ECOSYSTEM

ECOSYSTEM

FACTS

Of the 900 million desperately poor [people] earning less than $1 a day, 630 million live in rural areas with the most biodiversity...the very areas we're trying to conserve are where the poorest of the poor live."Jeffrey A. McNeely, Chief Scientist of the World Conservation Union, in the report "How Ecoagriculture Can help Feed the World and Save Wild Biodiversity", released last week (May, 2001)
Some 1,700 of the world's leading scientists, including the majority of Nobel laureates in the sciences, issued this appeal in November 1992. The Warning was written and spearheaded by UCS Chair Henry Kendall. http://www.deoxy.org/sciwarn.htm

ECO-Links

BUSH and Endangered Species Act (press here) action alert
Coop America http://www.coopamerica.org/
Environmental Ethics (press here). Andrew Light is an assistant professor of philosophy and environmental studies and currently a research fellow at the International Center for Advanced Studies at New York University. His primary areas of interest are environmental ethics and policy, philosophy of technology, and political and social philosophy. Light has published and presented widely. His books include Social Ecology After Bookchin (Guilford 1998) and, with Eric Katz, Environmental Pragmatism. (Routledge 1996).
GreenPeace (press here).

Forests under Seige (press here) nearly 80% of the world's ancient forests have been destroyed only around 20% of the world's large ancient forests remain intact.

Green Photos of Forests and Modernity

2000 - Best Book Reviews - Which World? Scenarios for the 21st Century: Global Destinies, Regional Choices by Allen Hammon Covelop Press and Divided Planet: The Ecology of Rich and Poor by Tom Athanasiou Little, Brown, and Company (press here).

On Hammon Book: "The important point is that unless we first imagine various futures, both good and bad, and utilize socially progressive and ecological visions as ethical and institutional maps, we will have nothing to guide us in the constitution of a viable future, and we will travel in time like lost seafarers... In its interesting design, Hammond's book begins with the importance of constructing stories or “scenarios” as critical maps of the present and guideposts for the future.

"As the planet spirals ever deeper into social and natural disaster, with all things becoming ever more tightly knit into the tentacles of global capitalism, there is an urgent need for new maps and compasses to help steer us into a viable mode of existence."

Athanasiou book - “The old environmentalism has hit its limits,” Athanasiou argues, and he calls for a “new ecology” that is similar to Murray Bookchin's social ecology--which seeks to link social and environmental problems from an anarchist perspective--only much more vague."

April 23, 2001 - EARTH DAY ACTION ALERT FROM THE UNION OF CONCERNED SCIENTISTS = Tell Vice President Dick Cheney that renewable energy and energy efficiency must be a part of a balanced national energy policy.
ISSUE: The president's energy task force, headed by Vice President Dick Cheney, is expected to release their recommendations on federal energy policy in the next few weeks. The recommendations are expected to focus heavily on increasing energy production but will also deal with renewable energy, energy efficiency and environmental concerns.

ACTION: Please contact the Vice President this Earth Day. Contact information is below, but you can also take action through our website at:

http://www.ucsusa.org/act/act_cleanen_action.html
APRIL 17, 2001 - This Week at TomPaine.com...

     http://www.TomPaine.com

DITHERING AND DENIAL

Shareholders Challenge ExxonMobil on Global Warming

Earth Day 2001 finds ExxonMobil CEO Lee Raymond once again

fighting some of his shareholders. They want him to stop

denying the reality of human-induced global warming.

The shareholders are pushing two resolutions at the

company's upcoming shareholder meeting in May. If passed,

the resolutions would help move ExxonMobil away from it's

global-warming denial. Last year, in opposing the same

resolutions, Lee Raymond showed he isn't above using

distortion to mislead his shareholders: he misused an

eminant oceanographer's research; mistated the findings of

another scientist's work; and he cited a discredited

petition in questioning whether a scientific consensus on

global warming exists.

"Institutional investors know it's not good business to

mislead shareholders or the public," said Sister Pat Daly,

one leader of the group pushing the shareholder resolutions.

"Investors want Lee Raymond to end ExxonMobil's dithering

and denial on global warming."

READ THIS WEEK'S NEW YORK TIMES 'OP AD'

http://www.TomPaine.com/opad

...AND READ THESE OP AD FEATURES...

HOW EXXONMOBIL MISLEADS ITS SHAREHOLDERS

by Campaign ExxonMobil (www.CampaignExxonMobil.org)

   ExxonMobil's position on global warming is consistently

based on outdated, manipulated and unqualified information.

>From the point of view of reason and fact, the company's

position is unjustifiable and reckless.

http://www.tompaine.com/features/2001/04/16/4.html

IN HIS OWN WORDS

by Lee Raymond, Chairman and CEO, ExxonMobil

   At the 2000 shareholder meeting, Lee Raymond shared his

thoughts on global warming, creating a rationale for further

dithering. Listen here for yourself.

http://www.tompaine.com/features/2001/04/16/7.html

THE SHAREHOLDER RESOLUTIONS

   Enough shareholders approved the following resolutions

last year that they are back on the ballot for the upcoming

ExxonMobil shareholder meeting in May. The company appealed

to the Securities and Exchange Commission to bar the

resolutions, but was rejected. Read for yourself what

ExxonMobil fears:

   * A RESOLUTION PROMOTING RENEWABLE ENERGY

http://www.tompaine.com/features/2001/04/16/2.html

   * A RESOLUTION ON EXECUTIVE COMPENSATION

http://www.tompaine.com/features/2001/04/16/3.html

THE SCIENCE OF SKEPTICISM

by Ross Gelbspan

   Those who dither and deny global warming like to justify

their postion by pointing to a handful of skeptics... many

of whom are funded by companies like ExxonMobil! Pulitzer

Prize winner Ross Gelbspan takes a look at some of them. A

piece originally published in The Nation.

http://www.tompaine.com/features/2001/04/16/1.html

EXXONMOBIL RESPONDS TO TP.c

by Cynthia Langlands, ExxonMobil Media Relations Officer

   We gave the company a chance to respond. This is all they

could come up with. Pretty weak.

http://www.tompaine.com/features/2001/04/16/6.html

================================

Also this Week at TomPaine.com...

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LEARNING A LESSON FROM THE CHINESE

by Ray Cheung

   The Bush administration could learn a thing or two from

China about compliance with international agreements and

global responsibility. After all, in the face of climate

change, the U.S. is sitting on its hands. China isn't.

http://www.tompaine.com/opinion/2001/04/03/index.html

STILL BURNING AFTER ALL THESE YEARS

by Stephen DiLauro

   Most residents of Centralia, Pennsylvania, fled after an

underground coal fire wouldn't go out. But those who remain

suspect authorities of duping them to get billions in

mineral wealth beneath the town.

http://www.tompaine.com/opinion/2001/04/16/1.html

LOSING GROUND IN THE NEWROOM

by Joe Davidson, BET.com

   While this country grows increasingly diverse, the

newspaper industry is in retreat. Today, the American

Society of Newspaper Editors doesn't even mention the goals

it set in 1978, much less its failure to live up to them.

http://www.tompaine.com/news/2001/04/13/index.html
June, 1999 issue of New Internationalist - Greening our Cities -(press here) - (entire issue)
9 November, 1999 - Gland, Switzerland (press here) - A new report launched today in London by WWF, the conservation organization, reveals that a rapidly increasing number of genetically modified (GM) trees are being planted without proper controls around the world. This poses a serious threat to the global environment. Source WWF.
Friday, December 17, 1999 ENN - The Leopold Legacy (press here) - By Janet Ginsburg
11/24/99 The Thin Green Line by Marilyn Bauer ENN (press here) - "From her perch in a thousand year old oak tree, eco-activist Julia Butterfly provides the benediction. She's a New Age Andy Rooney, an in-your-face hostess ramming home her environmental message into 19 million homes. Former Sierra Club president, Adam Werbach, is the host."

Julia Butterfly has been named one of the 20 most influential women in politics by George magazine.

11/4/99 Techno Optimists - (press here) THE BEST OF ALL POSSIBLE WORLDS Dow at 36,000! No more cancer! The new techno-optimists gush about a picture-perfect future. Should we believe them? By Mark Gimein SALON.COM "The Long Boom," heralds a new age of technological achievement, predicting a rosy end of history, in which the world will have conquered (in no particular order), cancer, poverty and global warming/" EXCERPTS

The first problem one notices with "The Long Boom" is the superficiality of its analysis.
The book, by contrast, goes hog-wild in creating mythical crises, only to explain how they will be brought to a speedy resolution. The global warming crisis will be resolved by a worldwide switch to hydrogen-powered fuel cells. International poverty will be solved through a European-inspired system of global taxation on electronic purchases. (This last is one of my favorite predictions: the authors not only think that the global taxes will raise $300 billion a year for development starting in 2008, but that these taxes, like the pennies and half-pennies skimmed from bank accounts by the villain in the movie "Superman III," will be so small as to be imperceptible.)

11/2/99 NATURAL CAPITALISM - "4 Principles of Natural Capitalism" By Amory Lovins and L. Hunter Lovins ABC News (press here) -New Limitation "But conditions have changed since the start of the Industrial Revolution. Then, natural resources were abundant and people were scarce. Now, there’s a surplus of people, while nature is in decline. Handicapped by an outdated view of the world, our economic system wastes both resources and people."

“Natural capital” refers to the natural resources and ecosystem services — air and water purification, climatic stabilization, waste detoxification, and so on — that make possible all economic activity, and indeed all life.
"Current business practices essentially assign no value at all to ecosystem services other than the indirect costs imposed by environmental regulations." Please See Green Accounting Gameboard for more on this topic. Summary of 4 principles:

1. RESOURCE PRODUCTIVITY - With resource productivity, no one has to choose between business and the environment; what’s good for one is good for the other. In fact, the massive inefficiencies that are causing environmental degradation almost always cost more than the measures that would reverse them.
2. ECOLOGICAL REDESIGN - Meanwhile, growing competitive pressures to save resources are inspiring companies to turn away from mechanical systems requiring heavy metals, combustion and petroleum to emulate nature’s life-temperature, low-pressure, solar-powered assembly techniques, theproducts of which rival anything human-made.
3. SERVICE AND FLOW - Dow owns the solvents, loans them to its customers as needed, then recovers them for reprocessing and reuse. That’s the third principle of natural capitalism: moving from the sale of goods to the delivery of a continuous flow of services.

4. NATURAL CAPITAL INVESTMENT - Companies in certain industries — forestry and tourism, for example — have clear incentives to look after their own stocks of natural capital, though even they don’t necessarily do so... A company that depletes its own capital is eroding the basis of its future prosperity. In time, companies will realize that the forms of capital they’ve been investing in — manufactured and financial capital — are ultimately dependent on the health of natural capital.

10/30/99 From New Scientist - "THE WHOLE of the Amazon rainforest will be lost if the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere rises by more than 50 per cent." (press here).
9/24/99 Populations Outrunning Water Supply As World Hits 6 Billion -- As world population approaches 6 billion on October 12, water tables are falling on every continent, major rivers are drained dry before they reach the sea and millions of people lack enough water to satisfy basic needs. - Worldwatch Institute- (press here)
8/3/99 Scientists warn of mass extinction Tuesday, August 3, 1999 Scientists have calculated what they call a background extinction rate — the rate at which species have been becoming extinct for the past 65 million years, since the last major extinction. The current extinction rate is now approaching 1,000 times the background rate and may climb to 10,000 times the background rate during the next century. For ENN full story (press here).

Widespread losses of plant species and varieties are eroding the foundations of agricultural productivity and threatening other plant-based products used by billions of people worldwide. Read the full news release.

9/1/6/99 Global Environment Outlook 2000 Findings The United Nations is warning that time is running out to stop worldwide environmental damage and says it is already too late to prevent irreversible harm to ecosystems like tropical forests. (click here) for ENN story.
8/5/99 Humans altering Earth for the worse. Thursday, August 5, 1999 Recent research shows that humans are responsible for serious changes in the Earth's chemical, biological and physical structure — and the changes are not for the better. Close to 50 percent of the land surface of the planet has been altered from its original state by humans, such as filling wetlands, converting tall grass prairies into cornfields, or converting forests into urban areas. For Environmental News Network story (press here).
9/9/99 Environmental Terrorism: Fact or Fiction?By Claude Morgan "Terrorism is a bogeyman." Note: Article thinks critically about how claims made are being use to justify voting down legislation (click here).
9/7/99 Pollution Prevention Performance Ranking For Vehicle Assembly Facilities (press here) for Envionrmental Defense Fund article.

Factory Farms (press here) for Hog Watch.