Start chilling the bubbly - the Kyoto Treaty is highly likely to soon enter into force! Imperfect and incomplete as it is, the treaty represents the first international mechanism to regulate greenhouse gases, and took over 10 years to negotiate. There is really no other international effort anywhere near being ready to implement, and this framework can and will be strengthened and expanded. This is great news for the World's peoples, forests and atmosphere.

Russia warms to Kyoto ratification

The Russian government says it will discuss ratifying the Kyoto Protocol on global climate change to which Moscow holds the key. President Vladimir Putin has ordered ministers to approve the pact, which aims to stabilise emissions of greenhouse gases, and Thursday's government session seems likely to be a formality before the pact goes to a Kremlin dominated parliament.

P.S. Meanwhile America's position on climate change remains abysmal

Posted by Dr. Glen Barry | Permalink | Comments (0)

Victoria's Secret - the high-end lingerie company - mails one of the largest and most influential catalogs. They are also a leader in forest destruction. The company mails out more than 395 million catalogs a year, many derived from ancient Canadian Boreal and dwindling natural Southern US forests. They use little recycled papers, and have no commitment to protected endangered forests. Forest Ethics is launching a new campaign based upon the premise that Victoria's Secret and the catalog industry can no longer turn a blind eye to the ways their consumption and unsustainable practices are destroying Endangered Forests. Please get involved early in this exciting new campaign - details are below.

Title: Did you know that Victoria's Got a Secret?
Victoria's Secret is destroying the world's last Endangered
Forests.
Source: Forest Ethics
Date: September 22, 2004

Get involved now! Together we can stop our endangered forests from ending up in mailboxes around the world.

Victoria's Dirty Secret

Victoria's Secret, despite their advertising image, is no angel when it comes to our forests. Victoria's Secret is one of the largest, most recognizable, and most influential catalogs in the industry and a leader in forest destruction. The company mails out more than 395 million catalogs a year and operates 1,000 stores across the U.S. Instead of using its leadership to challenge the logging industry's destructive practices, Victoria's Secret uses hardly any recycled paper and refuses to make a real commitment to protect Endangered Forests.

Acre after acre of the Canadian Boreal and Southern US forests are being cut down for Victoria's Secret. The Canadian Boreal is home to a quarter of the worlds remaining intact forest; it is the nesting ground for billions of North America's migratory birds, home to the caribou and grizzly bears, and one of the worlds greatest carbon storehouses. The Southern US is producing 15% of the world's paper; approximately 6 million acres of the South's forests are logged every year, primarily to make paper. This paper industry is driving the destruction of Southern US forests and the conversion of forests and wetlands to intensively managed tree farms.

ForestEthics has been meeting with Victoria's Secret, demanding that they come up with a new environmental policy that will actually make a difference and get Victoria's Secret out of Endangered Forests. But so far, Victoria's Secret has taken some small steps forward, but continues to buy massive amounts of pulp from areas in the Southern US and Canada that simply should never be logged.

After forest activists campaigned for over three years in the office supply industry, there were huge environmental shifts in corporations like Staples and Office Depot. Both agreed to stop selling paper from Endangered Forests and to significantly increase the average post-consumer recycled paper they sell. After such a huge shift in the office supply industry, Victoria's Secret and the catalog industry can no longer turn a blind eye to the ways their consumption and unsustainable practices are destroying Endangered Forests.

We are calling on Victoria's Secret to:

. End purchases from any company that is not identifying and halting logging in Endangered Forests in the Canadian Boreal;

. Maximize post-consumer recycled fiber in catalogs (achieve 50% post-consumer recycled in five years);

. Ensure that all suppliers are shifting to Forest Stewardship Council certification;

. End the use of any forest products sourced from other endangered forests, like key areas of the Southern U.S.

Get involved! We will only save the endangered forests from Victoria's Secret's destruction with a large widespread grassroots coalition like in the successful efforts on Staples and Office Depot.

Activists and groups will be holding local actions throughout the fall to pressure Victoria's Secret. Join in these efforts by bringing together your local group, a set of activists or even a bunch of friends to have a rally, call-in day, postcarding event, etc., etc.. In a campaign against Victoria's Secret, the possibilities for creative events are endless! There will also be an international day of action during the winter holidays, Victoria's Secret biggest time of the year, so start thinking about that! There will be more info about getting involved at: www.victoriasdirtysecret.net, which will be up soon.

Contact us immediately to get involved. We can help you plan an event, send you an action packet, and send you materials and information about the campaign. Please let us know that you're planning an event so we can track where actions are happening.

It's time to convince Victoria's Secret to stop destroying our forests!

Soon our new website will be up and running at

http://www.victoriasdirtysecret.net/

For More Info:

Joshua Martin, joshua@forestethics.org, 828-251-1184

Shana Ortman, shana@forestethics.org, 415-863-4563 ext. 302

Liz Butler, liz@forestethics.org, 301-864-3244

Posted by Dr. Glen Barry | Permalink | Comments (1)

I have seen the future and it is Haiti. The consequences of deforestation, poverty and inequity, combined with changing climate, are on display. The path to avoid such a future, and achieve local and global ecological sustainability, is clear. Unfortunately, it depends upon wisdom, ecological intuition and justice - not bombing - thus current leaders may be disadvantaged. Forests.org calls for a major international program to ecologically restore landscapes whose ecosystems have been destroyed and are no longer functioning. This will involve mixed plantings of trees suitable to meeting human needs; i.e. food, shelter and fuel. It will also require assembling new natural forests and grasslands composed of native species, planted along environmentally sensitive areas such as water sources and steep slopes. Man centered and nature centered forests must be intermingled and contiguous. Further, there will be no respite for environmental refugees until the human population is stabilized and then reduced using non-coercive means. This will require generations of one child households as the global norm. And finally, the atrocious sums of money being poured into militarism by our "leaders" must be rechanneled towards meeting basic human needs. Ecological collapse is just as real in the shiny and bright cities of the North. Imagine Phoenix in summer with no water or electricity (not impossible). I hope that you can intuit that humans are utterly dependent upon the Earth - yet we are failing Gaia and all her life badly.
g.b.

Deadly Floods in Haiti Blamed on Deforestation, Poverty, Associated Press

Posted by Dr. Glen Barry | Permalink | Comments (0)

There are indications that Australia's Prime Minister John Howard is finalizing a multi-million-dollar compensation package to end old-growth logging in Tasmania. Recall Tasmania's ancient old-growth forests are being chipped into pulp to make paper (about 5.5 million cubic meters in 2000) in unconscionable violence against the Earth. Less than 13 percent of Tasmanian old growth forest remains. If a timber industry buy-out were implemented, rights to log some 390,000 hectares of remaining Tasmanian old-growth would be negated. Tasmania's forest mismanagement, including large-scale clearing of native forests for plantations, impacts on water, and the effects of toxic chemical use; have drawn local, national and international outrage and calls for a federal inquiry.

Rapid fire Tasmanian forest policy discussions are occurring against the backdrop of pending Australian elections, where the green vote may prove decisive, and one-upmanship on environmental policy is rampant. While only speculation at this point (though widely reported), this would set a marvelous precedent. Destructive and inherently unsustainable industrial harvest of ancient old-growth forests must end in Tasmania and throughout the World. If need be, those that have amassed capital to liquidate these ecosystems may be compensated - but then the industrial harvest ends, period.

Forests.org continues to follow the situation at http://forests.org/south_pacific/ . Thankfully, WWF's atrocious plan to greenwash continued old-growth logging appears to have met a timely death, in Tasmania at least. Thank you for your pressure in this regard. If a rich, developed country like Australia can not find the will to protect their last ancient forest legacy, there is no hope for any old, large forests anywhere. Australia, please lead. Indeed, Tasmania and Australia's reputation is as much at stake as the wild forests themselves.

Posted by Dr. Glen Barry | Permalink | Comments (0)

At least a temporary tactical victory, as the Bush administration realizes the folly of removing popular roadless forest protection during an election year.

MSNBC - No roadless forest changes before election

The Bush administration said Wednesday it will put off until after the election a final decision on a plan to allow road building and logging on 58 million acres of remote forests where both are now prohibited.

Posted by Dr. Glen Barry | Permalink | Comments (0)

Yesterday marked the 40th anniversary of the Wilderness Act - a monumental piece of American legislation that protected much of the nation's wild and special places. There are now some 662 federal wilderness areas, covering some 106 million acres across 44 states. Not only do these areas provide wildlife habitat, recreation and clean water; they also are major component of North American continental ecological sustainability. Large contiguous wild natural areas are required to maintain atmospheric, hydrological and terrestrial systems. Yet current designations in North America are not adequate in this regard. This is why it is so important to gain protections for the tens of millions of acres of wilderness quality lands that lack federal protection. America's current leaders threaten what has been a bi-partisan agreement to protect America's wild legacy, with the current Congress having failed to designate one acre of new wilderness. The President is now opening wilderness quality land to gas and oil drilling, and to commercial logging, ostensibly to protect far off communities from wild fires. Large natural areas are more than an amusing amenity; they are the foundation that maintains conditions suitable for life - all life, including yours.

Posted by Dr. Glen Barry | Permalink | Comments (0)

The epic battle to protect forests and other natural ecosystems is intimately related to human rights. Who would believe that modern slavery is as pervasive as this article indicates - including in rainforest countries?

Slavery is not dead, just less recognizable. | csmonitor.com

Slaves are cheap these days. Their price is the lowest it's been in about 4,000 years. And right now the world has a glut of human slaves - 27 million by conservative estimates and more than at any time in human history.

Posted by Dr. Glen Barry | Permalink | Comments (0)