By Dr. Glen Barry, Ecological Internet
Earth Meanders come from Earth's Newsdesk

Earth is so beautiful, so perfect in its intimate interconnectivity, as are humans in their ability to create and transcend, to pass down knowledge, love, and ecological habitat to our children. Yet we know –especially direct victims of childhood rape and ecocide – that Earth and her humanity are filled with a dark, narcissistic self-destructiveness as well.

Two of the very worst evils stalking the land are those who sexually abuse children, and those who wage ecocide upon ecosystems. In fact, they are two sides of the same coin. This is going to be a deeply revealing and challenging essay. If you don’t think freely with an open mind; and are, well, dumb and insensitive, you may not want to try.

Dear Earth friends,

There is nothing like Ecological Internet on Earth, for Earth. For two decades this lean, highly effective effort has pioneered the use of the Internet for ecological protection. Our half a million strong global network has facilitated hundreds of environmental victories through online protest, biocentric advocacy tools, and sharing of deep green thought. Together we are having the same or greater impact for Earth as much larger organizations, without the greenwash.

Today we launch our 13th annual mid-year fund-raiser to continue doing so. Together we must raise a minimum of $25,000 to pay for staffing, computers and bandwidth. Will you please donate $10, $35, $100 or what you can afford – right away – to get us started? http://climateark.org/shared/donate/

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It is time to end US old-growth logging, most of which exists in Alaska’s Tongass National Forest [search]. Please urge the federal government to see the salmon and ecosystems through the dwindling old-growth trees for timber, and shift the focus from logging to an ecological protection economy in Earth’s largest temperate rainforest. With only 0.5% of Tongass’s old-growth remaining – the last areas still containing very large 300-800 year old trees – it is unconscionable that the United States of America continues with proposals to log these last tiny patches. If proposals to further log Tongass’ last old forests advance, it further clearly illustrates the United States has zero international credibility on issues of primary forest protection, climate change, and policy to achieve global ecological sustainability.

Essay by Dr. Glen Barry, Ecological Internet
Earth Meanders come from Earth's Newsdesk

The world’s pre-eminent environmental organizations, widely perceived as the leading advocates for rainforests and old growth, have for decades been actively promoting primary forest logging [search]. Groups like Greenpeace, Rainforest Action Network (RAN), The Nature Conservancy, Conservation International, World Wide Fund for Nature/World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and the Environmental Defense Fund actively promote industrially logging Earth’s last old forests. Through their support of the existing “Forest Stewardship Council” (FSC), and/or planned compromised “Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation” (REDD), they are at the forefront of destroying ancient forests for disposable consumer items – claiming it is “sustainable forest management” and “carbon forestry”.

Rainforest movement corruption is rampant as these big bureaucratic, corporatist NGOs conspire to log Earth's last primary rainforests and other old growth forests. Collectively the “NGO Old Forest Sell-Outs” are greenwashing FSC’s destruction of over 300,000,000 acres of old forests, destroying an area of primary rainforests and other old forests the size of South Africa (two times the size of Texas)! FSC and its members have built a massive market for continued business as usual industrially harvested primary forest timbers – with minor, cosmetic changes – certifying as acceptable murdering old forests and their life for consumption of products ranging from toilet paper to lawn furniture. Some 70% of FSC products contain primary forest timbers, and as little as 10% of any product must be from certified sources.

TAKE ACTION to stop the massacre of Tripa’s orangutans

In a global tragedy for wildlife, rainforests and ecosystem sustainability; rainforest peat fires and land clearing by palm oil firms could finish killing off within weeks about 200 orangutans in an important rainforest habitat [search] in western Indonesia. The Tripa swamp rainforest in Aceh, Indonesia – home to one of the largest remaining populations of wild orangutans in the world – is ablaze as palm oil companies rush to clear forests before a court case stops their plantation expansion. Up to 100 of an already much diminished population may have been killed in recent months, and unless the land grabs and rainforest burning are immediately stopped, the local population of critically endangered Sumatran orangutan (Pongo abelii) may soon go locally extinct, and the whole species soon thereafter.

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http://www.rainforestportal.org/shared/alerts/sendsm.aspx?id=orangutan_oilpalm

TAKE ACTION HERE NOW!

The Congo Basin [search]– home to some of Earth’s last large, ecologically intact, biodiversity rich rainforests – may soon be decimated by oil rigs, pipelines, deforestation, and oil spills. SOCO International – a London-listed oil company – has announced oil exploration plans in Virunga National Park - Africa’s oldest national park. Virunga is an UNESCO World Heritage site, home to a large population of wild gorillas, and many other important wildlife species, ecosystems, and local forest-dependent communities.

Oil exploration in these globally vital rainforest ecosystems will further set a dangerous precedent that nowhere – whether protected, or ecologically and socially important - is immune from oil industry destruction. Given record oil prices and growing global demand, it appears every last bit of Earth's large, wild and intact ecosystems will be sacrificed to industrial development – to extend our dependence upon fossil fuel, and delay transition now to renewable energy sources – while ensuring abrupt run-away climate change and global ecosystem collapse. Further rainforest ecocide for oil must end if we are to sustain global ecology. And standing old forests offer hope for advancement to the world’s forest dependent peoples.

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http://www.rainforestportal.org/shared/alerts/sendsm.aspx?id=congo_oil_virunga

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More than 6,000 Asian elephants [search] and hundreds of tigers still roam wild in South India, but rampant development and rapidly growing villages in the Sigur region of the Nilgiri foothills are choking off critical access corridors utilized by elephants to travel between still viable habitat areas. Following a 2006 national government declaration to protect elephant corridors (which Ecological Internet and YOU played a critical role in achieving), the Madras High Court of Tamil Nadu in 2010 issued an order to declare the Sigur Region an Elephant Corridor to regulate development and other activities affecting elephant habitat. Nevertheless, vested interests are vigorously opposing the order, causing the Tamil Nadu Ministry of Environment and Forests to delay action.

From Earth's Newsdesk and New Earth Rising, projects of Ecological Internet (EI)
Contact: Dr. Glen Barry, Ecological Internet, glen.barry@gmail.com, +1 (608) 381-5865 for interviews

(Madison, WI) - Ecological Internet (EI) reiterates its declaration of a planetary ecological emergency [1], first issued two years ago. Since then abrupt climate change [search] has revealed itself in all its fury, habitat loss and extinction have intensified, food and water have become increasingly scarce, and human inequity and injustice have grown. Yet there have also been promising signs of a global awakening regarding global ecology, rights, and workers – seeds of revolutionary social change necessary to sustain global ecology.

“There is no question global ecological systems are collapsing, as important planetary ecological boundaries have been – and continue to be – crossed. The human system’s fantastical growth, based upon liquidating nature, has finally caught up with us, and key ecosystems necessary to sustain global ecology are failing,” explains Dr. Barry. “An Eco-Earth Revolution to overthrow the industrial economic growth machine destroying ecosystems may well be the only option left to sustain global ecology.”

The European Commission – the executive branch of the European Union (EU) – will be voting in the next couple days whether to designate Canada’s tar sands [search] as being “highly polluting”. Given tar sands’ terrible ecological impacts upon our shared global atmosphere – and Canadian boreal forests, water, and indigenous peoples - the answer should be painfully obvious, and a resounding YES. Such a designation would be a significant setback for tar sands growth. Yet given the power of the ecocidal oil oligarchy which rules Canada and much of the world, empowered global citizens need to let the EU know the world expects, indeed demands, the EU do the right thing in condemning tar sands – in order to establish a level playing field for a renewable, efficient, and conservation based energy future.

By Dr. Glen Barry, Ecological Internet
Earth Meanders come from Earth's Newsdesk

Human Family’s Ecocidal Death Wish

The ecological foundation of being is unraveling before our very eyes. Without ecosystems there is no life. Fiercely loving Earth is the answer. Let's sustain global ecology together like our shared survival and abundance depends upon it. And while we set out using classic civil disobedience tactics, let’s not dismiss out of hand any obstruction, uncivil disobedience, sabotage and targeted insurgency tactics – that are non-terrorist – and that may be necessary to achieve global ecological sustainability. The human family’s shared survival depends upon passionately defending Earth using all means necessary.

Earth's ecosystems are collapsing under the burden of human growth, destroying our one shared biosphere that makes life possible. Industrial growth – frantically destroying ecosystems to feed insatiable, ever-growing appetites – is an aberration, a mistake, a disease. If left untreated, this will be the end of the human family, all life, and Earth's very being. Infinite economic growth at the expense of ecosystems is impossible, and seeking endless and inequitable growth in consumption and population can only lead to collapse and massive die-off.

Humanity’s last best chance to justly and equitably sustain a livable planet is to protect and restore ecosystems, end fossil fuels, and a people's power Earth revolution to utterly destroy the ecocidal industrial growth machine. We are all bloody fools to tolerate and not immediately overthrow a violently ecocidal system that is killing us all. If we all understood the implications of global ecosystem collapse, we would go now, together, and slay the global growth machine. It is too late to escape profound ecological decline, yet complete disastrous social and ecological collapse – and possible end to most or all life – may yet be avoided.

Sustaining ecology must become society’s central organizing principle or humans and all species face horrendous death. Globally it is time for radical change to simply survive converging ecology, food, war, water, inequity, population, climate, jobs, ocean, and extinction crises. It is deeply troubling most "environmentalists" deny the severity of ecosystem collapse, rejecting out of hand revolutionary measures sufficient to sustain ecology.

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Plans are to build a highway through Alto Purus - Peru’s largest national park – comprised of vital intact Amazonian rainforest ecosystems and inhabited by at least two 'uncontacted' indigenous tribes [search]. The Alto Purus protected rainforest in south-east Peru is an area of incredible biodiversity covering some of the most pristine forests in the southwestern Amazon and home to jaguars, monkeys and pink dolphins. To cut it with a road would compromise the integrity of the entire Amazonion basin and trigger the swift demise of some of Earth’s last isolated hunting and gathering tribes. One of the 'uncontacted' tribes in the park is known as the 'Mashco-Piro', thought to be the largest group i

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Earth is facing the twin global ecological emergencies of abrupt climate change and land being scoured of natural ecosystems. Sadly, corporate American NGOs and the United Nations are responding to these crises by further promoting logging ancient forests. The United Nations REDD+ program to protect primary and old growth forests as a climate change and deforestation solution has been hi-jacked by logging interests [search] and their big pro-logging NGO friends, and will instead subsidize primary forest logging for new plantations. REDD has become a gravy train for consultants, greenwashing NGOs and charlatans of many sorts - claiming logging ancient rainforests for the first time protects them! Old standing natural forest ecosystems are key to sustaining climate, ecosystems, biodiversity, local livelihoods humanity and the Earth System. Corporate NGOs supporting REDD+ must be compelled to stop their old forest logging greenwash - or face ridicule, protest, and an end to public support, until they do.

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Brazil's industrial agriculture lobby has forced through their Congress changes to the forest code [search], the primary legal instrument related to Amazon rainforest protections. It has been done without any scientific inputs, and in a way that will greatly expand industrial agriculture by reducing ecological protections. Newly elected President Dilma Rousseff must be encouraged to veto the bill, something she promised to do during the election. Efforts to address forest code deficiencies must recommence in a manner that incorporates the latest agro-ecological science regarding sustainable agriculture and the importance of large, connected and intact rainforest ecosystems within agricultural landscapes. Without a veto, recent progress in Amazon rainforest protection is at stake just as Brazil is to host the Rio+20 Earth Summit in 2012.

TAKE ACTION HERE NOW!

Belize’s renowned rainforests [search], beaches, and Mayan homelands are threatened with a resource rampage by a corrupt government confronted with massive foreign debt. With the Prime Minister's permission, Colorado-based oil company US Capital Energy is drilling seismic testing lines through the ecologically spectacular Sarstoon-Temash national park - against international treaty commitments and a Belizean Supreme Court ruling. These cleared lines are now being used by poachers to ransack the rainforest, with stolen timbers transported to Guatemala and onward to China.

By Ecological Internet, http://www.climateark.org/
Contact: Dr. Glen Barry, glenbarry@ecologicalinternet.org

Last week the Northern Gateway tar sands pipeline [search] approval process - meant to transfer filthy tar sand oil from Alberta, Canada to Asia – was delayed one year until at least the end of 2013. The $5.5-billion, 1,200-kilometre double pipeline would transport up to 525,000 barrels per day of crude from Alberta’s environmentally devastating tar sands oilfields – traversing innumerable waterways, temperate rainforests, and sensitive coastal ecosystems – to ocean-going tankers for transport to Asia. The Enbridge Northern Gateway joint review panel announced the decision by email, noting “significant public interest in the Northern Gateway project.”

The pipelines would go through B.C.'s sensitive Pacific North Coast ecosystem, and threatens First Nations’ land and salmon economy. One mishap – such as project developer Enbridge’s recent broken pipeline fouling the Yellowstone River – will bring disastrous results and long-term loss of marine life, pristine waterways, and sensitive coastal ecosystems. First Nation opposition is strong and united, making clear the pipeline will never be allowed over their land, and with suggestions of massive civil disobedience if approved. The pipelines could not be constructed without breaking First Nation unity through financial inducements, or simply taking their land.

Today is my birthday and it’s going to be a good time. So as I craft a day of mirth, free spirit and all my favorite activities, let me ruminate upon what I wish for as gifts on this special day.

I want peace on Earth, real peace, the kind where the armies demobilize and don’t remain standing like it used to be. Peace where trillions aren’t wasted from funding public social needs. I want a real and permanent turning of tanks into ploughshares. War’s obscene waste of energy, materials, human potential and life cannot persist if human and ecological being are to continue. I want it to end now.

The truth is we are one human family, one species, perhaps from different lineages with a crazy uncle, but a family nonetheless. And I want us to start acting like it. Nation state boundaries are a new false construct meant to divide us. As a human family I want our basic universal rights strictly and unconditionally observed. The human condition is absolute freedom as long as we don’t hurt others. I want gods and governments off of and out of my body.

The New York State government is set to end its fracking ban [search] – a dangerous natural gas drilling method – placing its citizens, water and ecology at great risk. Fracking blasts water mixed with toxics at high pressure into the ground to shatter deep bedrock – releasing toxic methane, chemicals and other contamination – while destroying crucial water resources and destabilizing the land. Tell Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo that fracking will never be environmentally acceptable, much less sustainable, and that it needs to be permanently banned. Failure to do so makes him personally responsible for vast water contamination that will forever poison New York citizens he has sworn to serve and protect.

The proposed Canadian Enbridge Northern Gateway tar sands pipelines [search] seek to export filthy oil to Asia. The delay of the Keystone pipeline – largely due to people power protest – makes this route all the more vital to Canada, if tar sands production and transport to the international marketplace are to grow. Ecosystems will be placed at risk from Alberta's massive clearcut mining of boreal forest, Western Canada's intricate waterways, to British Columbia’s precious and fragile temperate rainforests and coastal waters, endangering the First Nations' salmon economy. To keep the anti-tar sand campaign momentum, this pipeline must be delayed and eventually stopped too! With stalwart indigenous opposition, and the magnitude of vital and sensitive ecosystems to be traversed, our chances are good. This alert was first launched and hundreds of thousands of protest emails sent a year ago, and has now been updated.

TAKE ACTION HERE NOW!

The world is careening towards abrupt climate change and global ecosystem collapse. Global climate talks have been stymied by an inability to reconcile the historic carbon debt for past inequitable development with reasonable demands that all nations commit to differentiated emissions reductions. Tell Durban climate meeting delegates that failure to act now upon the looming climate emergency means governments have abdicated and the people will lead.

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Plans by Uganda's President to partially destroy the Mabira rainforest - one of the nation's most important rainforest preserves - have surfaced again after being defeated in 2007. Let the Ugandan government know rainforests and their ecological services including water, climate and biodiversity are far more important than sugar which can be grown elsewhere. Together with local opposition Ecological Internet has defeated this project twice before, let's do it again.