REDD Herring

Dying of Consumption

Just as the fossil fuel nations have already consumed the easiest oil and gas resources and are now scraping the bottom of the barrel, reaching into ever more difficult and dangerous areas, so also are we forcing our way into ever more remote places as we suck the life out of the biosphere. Concentrating wealth into fewer and fewer hands. Devising ever more cunning and devious ways of asset stripping the Earth and our fellow human beings. Destroying genuinely sustainable ways of life and replacing them with the here now, throw tomorrow uncertainty of modern Western consumer atomisation. Blaming the poor for our greed. Turning a private profit from destroying the common heritage of humanity.

Carbon Cowboys Draw Up New Plans to Eliminate Indians

REDD Monitor has produced a list of the top ten worst climate cons being perpetrated against defenceless communities in the name of "saving" the environment from the consequences of our Western fossil fuel addiction.

By way of example, a project in the Amazon region threatens the Guarani people by shutting them off from the forest that is their very means of subsistence, ignoring the fact that, as film-maker Paul Kell explains:

“These tribes are not the reason our ecosystem is being threatened, but they are now being made scapegoats and are actually going to prison for it. As is often the case, hastily (and insanely profitable) laws are put in place to appease the collective conscience, when in fact, the real criminals behind crimes against Nature are being rewarded with unheralded growth and prosperity. Such is progress.”

Not What it Says on the Tin: REDD Will Not 'Reduce Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation'

Here's a video view from the grass-roots.

Ethics Ain’t Hip, Apparently

You may be used to losing out, being downgraded and passed over, simply because for ethical reasons you stubbornly refuse to drive a car or indulge in all that glamorous consumerism of convenience. But what is really ironic, is to realise that most so-called environmentalists and right ons are just as easily impressed by the jet-setting, car-driving and consumerist lifestyle as the normal people they often like to sneer at for being “conned”.

And so it seems that that is exactly how Mark Kennedy managed to gain the confidence of many in the activist community, as he burned around Europe doing the environment scene, maan …

“He was a very popular lad at the Sumac Centre …”

“That’s how I remember him – a cool guy with a flash car who dropped off this cool coffee. He got involved with helping anyone with transport, because he was ‘climate’ by trade.”

“Sometimes he’d have jobs on the side and would disappear, but because of the couriering you never really knew where he was. We were under the impression it was all black economy. He’d be like, “don’t worry - I’ll get you a drink next time I see you.” So he was seen as a bit of a geezer.”

Patrick Smith, Veggies, Nottingham, in LeftLion magazine.

So much for being cool!