Carbon Footprints

Burning rain forest in the Amazon, Para, Brazil. Photo by Julio Etchart, used with permission.
Almost one fifth of the Amazon rainforest has been destroyed to date according to an article on Mongabay.com titled Fires rage in Amazon rainforest park.
In 2005 and 2006 the Amazon experienced the worst drought on record as thousands of square kilometers [...]

Fire in the Amazon as seen from Google Earth. Google Earth link
The Amazon, often described as ‘the lungs of the Earth’ is burning. The UK’s The Independent has this story; South America chokes as Amazon burns.
From Santa Cruz in the east of Bolivia, where flights have been grounded, to the Brazilian frontier city of [...]

Newsweek is running a fascinating history of coordinated climate change denial in a story The Truth About Denial.

Since the late 1980s, this well-coordinated, well-funded campaign by contrarian scientists, free-market think tanks and industry has created a paralyzing fog of doubt around climate change. Through advertisements, op-eds, lobbying and media attention, greenhouse doubters (they hate being [...]

Cartoon ©Fiona Katauskas, used with permission
Political zine New Matilda is featuring a stinging rebuke of Murdoch’s The Australian, Australia’s only national daily paper, in an article The Australian, Free Speech and Hypocrisy by Clive Hamilton of The Australia Institute, author of the new book Scorcher: The dirty politics of climate change which claims to blow [...]

The UK’s Guardian is reporting the very sad, but hardly surprising news that US rejects all proposals on climate change.
The US has rejected any prospect of a deal on climate change at the G8 summit in Germany next month, according to a leaked document.
Despite Tony Blair’s declaration on Thursday that Washington would sign up to [...]

The UK’s Independent is reporting As Blair leaves Washington, US hardens stance on climate change.
As Tony Blair left Washington yesterday for his last visit as Prime Minister, the Bush administration was acting to scupper international efforts to combat climate change.
Harlan Watson, President Bush’s chief climate negotiator, rejected any caps on US emissions or participation in [...]

In the UK, The Guardian is reporting Paradise lost - with napalm.
To Australia’s shame, loggers are being allowed to destroy Tasmania’s extraordinary primeval forest.
Rainforest is being clearfelled and then burnt with napalm. The world’s tallest hardwood trees, eucalyptus regnans, are being reduced to mud and ash. And the monocultural plantations that replace the old growths [...]

The Financial Times has been investigating dodgy carbon offset schemes in a story Industry caught in carbon ‘smokescreen’.
A Financial Times investigation has uncovered widespread failings in the new markets for greenhouse gases, suggesting some organisations are paying for emissions reductions that do not take place.
Others are meanwhile making big profits from carbon trading for very [...]

In Political Affairs‘ Letters to the Editor section thus week they were asked,
Dear EarthTalk: Did Exxon/Mobil really pay scientists and economists to write articles trying to de-bunk global warming? — Rosemary R., via e-mail
I’ll reprint their reply in full here as it summs up the situation so well.
A February 2007 report in the British [...]

The Seattle Post Intelligencer is reporting U.S. bars talk of climate change effects on bears.
The Bush administration is ordering federal wildlife officials headed for international meetings on polar bears not to talk about how climate change and melting ice are affecting the imperiled animals.
It is the latest in a string of cases in which the [...]