George Monbiot laments the craven sellout to rampant consumer capitalism as climate change and a host of environmental emergencies destroy conditions for life on the planet. His answer is not workers revolution nor assassinating billionaires, but local ‘rewilding’ to at least delay the biosphere’s collapse.
After Rio, we know. Governments have given up on the planet
The post-summit pledge was an admission of defeat against consumer capitalism. But we can still salvage the natural world It is, perhaps, the greatest failure of collective leadership since the first world war. The Earth’s living systems are collapsing, and the leaders of some of the most powerful nations – the United States, the UK, Germany, Russia – could not even be bothered to turn up and discuss it. Those who did attend the Earth summit in Rio last week solemnly agreed to keep stoking the destructive fires: sixteen times in their text they pledged to pursue “sustained growth“, the primary cause of the biosphere’s losses. Continue reading “After Rio, we know.. Governments have given up on the planet.”
The draft and probably final declaration is 283 paragraphs of fluff. It suggests that the 190 governments due to approve it have, in effect, given up on multilateralism, given up on the world and given up on us.
The Rio Declaration rips up the basic principles of environmental action. In 1992 world leaders signed up to something called “sustainability”. Few of them were clear about what it meant; I suspect that many of them had no idea. Perhaps as a result, it did not take long for this concept to mutate into something subtly different: “sustainable development”. Then it made a short jump to another term: “sustainable growth”. And now, in the 2012 Earth Summit text that world leaders are about to adopt, it has subtly mutated once more: into “sustained growth”…. Continue reading “Rio treaty ‘written for billionaires’..283 paragraphs of fluff.”
“Comida ruim ninguém aguenta, é a Syngenta./É veneno em todo canto, é a Monsanto./Mata gente e mata rio, é a Cargil./Agronegócio, a mentira do Brasil.”
Foto: Manifestantes organizam intervenção dentro da AgroBrasil, no Pier Mauá, espaço coordenado pela Confederação da Agricultura e Pecuária do Brasil
Rio de Janeiro Manifestantes ligados à Via Campesina Internacional, que congrega movimentos sociais de pequenos agricultores de diferentes países, realizaram na manhã desta quinta-feira, 21, um protesto contra produções baseadas no uso de agrotóxico e monocultura. O ato aconteceu dentro do Pier Mauá, onde foi instalado o AgroBrasil, espaço coordenado pela Confederação da Agricultura e Pecuária do Brasil (CNA). A entidade é presidida pela senadora Kátia Abreu (PSD-TO), uma das principais lideranças da Frente Parlamentar de Agropecuária, a Bancada Ruralista.
O AgroBrasil tornou-se a principal base utilizada pelos parlamentares ligados ao setor e empresários durante a Conferência das Nações Unidas sobre Desenvolvimento Sustentável, a Rio+20. Com apoio de Monsanto e JBS, entre outros, o espaço virou uma feira de negócios com expositores oferecendo alternativas para ampliar a produção e com monitores defendendo e explicando a importância do uso do veneno para aumentar a produção. Até simuladores de máquinas utilizadas na aplicação foram instalados.
Com gritos, música e cartazes, os manifestantes procuraram chamar a atenção dos demais visitantes para o fato de o Brasil ser hoje líder no uso de agrotóxicos no planeta e as conseqüências relacionadas a uma produção de alimentos cultivada com veneno. Uma maquete, na qual os expositores exibiam o que consideram modelo ideal de agricultura, com amplas áreas de pasto, monocultura de eucalipto e grãos, foi coberta de cartazes e manchada de tinta. Continue reading “Rio+20: Manifestação e protesto da Via Campesina”
Greenpeace temporarily blocked a freighter from being loaded at a northern Brazilian port in protest over a partial presidential veto of a land-use bill seen as harming the Amazon
The environmental group said on its website on Saturday that activists ferried by its Rainbow Warrior vessel occupied a giant pile of pig iron on the dock while another team scaled two cranes to stop them from loading the raw material of iron and steel onto the US-bound Clipper Hope.
The activists then unfurled banners proclaiming “Amazon Crime” and “Dilma’s dirty secret,” in protest at President Dilma Rousseff’s partial veto Friday of 12 controversial articles of the new code regulating the use of land on rural properties.
Anarchist Interventions #4: Imperiled Life by Javier Sethness-Castro,
Now Available for Pre-order
Imperiled Life theorizes an exit from the potentially terminal consequences of capital-induced climate change. It is a collection of reflections on the phenomenon of catastrophe—climatological, political, social—as well as on the possibilities of overcoming disaster.
The fourth title in our Anarchist Intervention Series, co-published with AK Press!
Javier Sethness-Castro presents the grim news from contemporary climatologists while providing a reconstructive vision inspired by anarchist intellectual traditions and promoting critical thought as a means of changing our historical trajectory.
Praise for Imperiled Life:
“Imperiled Life is an angry and urgent dissection of the omnivorous economic system that is mercilessly turning the planet into a death camp.”—Jeffrey St. Clair, author Born Under a Bad Sky
About the author:
Javier Sethness-Castro is a libertarian socialist and an animal rights advocate. Imperiled Life is his first book.
Using aerial and ground-based surveys, the team identified about 150,000 methane seeps in Alaska and Greenland in lakes along the margins of ice cover.
Many of the sites were bubbling methane that has been stored for millenniaScientists have identified thousands of sites in the Arctic where methane that has been stored for many millennia is bubbling into the atmosphere. 
The Free 