnArbor.com, TIME and CNN. But it was the front-page coverage in the Wall Street Journal that launched the issue into primetime. This amazing piece was quickly followed by a whirlwind media tour that included live national television appearances on ABC, CBS and Fox News as well as a powerful blog post on Huffington Post by Josie Carothers, granddaughter of the inventor of Girl Scout cookies, titled “Why the Inventor of Girl Scout Cookies Would Be Ashamed Today.”

Girl Scouts against palm oil Madi & Rhiannon
Here are actions you can take to stop orangutan habitat and rainforest destruction:
1  Vote with your dollars – stop buying any products made with palm oil.
2  Post this message on Pepsi’s Facebook wall: Hey Pepsi, I’m standing with orangutans, and I can’t stand by brands that use Conflict Palm Oil. Demand responsible palm oil from your suppliers and eliminate Conflict Palm Oil from your products. The power is #InYourPalm.
3  Tweet at Pepsi: Hey @PepsiCo, I can’t stand by brands that use Conflict #PalmOil. The power is #InYourPalm.

Truths about society in new book Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt

Tim Knight shares a review of the book. Now I can’t wait to read it.

Excerpt from the preface

The ruthless hunt for profit creates a world where everything and everyone is expendable. Nothing is sacred. It has blighted inner cities, turned the majestic Appalachian Mountains into a blasted moonscape of poisoned water, soil, and air. It has forced workers into a downward spiral of falling wages and mounting debt until laborers in agricultural fields and sweatshops work in conditions that replicate slavery. It has impoverished our working class and ravaged the middle class. And it has enriched a tiny global elite that has no loyalty to the nation-state. These corporations, if we use the language of patriotism, are traitors.

Tim says,

I just finished Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt by Chris Hedges and Joe Sacco. It is superb, and I’ve spent a fair amount of time typing in passages from the book below in order to capture some of its theme.

The “me” of twenty years ago wouldn’t be caught dead reading a book like this. It is, after all, an unflinching assasination of our present capitalist system. As a younger person, I was wholeheartedly (and more than a little ignorantly) devoted to a dog-eat-dog, lassiez-faire capitalist system. And, in my adult life, I have lived that way, at least inasmuch as I created, built, and sold a successful business and have, before, during, and after that time, been a very active participant in the financial markets (both by way of trading as well as writing).

Experience and observation have moderated my views, however. At the outset I will say that I still regard capitalism as the most proper, natural, and constructive economic system, but I’m a much firmer believer in a modified version – – consistently-regulated with a distribution of wealth more akin to the 1970s than the present day – – than I ever imagined I would be.

and

There are several broad regions of the United States covered in the book, including the Indian reservations of South Dakota; the mean streets of Camden; the wretched lives of the produce-pickers in Southern Florida; and the “moonscape” of West Virginia’s coal country. It is this last area that includes a talk with Larry Gibson, an activist in West Virginia who grew up there, had to leave for a while due to family poverty, and has returned to try to fight for the region’s sake. He says the following, which is perhaps my favorite section of the entire book:

“Living here as a boy, I wasn’t any different than anybody else. First time I knew I was poor was when I went to Cleveland and went to school They taught me I was poor. I traded all this for a strip of green I saw when I walking the street. And I was poor? How ya gonna get a piece of green grass between the sidewalk and the street, and they gonna tell me I’m poor. I thought I was the luckiest kid in the world, with nature. I could walk through the forest. I could hear the animals. I could hear the woods talk to me. Everywhere I looked there was life. I could pick my own apples or cucumbers. I could eat the berries and pawpaws. I love pawpaws. And they gooseberries. Now there is no life there. Only dust. I had a pigeon and when I’d come out of the house, no matter where I went, he flew over my head or sat on my shoulder. I had a hawk I named Fred, I had a bobcat and a three-legged fox that got caught in a trap. I wouldn’t trade that childhood for all the fancy fire trucks and toys the other kids had.