Vandana Shiva: Food, Forests and Fuel

[nosmokes]

It would be to our benefit to liston to and heed the words of Miss Shiva, a woman of great wisdom and wit, and a personal hero of mine.
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original-slowfood

Food, Forests and Fuel

27 Dec 07 - Vandana Shiva - Sloweek
December 3–14 2007 will see more than 10,000 representatives of government and civil society gather in Bali for a meeting of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. This is the international treaty under which the Kyoto Protocol was negotiated. The Protocol expires in 2012, and Bali is supposed to begin negotiations on a post-Kyoto framework.

In 2007, no one can deny that man-made climate change is taking place. However, the commitment to mitigate and help the vulnerable to adapt does not match the recognition of the disaster.

Mitigation requires material changes in production and consumption patterns. Globalization has pushed production and consumption worldwide to higher carbon dioxide emissions. WTO rules of trade liberalization are in effect rules that force countries on a high emissions pathway.

Similarly, World Bank lending for super highways and thermal power plants, industrial agriculture and corporate retail coerces countries to emit more greenhouse gases. And giant corporations such as Cargill and Walmart carry major responsibility in destroying local, sustainable economies and pushing society after society into dependence on an ecologically destructive global economy.
Cargill is an important player in spreading soya cultivation in the Amazon, and palm oil plantations in the rainforest of Indonesia thus increasing emissions both by the burning of forests and destruction of the massive carbon sink in rainforests and peat lands. And Walmart’s model of long-distance centralized trade is a recipe for increasing the carbon dioxide burden in the atmosphere.

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complete article here