Showing posts with label Amazon fires. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Amazon fires. Show all posts

Sunday, 22 September 2019

Our Home Is On Fire.

         Just what are we doing to the our home, planet Earth? The Amazon fires have grabbed the headlines recently, but it seems that it is not the largest or most widespread of the world's fires. Forests are being cleared at an alarming rate, some by natural events, though this is accelerating due to rising temperatures, and an increasing amount of fires are to increase farmland. However without forests life on this planet is in extreme danger of a dramatic change. Without our forests the CO2 would rapidly fill our atmosphere greatly accelerating the temperature rise and rapid demise of most large forms of life, including humans. No doubt bacteria, viruses and certain insects would survive for a certain amount of time, they would probably be the last inhabitants of planet Earth.
       All this "slash and burn" extravaganza is nothing more than the capitalist system at work, a system where every piece of the planet must be turned it a profit making entity. Forests are seen as profit generating timber factors, or a hindrance to developing other profit making ventures. In this capitalist system nothing is for what it actually is, it has to produce financial profit or it is deemed to be useless. The profit from a healthy planet is not on their balance sheet.
       Seeking to change capitalism into a humane green system is being naive in the extreme. To save our home, planet Earth, from burning, capitalism has to be destroyed and replaced with a sustainable system of mutual aid and co-operation, freed from the profit motive, that sees to the needs of all our people. We have to decide which system we want and we don't have a lot of time to make that decision. As one placard said "The wrong Amazon is burning".


 This from Void Network:

         While the Amazon burns, many other fires are burning across the world, some even larger and more widespread than those in the Amazon.
        The fires in the Amazon have been among the top news stories in the world for the past week because it is such an iconic location that is so important to the global ecosystem. However, it is important to note that these events come at a time where many other fires are burning across the world, some even larger and more widespread than those in the Amazon.
        The areas affected include Angola, Congo, Spain, Greece, Alaska, and Siberia.
        The World Meteorological Organization announced that this fire season has been unprecedented for the Arctic Circle, with over 100 major fires reported in the region.
        In Siberia, it has been reported that over 21,000 square miles of the forest were recently damaged. Some reports, from Global News and other outlets, have indicated that these fires were started intentionally to conceal illegal logging activities, but these reports have not been confirmed.
       Also last week, the Greek island of Evia was under a state of emergency after multiple large fires broke out. Earlier this month, a huge fire in Russia’s Krasnoyarsk Territory damaged over 1 million hectares of forest.
        Alaska and Greenland, both known for cold temperatures, have also faced serious fires this summer. Last month, Denmark sent a team of firefighters to Greenland to put out huge fires that were spreading across the island nation.
         A fire in Spain’s Canary Islands cased 9,000 people to evacuate. Another Spanish island off the northern coast of Africa, Gran Canaria, lost about 46,000 square miles of woodland due to fires this year.
        At this moment, it seems that the largest fires in the world are currently burning in Angola, Africa.
        According to MODIS satellite data analyzed by Weather Source, 6,902 fires broke out in Angola in the 48 hours between August 21st and 23rd. During the same time, 3,395 fires were reported in the Democratic Republic of Congo and 2,127 in Brazil.
        Large wildfires are not uncommon in Central Africa this time of year, but once again, many of these fires are intentionally set by humans attempting to clear space for agriculture businesses.
        According to data from the NASA Aqua satellite, more than 67,000 fires were seen in just one week during June of last year.
        Experts believe that most of these fires are the result of a farming technique, known as slash and burn, which as the name implies, involves the burning of forest to make room for crops. Obviously, there are other far less-reckless ways of getting the job done, but burning everything down just happens to be the fastest and the cheapest. The ash also provides nutrients to the crops that will eventually be planted, but environmentalists warn that this practice could cause deforestation, soil erosion and a loss of biodiversity.
Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk

Sunday, 25 August 2019

Governments Fiddle While The Planet Burns.

        It has been in the news recently, and there has been condemnation and outrage, and rightly so. The Amazon fires, the raging capitalist driven burning of the planet's lung. This is surely the most greed driven insane action of capitalism for many years, if not ever. All accepted rational scientific information states clearly, to survive our species needs the Amazon forests. This destructive action has no other reason than money for the rich and powerful, spearheaded by macho, fascist, psychopath Balsonaro. What we see is from afar, but their are people who live in the forests and have no other way of live except to live with and in the forest, it is their way of life and their culture that is going up in smoke. If this continues, then we will be the next to feel the utter folly of burning the planet's lung, nobody will escape this suicide pact with the corporate juggernaut and the financial Mafia. It may already be too late, if there is life out there in outer space, they must be looking on in complete disbelief, watching a supposed intelligent, ration species, stand by and allow a small group of their own, engineer collective suicide for all. This must surely be the most dramatic lethal and final action that proves beyond any doubt, that capitalism is a destructive force and doesn't and can't work for the people. It is either the destruction of capitalism, or the destruction of the species. The chose is ours.
       The following from AMW
Originally published by Abolition Media Worldwide.

      More than 18,000 Mura people live in Amazonas state, the largest state in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest.
       Logging companies have cleared away an area the size of several football fields near their village, leaving a broad dirt hole in the ground pockmarked by the treads of heavy machinery.
    “With each passing day, we see the destruction advance: deforestation, invasion, logging,” said Handerch Wakana Mura, one of several leaders of a tribal clan of more than 60 people.
       “We are sad because the forest is dying at every moment. We feel the climate changing and the world needs the forest.”
       Indeed, Amazon deforestation has surged 67% in the first seven months of the year from the same period a year ago, as the Bolsonaro regime has ramped up environmental destruction.
       Forest fires were up more than 80% in the country year-to-date, hitting their highest point since at least 2013.
       Everywhere in the region around the Mura village, pockets of fire were raging.
      The fascist President Jair Bolsonaro has called for the development of protected reserves and railed against environmental fines, emboldening loggers and farmers who seek to clear the land, sometimes by setting fires.
      Deforestation in the area began four years ago, and only last year were loggers and those extracting rocks to build a nearby roadway forced out.
      Logging subsequently jumped across the roadway, with a huge area of downed trees visible by drone.
       When that abated, the Mura people came upon a path through the jungle nearby that had recently been hewn with chainsaws and machetes – a logging path and the first sign of a new area that would be targeted.
      This time, the path runs particularly close to a group of Brazil nut trees the clan harvests, a major traditional food source for indigenous people in the area, Handerch Wakana Mura and other tribal leaders say.
      The Mura clan plans to fight against loggers and others exploiting the land through militant resistance.
     The clan says it will be a tough battle, with Bolsonaro having vowed not to set aside any more tribal land.
      Leader Raimundo Praia Belem Mura, a 73-year-old who has lived on the land his entire life, has vowed to fight to the bitter end.

    “For this forest, I will go on until my last drop of blood,” he said.
      A small group armed with spears, bows and arrows, cannot be left alone to fight this corporate juggernaut suicide mission, if ever solidarity was needed it is now.
Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk