First of all, HAPPY BIRTHDAY, skywardprodigal! You are so amazing, wonderful, smart and talented, I wish you the best and a wonderful day.

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Now, to not spam you all, via powerswitch: How much oil is there left, really?



Leaving aside the issue of Saudi Arabia lying about is reserves, I know there is still a lot in every zone but it really bothers me how S & Central America and Middle East have most of oil, and also have... very complex and difficult situations of colonizations and imperialism with powerful Word Powers. Just saying.

About last post, voz_latina shared some links about he rural cleansing going on Maine, her farm being affected by it.

One of the most telling was this one about Monsanto. As you see, environmental concerns have nothing to do with it, what is happening is that sometimes Big Corporations want to be free of competition. Like our old friend, Monsanto, corp that does pretty much the same thing in every place of the world (very well known around these places thanks to soy).

I'm still on my very credible hiatus, but wonderful the_future_modernes wrote a magnificent, well-researched and extensive post about Conservationist Refugees: What happens when Western Environmentalists join forces with corporations? They end up creating Conservation Refugees.

Internets? I am so fucking angry right now. Why? I saw this two days ago: Thanks to GM, People Are Being Displaced So Their Forests Can Become Offsets for SUVs. and I’m thinking what the everloving fuck????? Then I am meandering about on Daily Kos and I see a book review for Conservation Refugees: The Hundred-Year Conflict between Global Conservation and Native Peoples (AMazon has it cheaper and then there are used books and the library, of course.

Since 1900, more than 108,000 officially protected conservation areas have been established worldwide, largely at the urging of five international conservation organizations. About half of these areas were occupied or regularly used by indigenous peoples. Millions who had been living sustainably on their land for generations were displaced in the interests of conservation. In Conservation Refugees, Mark Dowie tells this story.

This is a “good guy vs. good guy” story, Dowie writes; the indigenous peoples’ movement and conservation organizations have a vital common goal—to protect biological diversity—and could work effectively and powerfully together to protect the planet and preserve species and ecosystem diversity. Yet for more than a hundred years, these two forces have been at odds. The result: thousands of unmanageable protected areas and native peoples reduced to poaching and trespassing on their ancestral lands or “assimilated” but permanently indentured on the lowest rungs of the economy.

Dowie begins with the story of Yosemite National Park, which by the turn of the twentieth century established a template for bitter encounters between native peoples and conservation. He then describes the experiences of other groups, ranging from the Ogiek and Maasai of eastern Africa and the Pygmies of Central Africa to the Karen of Thailand and the Adevasis of India. He also discusses such issues as differing definitions of “nature” and “wilderness,” the influence of the “BINGOs” (Big International NGOs, including the Worldwide Fund for Nature, Conservation International, and The Nature Conservancy), the need for Western scientists to respect and honor traditional lifeways, and the need for native peoples to blend their traditional knowledge with the knowledge of modern ecology. When conservationists and native peoples acknowledge the interdependence of biodiversity conservation and cultural survival, Dowie writes, they can together create a new and much more effective paradigm for conservation.

Indeed. It appears that the book recced in my earlier post did not but scratch the surface of what appears to be widespread fuckery on behalf of white western environmental organizations, who seem to have this quaint notion that the best way to fix their society’s poisoning of the earth and sea, by practicing environmental neo-colonialism.

It has lot of awesome links, but I can put them in the quote up there because my computer doesn't have the < > keys and copy-pasting is a pain in the ass. Yeah, I don't know how to configure a keyboard, sue me!

Via, ew_younerd again.

I'm sure everyone and their mothers has seen The Story of Stuff. Well, I hadn't. So if you are like me, you should watch it. Now. Must see, even if you already know this stuff.

That's the truth about how goods are done, why are done, and how they affect us in our capitalist world. (Even if it's kinda USA's centric.)

Acá el sitio Internacional donde se puede ver la versión en español (entre otros idiomas). Lo vale. (Mako. Mira eso, es genial.)