Change the World Wednesday – 12th Mar

Cloro was a great one for licking his nuts, apparently, he kept them in good working order…

I am crazy. It’s 2am and I’m at the keyboard with a tankard of iced sparkling mineral water, it’s too early for coffee; and too hot (I’m sweating). But don’t expect me to stay up and finish this, it’s just until I get sleepy again… then it will be crash until coffee.

I am still catless, but apparently not for long. You’ll have to read Legacy to find out why.

Carnaval is well in the past, back to work. The garis (street sweepers) and council have reached an agreement and are back to work.

My PC is still behaving like a PC should, so it seems as though my troubles are over for the present, despite the fact that it looks like a gutted box beside me with its blinking lights.

I like the lights blinking on and in the PC, they’re a comfort, they indicate that things are as they should be.

I had an interesting conversation with a fregües (regular) at the bar during the week. He uses disposable cups for his beer, which I think is totally crass.

The terrible convenience

The bar has them for the kids who buy soda to drink in the praça (park) and some of the regulars have taken to using them for beer.

I challenged him on it. He just considered a convenience. When I asked him how many barrels of oil would be wasted in his lifetime just for his convenience, he replied, “guilty as charged.” Now this guy is no fool, he’s a maritime engineer, but even for educated Brazilian, it’s hard to get the message across. The next time I saw him at the bar… yes, he was still using a disposable cup.

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On with this week’s CTWW. It’s a good one and I can get right into it.

If you haven’t already done so, replace at least one incandescent light bulb with a CFL or LED bulb.

 

OR … If you have switched all your bulbs to Eco-friendly varieties, please conduct a brief analysis of your home furnishings. Are items sustainable and Eco-friendly, made from materials like bamboo, cork, or recycled content? Were they made locally? How many pieces are second hand? Do any items contain foam (cushions, pads, etc.) which typically are treated with fire retardants (toxic chemicals)? Has anything been varnished or finished with lacquers (both contain harmful pollutants)? Do you have wood furniture? If so, do you know where the wood came from and whether or not the trees were sustainably grown? The idea, here, is to start thinking about the sustainability of our furnishings and raise our awareness on the types of items we should both support and avoid.

Part One I am in the process of changing over, as much as I was against CFLs initially, because of disposal and breakage problems, I have had to toe the line, because in Brazil this year incandescent light bulbs will become illegal, to make and to sell.

I would prefer LEDs, but I haven’t found them in our part of town yet, we do live out in the styx a bit when it comes to innovation. You see people think that Rio stops after you have passed the posh suburbs of Barra da Tijuca and Recreio, once you go over the hill Grota Funda (now you can go through it, we’ve got a tunnel) the world ends. But I will keep looking.

Part Two (This will have to wait until the real morning, you know with coffee and daylight)

Daylight √

Coffee √

Okay, we’re ready to continue…

At the start of summer I made a big purchase; not a thing I do often. I bought two new fans.

Now fans here in Brazil, and probably everywhere, are big on plastic.

You can see them in all the stores.

In my efforts to avoid plastic, it was a criteria that I set myself.

I found what I was looking for a nearly all metal model.

One was an upright, the other on a tube base for a table.

The only visible plastic is the name plate on the front, the blades and the small clips to hold the front grill in place.

So yes, I consider the environment when I buy.

Now as for the rest of my furnishings.

In the living room, I have two new items, a coffee table and a bookcase stand; both are made of wood. But the wood is a composite type, which I consider more ecological that real wood because it is usually made from recycled wood.

Everything else is second hand and some is just boxes, like my beer box.

Oh, there is another one on the other side of the TV for my wine bottle candle holders.

My sofas, 3 & 2 seat, were rescued from the street as discards by a neighbour, they have foam in them, actually they had foam in them, there is not as much as there should be. But to compensate for this, the one I use most is covered by a camp mattress and a blanket and the cushion is an old doubled over pillow.

So rather than rushing out and buying new stuff, I make do with what’s available. When I do, I do consider the environment as well as the cost, because I can be a real Scrooge.

Take a Different Look

Tongue in cheek…

Satireday on Eco-Crap

Satireday on Eco-Crap

This one’s from Brazil, a capivara’s point of view

Translation:

…and after they create such a scandal when they step in our poo!

A Royal Rattles the Bars

Prince Charles attacks global warming sceptics

Prince uses speech at St James’s Palace to single out ‘confirmed sceptics’ and environmentally unfriendly businesses

Prince Charles: ‘We can’t wait until we are absolutely sure the patient is dying.’ Photograph: Steve Parsons/PA

The Prince of Wales has criticised “corporate lobbyists” and climate change sceptics for turning the earth into a “dying patient”, in his most outspoken attack yet on the world’s failure to tackle global warming.

He attacked businesses who failed to care for the environment, and compared the current generation to a doctor taking care of a critically ill patient.

“If you think about the impact of climate change, [it should be how] a doctor would deal with the problem,” he told an audience of government ministers, from the UK and abroad, as well as businesspeople and scientists. “A scientific hypothesis is tested to absolute destruction, but medicine can’t wait. If a doctor sees a child with a fever, he can’t wait for [endless] tests. He has to act on what is there.”

He added: “The risk of delay is so enormous that we can’t wait until we are absolutely sure the patient is dying.”

Hosting a two-day conference for forest scientists at St James’s Palace in London, the heir to the throne – who is taking over from the Queen at this year’s meeting of the Commonwealth in Sri Lanka – savagely satirised those who stand in the way of swift action on the climate.

He characterised them as “the confirmed sceptics” and “the international association of corporate lobbyists”. Faced with these forces of opposition, “science finds itself up the proverbial double blind gum tree”, he said.

Read more

 

Monday Moaning

Yes, I know it’s Tuesday and I should be doing a CTWW post for tomorrow, but this has just landed on my plate.

China is fast becoming the most belligerent country on the planet. We know about their refusal to compromise in the use of fossil fuels, we know about their dubious mining practices for rare earths, we know about their ridiculous claims to the South China Sea, we know about their new aircraft carrier, and now this…

China at the centre of ‘illegal timber’ trade

Environmental groups accuse ports and cities of being a centre for illegally logged wood despite international conservation treaties

Workers loads timber on to a truck in Yuanjiang, Hunan province, China. Photograph: AP

China is at the centre of a vast global traffic in illegally logged timber that is destroying entire swaths of forest around the world.Academic research and NGOs such as WWF and Global Witness have already revealed the existence of illegal trading networks in central Africa, Burma and Russia leading directly to Chinese ports or cities. Now for the first time fingers are pointing directly to Beijing and holding public enterprises and local government officials responsible for this highly lucrative illegal trade.

The British NGO, Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA), published a detailed report at the end of November called “China, appetite for destruction”. It reveals just how China’s appetite for wood has grown in the past decades as a result of consumption by the new middle classes, as well as an export-driven wood industry facing growing demand from major foreign furniture and construction companies.

China has become the leading importer, consumer and exporter of the world’s timber. Its own forests provide less than 40% of its needs. According to the report, “in response to severe flooding in 1998, China adopted a Natural Forest Conservation Programme […] and embarked on a massive programme of reforestation […] The government spent $31bn on tree planting between 1999 and 2009.”

But the gap between domestic supply and demand has continued to grow. In 2011 China imported 180m cubic metres of wood products, 28% more than in 2010 and 300% more than in 2000. According to the EIA, last year one-third of all the timber sold worldwide was bought by China, with little regard to its origin.

Unlike the US, the EU and Australia, which, under pressure from public opinion, have adopted legislation banning illegal timber imports, China has made no such move. The government has only signed bilateral agreements with the US, Europe, Indonesia and Burma, the benefits of which have yet to be demonstrated.

After analysing trade data for 36 supplier countries, the EIA has concluded that approximately 10% of the logs and sawed timber is illegal, representing “turnover” of $3.7bn. Public enterprises, often controlled by provincial governments, play a strategic role in this trade, says the EIA, citing illegal imports from Indonesia and Mozambique. The report describes corruption networks in countries with weak governments such as Burma, Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands.

Rosewood trafficking is especially lucrative. Although rosewood is classified as an endangered species by the International Trade Convention, trade in that wood has risen dramatically, triggered by demand from well-off Chinese households for reproductions of Qing and Ming dynasty furniture. It is now sourced in Madagascar, Burma, Thailand, Vietnam and Belize, and rosewood imports to China rose from 66,000 cubic metres in 2005 to 565,000 cubic metres in 2011.

Opinion:

China has shown scant regard for anything that might help the environment, its appetite for destruction knows no bounds.

The only interest that China has is a great big get rich scheme that will hasten its aims of world domination.

The world has let China get too big and powerful and will suffer the consequences.

The world has tackled smaller nations for becoming belligerent, and acting against the interests of the west both militarily and by way of sanctions, but they are too scared to say “Boo!” to China; and now it is too late.

All the world is wooing China as a partner making it both richer and stronger.

Saturday Satire

Ecuadorian-UN accord that puts ecology over oil drilling hailed as model for world

White-banded Swallows perching of a tree stump on the bank of Rio Tiputini, Yasuní National Park in Ecuador

23 September 2011 – An Ecuadorian accord to leave vast oil reserves, conservatively valued at $7.2 billion, untapped to protect biodiversity in a national park in return for half that amount from the international community was heralded at the United Nations today as a model in the fight to save the planet.

“It is not often that a government chooses sustainable development over easy money,” Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told a high-level meeting on the Yasuní-ITT Initiative, under which the UN Development Programme (UNDP) and Ecuador agreed last year to set up a trust fund to protect the Yasuní National Park, a World Biosphere Reserve in the country’s Amazon region, with an estimated 846 million barrels of crude oil lying under it.

“The initiative is helping Ecuador move on multiple fronts towards achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs),” he told the event, held on the sidelines of the General Assembly’s annual general debate in the presence of Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa.

“It is supporting indigenous livelihoods and culture. It is protecting biodiversity. It will help to avoid emissions of greenhouse gases. And it is showing the contribution that can be made through an innovative financial mechanism.”

Source: UN News Center Read more

Ecuador

Ecuador is one of the lesser known countries in South America, perched between Colombia and Peru.

With all that is going on in the world it is gratifying to see such a small country making the effort and putting the world’s major powers to shame and disgrace.

Ecuador is indeed a model for the rest of the world.

Let’s hope that others follow the leader.

 

Yasuní National Park

Such beautiful areas of the planet should be left… beautiful and not fall victim to man’s greed for power and money.