rainforest

Ranchers are clearing the Amazon rainforest with Agent Orange

In Brazil, ranchers are opting to use Agent Orange -- one of the most toxic herbicides ever concocted, infamous for its use as a defoliant and de facto weapon during the Vietnam War -- to clear acres of rainforest. It's illegal to clear the forest, but by spraying swaths of trees with Agent Orange, deployed by helicopter, ranchers stand less chance of detection than if they cleared the land by bulldozing or cutting down trees.

Bill McKibben: Blame Canada!

Bill McKibben has it in for Canada. In a new article in The New Republic, he calls it "one of the earth's most irresponsible nations," admonishes liberals that they need to find a new country to dream of emigrating to, and stops just short of calling Canadians (and Americans, but what else is new) giant hypocrites.

What's pissing McKibben off? Tar sands, of course.

How rainforests can produce biofuel sustainably

Production of biofuel from palm oil has been an unmitigated disaster for the rainforest, leading to clear-cutting throughout Indonesia and propelling that country to the top ranks of the world's largest greenhouse gas emitters. That's why it's so strange that biologist Willie Smits, last seen cooking up a plan to save orangutans, thinks that biofuels could actually save the rainforest.

Ken is leaving Barbie over her deforestation habit

Barbie's got a dangerous addiction to endangered Indonesian hardwood, and Ken isn't putting up with it anymore. Once he found out Mattel packaging uses wood from the fragile Indonesian rainforest, at least some of which is from evil conglomerate Asia Pulp & Paper, he was out of there, girl.  This video leans a little hard […]

Critical List: No more nuclear power in Germany; angry moose attack

Germany plans to close its nuclear reactors by 2022. Electricity generation in 2010 created more carbon emissions than ever before. Canada just looooves tar sands. So much that the country sorta kinda forgot to mention to the U.N. that pollution from the oil-sands industry increased by 20 percent in 2009. European countries are banning imported […]

GOP congressman: Stop climate change by destroying the rainforest

Republican representative Dana Rohrabacher has a novel solution for reducing greenhouse gases: Destroy the rainforest! While we’re at it, we should probably get rid of the ozone layer and those pesky whales, as well. Rohrabacher argues that since 80 percent of carbon emissions come from decaying plant matter, we should clear-cut rainforests in order to […]

Critical List: More Midwest deaths after storms; White House, NASCAR go green

More deaths in the Midwest after storms hit Kansas, Oklahoma, and Arkansas. Some areas of Texas have received less than one-fifth the normal amount of rain in the last six months. The drought has cost $1.5 billion so far. But these catastrophes are totally unrelated, right? Bill McKibben takes his sarcastic stick to anyone who'll […]

Can barcodes enforce sustainable logging in Liberia?

Liberia, semi-miraculously, is still covered in rainforest, even though at one point in its history, warlord Charles Taylor was more or less giving arms traffickers logging tracts in exchange for weapons. The U.N. eventually noticed this problem and ended up saving the country's forests by putting an embargo on the country's "logs of war.” But […]

Girl Scouts censor Facebook criticism of palm oil in cookies

Critter-killing cookies?Photo: Laura TaylorLooking for a lesson of how not to respond to green consumer demand in the internet age? Check out Girl Scouts USA. The Scouts’ CEO Kathy Cloninger has for several years rebuffed polite requests from individual scouts, major environmental organizations, and others that they make their famous Girl Scout cookies rainforest friendly. […]