Author: Guest Contributor
Sustainable Agriculture as a Way of Struggling Against Climate Change
News From Via Campesina:
Sustainable Agriculture as a Way of Struggling Against Climate Change
11/12/2007
Members of La Via Campesina from Japan, Thailand, Sri Lanka, India, Cambodia, Norway, Canada, Mozambique and Brazil visited the Jatiluwih village in Bali to see rice cultivation in terraces and to analyze ways to practice peasant farming with local producers.
The meeting aims to exchange experiences between peasants, in order to take advantage of the presence of farmers from 20 countries in Indonesia who are taking part in the parallel activities to the UN Conference on Climate Change (COP 13).
La VÃa Campesina had participated in a march on Saturday in the region of Kuta, in Bali, to demand climate justice and responsible measures of the industrialized countries governments to tackle climate change. Real World Radio was there and interviewed a member of La Via CampesinaCelso Rivero, who is also state leader of the Rural Landless Workers’ Movement (MST) in the west of Parana.
BP Set to Commit “The Biggest Environmental Crime in History”
by Cahal Milmo
BP, the British oil giant that pledged to move “Beyond Petroleum†by finding cleaner ways to produce fossil fuels, is being accused of abandoning its “green sheen†by investing nearly £1.5bn to extract oil from the Canadian wilderness using methods which environmentalists say are part of the “biggest global warming crime†in history.
The multinational oil and gas producer, which last year made a profit of £11bn, is facing a
head-on confrontation with the green lobby in the pristine forests of North America after Greenpeace pledged a direct action campaign against BP following its decision to reverse a long-standing policy and invest heavily in extracting so-called “oil sands†that lie beneath the Canadian province of Alberta and form the world’s second-largest proven oil reserves after Saudi Arabia.
Producing crude oil from the tar sands – a heavy mixture of bitumen, water, sand and clay – found beneath more than 54,000 square miles of prime forest in northern Alberta – an area the size of England and Wales combined – generates up to four times more carbon dioxide, the principal global warming gas, than conventional drilling. The booming oil sands industry will produce 100 million tonnes of CO2 (equivalent to a fifth of the UK’s entire annual emissions) a year by 2012, ensuring that Canada will miss its emission targets under the Kyoto treaty, according to environmentalist activists.
The oil rush is also scarring a wilderness landscape: millions of tonnes of plant life and top soil is scooped away in vast open-pit mines and millions of litres of water are diverted from rivers – up to five barrels of water are needed to produce a single barrel of crude and the process requires huge amounts of natural gas. The industry, which now includes all the major oil multinationals, including the Anglo-Dutch Shell and American combine Exxon-Mobil, boasts that it takes two tonnes of the raw sands to produce a single barrel of oil. BP insists it will use a less damaging extraction method, but it accepts that its investment will increase its carbon footprint. Continue reading
