A n i m
a l W r i t e s © sm
The
official ANIMAL RIGHTS ONLINE newsletter
Publisher ~ EnglandGal@aol.com
Issue #
01/07/01
Editor ~ JJswans@aol.com
Journalists ~ Park StRanger@aol.com
~
MicheleARivera@aol.com
~ SavingLife@aol.com
THE ARTICLES IN THIS ISSUE ARE:
1 ~ How to Change the World
2 ~ What to Avoid to Spare the Rainforests
3 ~ The Stray Rogue
4 ~ Quote To Remember
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How To Change The World
from Diana Artemis - artemisd123@hotmail.com
One
baby step at a time. "Big breakthroughs" never "just
happen." They're the result of every person doing one small thing
one day at a time: saying something casual and genuine while waiting in
line at the grocery store about soy burgers or the suffering that cows go
through to produce milk and how it harms human health -- not a scary, preachy
lecture, but something casual and friendly.
Investing 34 cents to mail a letter to your Congressperson or other decision
maker; or making a call.
Forwarding a letter or article to a friend, co-worker or family member, etc.,
etc. Engaging them in friendly, genuine conversations.
Selecting a vegan cookbook as a gift with a brief note saying, "thought
you'd like to try these great recipes," etc., etc.
Not that I think Christianity is a model religion, but it did, after all, start
with 12 people talking one-on-one with other people; now, for better or worse,
it circles the globe.
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What To Avoid To Spare The
Rainforests
from the Macaw Landing Foundation - mlf@cnnw.net
* Tropical Hardwoods
Woods such as tropical plywood (sometimes called lauan or meranti in the
stores), mahogany, teak, rosewood, wenge, cocobolo, zebrawood, paduak and ramin
are all highly detrimental to the rainforests. Demand for these species
is driving devastating logging, both legal and illegal, throughout the
rainforests of the world. Logging is the number one cause of rainforest
destruction in S.E. Asia. Philippines is now 80% deforested, Thailand,
80%, and two Malaysian states, 50%, all for logging for plywood. The US is the
second largest importer of tropical hardwoods. The plywood is used for
paneling, door skins, sub-flooring and sub-roofing, furniture backing and
picture frame backing. The other woods are found mostly in furniture (all),
futons (mahogany, ramin) but also in musical instruments (ebony, mahogany),
picture frames (teak, rosewood, ramin), and even tool handles (ramin).
What you can do: Avoid any wood product that you cannot identify as
domestic. For plywood, use domestic softwood plywood (pine and spruce) or
domestic hardwood plywood (maple and birch). Avoid tools with wooden
handles unless they are oak, ash or hickory. Buy used furniture or antiques. Always ask if any tropical woods are
independently certified, such as Smart Wood (tm). These are okay to buy.
* Bananas
This, the most popular fruit in the world, is responsible for massive
degradation of the land, chemicalization, worker poisoning, and
oppression. Workers all over the
tropics are now attempting to organize for better conditions, but are being
fired for it. New rainforests are being cleared daily for more plantations.
Currently, no fresh banana available in the US is grown in a way that is not
detrimental to the rainforests. Organic is better, but even those are grown on
plantations that used to be rainforests. Good for Dole, bad for the
rainforests.
What you can do: Until bananas can be certified as Rainforest Safe (tm),
the best bet is to avoid them entirely. If you must have bananas, eat only
organic. Ask your grocer to order Rainforest Farms (tm) dried bananas. Eat locally grown produce, such as peaches
and apples.
* Coffee
Coffee is highly responsible for the continuing loss of rainforests. Coffee
growers in Central and South America are being convinced to convert their
"shade-grown" coffee plantations into high-yield monocultures. This
necessitates much higher use of chemicals, since the full-sun varieties
(developed with the help of US scientists) is much less hearty. Vast areas of
formerly productive coffee farms are being turned into chemicalized
deserts. Birds using the farms drop from 93% of those in primary forests,
to 3%. Good for those with stock in Monsanto, but bad for the rainforests.
What you can do: Avoid coffee unless it is organic and shade-grown, and
co-op grown. You can find this at specialty shops (almost all coffee from
Africa and Asia is such), or look for labels such as Equal Exchange,
Thanksgiving Coffee, Frontier Coffee and the Organic Coffee Company.
* Chocolate
Much of Central West Africa's rainforests have been converted to cocoa
plantations. The workers are being poisoned from the use of agricultural
chemicals and those shelling the nuts are contracting cancers of the hands and
skin. This is now expanding to Central and South America.
What you can do: Avoid chocolate unless it is organically grown. Newman's Own
Organics and Cloud Nine use organic chocolate from a co-op in Costa Rica.
* Beef
The largest cause of deforestation in Central America. The US is the largest
importer of Central American beef. Because of its poor quality, it is
used in processed beef products.
What you can do: Avoid all processed beef (hotdogs, hamburgers and dog and cat
food).
* Paper
More and more, temperate rainforests are being converted to tree farms for
production of paper, be it newsprint, magazine paper or copy paper. In
the process, jobs are lost through greater mechanization and exports of
raw trees. The same is happening in the tropics as large corporations
convert tropical forests to pulp plantations of non-native species. This
dooms the wildlife and native peoples. The top exporters of paper to the US are
Canada, Brazil and Indonesia, all countries where rainforests are being
converted to paper plantations. All because our demand for paper is
insatiable. According to the US Forest Service, our demand for paper has
doubled since 1950, and will double again by 2040! Much of the last
doubling was packaging; the current one is office paper.
What you can do: Entirely avoid disposable paper products. Use real plates,
napkins and bring a mug with you for drinks. Share newspapers with neighbors.
Clean and recycle everything made of paper. Seek out paper with recycled
content. Avoid packaged foods and use a reusable shopping bag. At the
office, copy both sides, and use already used paper for draft print-outs and
memos.
* Aluminum
Aluminum requires massive inputs of energy to mine, process and form into
products. The entire Columbia River basin in the Northwest US was dammed to
provide cheap power to the US aluminum industry. This has totally destroyed the
Northwest fishing industry, which provided many more jobs and income. Now that
power rates are climbing there, US companies, such as Alcoa and Reynolds, are
mining aluminum in Central and South America.
Venezuela is seeking to become the world's top aluminum producer. In the
process, rainforest rivers are dammed for hydro power, vast areas of
rainforests are flooded, human populations are displaced, and entire species
wiped out. 70% of our aluminum is made into beverage cans.
What you can do: Avoid aluminum if you can, but since aluminum recycles
completely, if you use it, make sure you recycle it. All of it. You can
save the energy equivalent to a beverage can of gasoline just by recycling that
aluminum can! Making aluminum from recycled aluminum requires only 5% of
the energy to make it from ore!
* Gold
More than anything else, the quest for gold has been responsible for wiping out
indigenous cultures the world over. And the process continues. In the US, gold
was the greatest factor in wiping out native Americans. In the Amazon,
gold miners constantly invade indigenous lands, murdering Indians and
spreading deadly diseases. Entire ecosystems are contaminated from the
chemicals used to process gold. In Papua New Guinea, the Ok Tedi gold mine
"the world's largest" has silted the river with contaminated
tailings, killing it and making life along the river impossible. The natives
are suing the company. Recently in Guyana a tailings dam broke, spilling
cyanide into the river, killing it for 5 miles downstream. The company was not
kicked out -- on the contrary, they received approval to expand the mine. 70%
of gold production goes to making jewelry.
What you can do: Avoid gold entirely. There is no good reason to buy
it. If you own it, consider selling it.
* Oil
Vast areas of rainforests in Ecuador, Bolivia, Indonesia and Nigeria have been
contaminated by oil drilling operations. The natives of Ecuador are suing
Texaco to clean up the mess it left from 22 years of oil production in the
middle of pristine rainforests in a National Park. According to the
government's own figures, Texaco spilled 1.5-times the amount of the Exxon
Valdez spill in 17 years, just from the main pipeline! In Nigeria,
activists attempting to get Shell to clean up the mess it has made of the Ogoni
homeland were recently hung by the military dictatorship. 50% of the oil we
import is used to fuel our cars. 40% goes to make electricity.
What you can do: Drive less, walk, use a bicycle or mass transit. Car pool, ask
your neighbors when they are going out. Turn out the lights unless
absolutely necessary. Install energy efficient lighting (this saves you lots of
money, too!). Turn down the thermostat in the winter and turn off the
air conditioner. Recycling saves great amounts of energy as well, as
does buying used items.
* Steel (Iron)
In Brazil, the Carajas iron mine, the world's largest, uses charcoal made from
the surrounding forests to process the iron. This mine is estimated to consume
16% of the Amazon forests by the time it is spent!
What you can do: Sell your car and don't buy another one. Recycle all metal
objects. Most towns now have bulk recycling or try the phone book under
"recycling".
While we tend to narrow our focus in our daily lives, and indeed,
such concentration is essential to accomplishing our goals, we encourage
you to take a thoughtful look at the BIG picture too. For inherent
in the conservation of one species or one small habitat or one isolated
indigenous group is the preservation of the Earth's entire health. We are
living on a planet with a population increase that is out of control.
There are now more people alive on our planet than have ever walked its face
since the beginning of time and humans continue to damage our environment at an
unprecedented rate. More than a third of the planet's plant and animal
species exist exclusively on a scant 1.4 percent of its land surface,
which is mostly rainforests. We are losing this rainforest at the rate of
1 1/2 acres a SECOND, to provide the developed world with oil, steel, wood,
bananas, coffee, gold, beef, chocolate, paper and aluminum, to name just a few
items. In Brazil we are losing the dryforest at an even greater rate to
make room for cattle ranching, soy farming and steel production. We have
a population of several million indigenous people living in the rainforest,
many of whom prefer no contact with the outside world because they fear
extinction. The Siona indigenous people of Ecuador and Colombia numbered
several thousand before Texaco entered their lands to drill for oil. Today
they number less than 500, and because of the polluted water supply in the
rainforest they are developing cancer. Texaco spilled 17 million gallons
of raw crude oil in the rainforest of Ecuador, and left it. (See www.MacawLanding.org for related
articles.) That's over half again as much as the Exxon Valdez spilled in
Alaska. There is a ten-year-old lawsuit pending against Texaco by the
Siona people for one billion dollars, the cost to clean up the oil, which
Texaco has refused to do. The rough-shod attitudes and methods of some large,
well known companies drive other indigenous people to retreat farther into the
rainforest to avoid persecution, harassment and ultimately, death. The
U'wa indigenous people of Ecuador have had to threaten mass suicide to stall Occidental
from drilling on their lands.
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'The Stray Rogue'
by Diana Moreton - tapster@mindspring.com
Loki, how dangerous jungles are these days
infested with men and invisible plagues
Beat, ancient giants paraded in paint
pay for it dearly in blood-reddened taint
Encroachment, entrapment, humans galore'
run past the tigers to mystic escape door
Run for your life, Loki, run from the crowd
seek solace and refuge, heavenly shroud
Giant gray moth evolves in reincarnation
understand Loki's pain, fear, constant
frustration
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Quote To Remember
"We need a boundless ethic which will include animals also."
-- Albert Schweitzer
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Susan Roghair - EnglandGal@aol.com
Animal Rights Online
P O Box 7053
Tampa, Fl 33673-7053
http://www.geocities.com/RainForest/1395/
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not-for-profit publisher of The Animals' Agenda Magazine
http://www.animalsagenda.org/
The Animals' Agenda Magazine: WebEdition
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