Can Protected Areas Combat the Sixth Mass Extinction?

Our planet is currently facing one of the most destructive extinction events in the history of the earth, with an estimated loss of 30,000 species per year, known as the Sixth Mass Extinction. The cause?  Humans. The pulp and paper and palm oil industries are causing species extinction left, right, and center in one of [...]

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Rainforest Action Network Victories: Top Ten of 2010

Making change in the world is hard work — some times decades-long hard work. But with the right combination of strategies, experience, tenacity, and allies, it is possible to achieve victories that have a lasting impact. This year, Rainforest Action Network took on corporate titans and secured real wins for the world’s forests, the climate, [...]

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A Victory for Tasmania’s Forests

After years of clearcutting Tasmania’s ancient forests, Australian timber giant Gunns Limited broke ranks with Tasmania’s forest industry and stated that it will pull out of native forest logging altogether. On September 9th, at the Forest Industry Development Conference at Melbourne, Gunns announced that it will shift to a plantation-based business. Mr. L’Estrange, the new [...]

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Ecuadorian Community Activists Get Canadian Mining Company Delisted from TSX

Over the past 12 years, RAN has supported through our Protect-an-Acre small grants both Defense and Ecological Conservation of Intag (DECOIN) and Community Defense Council in the Intag region in the western Andes of Ecuador, a cloud forest ecosystem that is a globally significant biological hot spot. For 2 decades now, communities there have successfully [...]

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Why the U.S. is Strong on REDD but Weak on Climate

Here in Copenhagen (Day 5, 5:00 PM), delegates from all over the world are not surprised that the U.S. is playing a disappointing role in the climate negotiations, after all the science calls for 40% emissions reduction below 1990 levels by 2020, and the U.S. climate legislation calls for only 4%. This past summer, RAN [...]

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REDD Forest Agreement Still Missing Basic Elements for Sustainability

As negotiations wrapped up in Barcelona at the UN Climate Talks, the opportunity for a robust agreement to reduce emissions from deforestation and degradation in developing countries (REDD) is dangling from a wire. The latest negotiating text, which parties will be working on at the opening of the Copenhagen UNFCCC COP15, contains no provisions to [...]

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Earth to Chamber of Commerce Members: Change or Leave

The controversy surrounding the US Chamber of Commerce continues. The labor coalition Change to Win recently issued a report on how the Chamber has been hijacked by right wing ideologues, whose opposition to regulation of greenhouse gas pollution has included calling for the EPA to conduct a ‘Scopes Monkey Trial’ on climate change. In a [...]

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Big day for climate, Big new bill, and Big giveaways to coal, oil and loggers

With climate talks underway in Bangkok, Indigenous activists reviewing the text and engaged in the talks calling for no market-based REDD deal, Greenpeace activists blockading the tar sands in Alberta, and the EU investigating fraud in carbon trading schemes, today is a big day for the movement for climate justice. Too bad it’s such a [...]

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Seeing the Rainforests for the Trees in the Senate Climate Bill

Senators Kerry and Boxer have said that they are on track to introduce the first step for Senate version of the ACES climate bill next Wednesday, September 30th. The draft will reportedly include an emissions reduction target of 20% from 2005 levels by 2020, an modest improvement over ACES’ 17% target, but nowhere near the [...]

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The Carbon Logic Problem Statement | Grist

The Carbon Logic Problem Statement by Ken Ward. All too often those debating the solutions and proposed actions to tackle global warming fail to challenge the assumptions. While it's important to deal with emissions it can be argued that the root causes of emissions lie farther upstream and can more effectively deal with the challenges we are facing. Cutting emissions is good. Investing in clean energy and cutting emissions before the fuel is readied is better.

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