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And, yes, I DO take it personally

Sunday, November 11, 2007

mirror effects

from The Seoul Times: "We Need a Moratorium on Agrofuels":

Who burned our Rain Forest?Caption: "Impact of Deforestation — Native indians walk through recently burnt rainforest in South America."

With biofuels being touted as our best great hope to undo climate change, it would be easy to ask yourself, "What's not to like?" Biofuels, proponents claim, will counter our global dependence on fossil fuels and help curb carbon emissions. But this "greening" of our energy sources is not all that green. A growing group of human rights and environmental activists point to the dangers that biofuels pose to environmental sustainability and the livelihoods of communities around the world, and call for a major shift: a moratorium on biofuels.

Most of the policies being put forward envision substituting biofuels for fossil fuels without reducing our overall consumption of energy. These proposals are backed by agribusiness, biotech companies, and oil interests that are now investing billions in ethanol and biodiesel plants, plantations of soy, corn, sugarcane, and palm oil, as well as genetically engineered trees and microbes for future supplies of cellulosic ethanol."

from UNHCHR - "The Rights of Indigenous Peoples":

Indigenous peoples inhabit large areas of the earth's surface. Spread across the world from the Arctic to the South Pacific, they number, at a rough estimate, some 300 million. Indigenous or aboriginal peoples are so-called because they were living on their lands before settlers came from elsewhere; they are the descendants - according to one definition - of those who inhabited a country or a geographical region at the time when people of different cultures or ethnic origins arrived, the new arrivals later becoming dominant through conquest, occupation, settlement or other means.

Among many indigenous peoples are the Indians of the Americas (for example, the Mayas of Guatemala or the Aymaras of Bolivia), the Inuit and Aleutians of the circumpolar region, the Saami of northern Europe, the Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders of Australia, and the Maori of New Zealand. These and most other indigenous peoples have retained social, cultural, economic and political characteristics which are clearly distinct from those of the other segments of the national populations.

Throughout human history, whenever dominant neighbouring peoples have expanded their territories or settlers from far away have acquired new lands by force, the cultures and livelihoods - even the existence - of indigenous peoples have been endangered. The threats to indigenous peoples' cultures and lands, to their status and other legal rights as distinct groups and as citizens, do not always take the same forms as in previous times. Although some groups have been relatively successful, in most part of the world indigenous peoples are actively seeking recognition of their identities and ways of life."

following a government sanctioned pogrom at a 50-year-old Southern California nudist colony, I observed that pogroms and ethnic cleansing of peoples and tribes, no matter how obscure, seemed to have the almost immediate predictable results of spontaneously occurring elsewhere, as if by some connected hidden thread. I noted shortly after that time, that then New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani simply couldn't cleanse the New York City culture of adult theaters, newsstands and porno shops by a sweeping declaration of his "Broken Window Policy", in order to be rid of those cultures of which he disapproved. He could not do that anymore than others could wipe out a tribe in a rain forest, and not expect a similar event to break out almost spontaneously, elsewhere. He clearly got back his Broken Windows Policy, in spades, on 9/11/01.

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Tuesday, June 05, 2007

"Uppity" developing countries - a headline from Spiegel on the G-8 summit

any country that has the nerve to print this headline has no room to talk about anyone else being "uppity"...
Developing Countries Get Uppity Ahead of the G-8 Summit

[Brazil's president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva] suggests that rich countries should pay poor countries to preserve their forests if they are so concerned about deforestation. Meanwhile China and India ask why they should have to cut their emissions when developed countries got rich by polluting.

Many experts on climate change have proposed market-oriented approaches to fighting global warming, such as emissions trading or carbon taxes. Now Brazil's president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has suggested a blindingly simple market-driven solution to deforestation -- if rich countries want poor countries to preserve their forests, they should pay them to do so.

my sympathies lie totally with the developing countries... the g8 countries most certainly DID get rich by polluting and, now that the developing countries want a piece of the pie, we try and curb their development in the name of halting pollution...

what gets obscured here is that a great deal of the "riches" of the g8 came directly from the resources of the developing countries and still do... the g8 countries consume a vastly disproportionate share of global resources, a situation that suits them just fine... calling developing countries "uppity" for daring to point that out really rubs me the wrong way, especially when spiegel attempts to justify it with this...

Lula's comments gloss over the fact that Brazil is itself a rich country -- albeit one with a high level of inequality between rich and poor citizens. According to figures from the International Monetary Fund, Brazil in 2006 had the 10th largest gross domestic product in the world, ahead of G-8 member Russia and other supposedly rich countries such as Australia, the Netherlands and Sweden.

yes, brazil is a VERY rich country and tossing in the aside about the rich-poor gap completely understates the reality... i can't cite a specific percentage, but based on my familiarity with other latin american economies, you can be sure that well over 85% of brazil's total wealth is under the control of less than 5% of the population, and that may be underestimating the situation... talking about brazil having the 10th largest gdp in the world reminds me of the joke i read yesterday... when bill gates walks into a bar, the average income for everyone there rises 10,000%...

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