There's Something Wrong

Before consuming some wood or paper... Think twice please...

• A surface equivalent to a football stadium disappears every two seconds.
• Non Stop. Every day a surface equivalent to 43,200 football stadiums disappears. Every year a surface equivalent to 15,500,000 football stadiums a year disappears. It would be something similar to the surface of Spain and Portugal together.
• In the last 80 years we have lost so much forests as in the last 10.000 years and what is worst... the pace is accelarating: in the last 30 years we have lost so much forests as in the last 5,000 years. And last but not least, the loss of biodiversity goes in parallel with the loss of forests.
• Many forests finishes their lives transformed into toilette paper, packing, wrapping and office paper.

It's up to you.

End of 2009: Year of the Gorilla

I know I arrive a bit late but what matters is the thought. Some days after having begun 2010 I would like to wish it to you.

Year after year, one that comes another that goes, that's life: someone comes, someone goes. I have taken advantage of the last post of the year to dedicate some words to the animal of the year 2009: The Gorilla.

This is not the first time I make a reference to this animal but sadly, this species like many other big mammals are on the brink of extinction and I think it is a moral obligation to me to remind my readers the nowadays situation of one of our nearer relatives in the Line of Evolution.

I always insist in the same words: The Change has to come out from everyone of us and this is usuful for different aspects of life. We don't have to wait for the Messiah, just live in the way we would like things to be. And of course I'm not the author of this quote, it is the philosopher Kant and it is something that I try to put into practice every day:

Act that your principle of action might safely be made a law for the whole world.

If continue reading, below you'll see I have left several links to information about the gorilla although we could reduce its problems to deforestation and it has three main causes:

1. Search of wood for furniture for rich people (WE).


2. Search of wood for cooking and meat for the ones who are very poor (THE OTHERS).


3. Coltan minery for the posh people who want to change their mobile at a good clip (and I say mobiles for not saying more electronic devices).

So if you consider yourself a responsible person:

• Buy wood when really necessary and take into account its origin. Look for FSC certificates or at least ask the shop assistant about any other warranties: Get the word out.

• Reuse, try to buy second hand furniture. You can find some good oportunities with a bit of patience.

• Calm down with your mobile and don't be so flashy, take profit of it for at least two years if possible and ask your mobile provider any kind of certification which shows that the coltan in your mobile has been taken out under environmental and social responsibility policies because not only elephants and gorillas are killed but also children and farmers are made slaves.

I also want to pay tribute to Dian Fossey who gave her life for defending these incredible animals and without her sacrifice gorillas would've been wiped out. Here you are some links: Wikipedia, the charity which takes her name and another where I've got the picture below.

We also have to pay tribute to Jane Goodall: link 1, link 2 and link 3. You are her foto below and one of her books made me think twice about the way I was conntected to the world and also made me give the first steps to become vegetarian.

Finally, as I paid tribute to the bucardo (link in English), I'd like to do the same with Digit because I think is not fair they fall into obscurity because of a world plenty of "noise", vanity, shallowness and greed. To those who don't know it, gorillas almost don't fight for food, their territory or mating, but leaders put into risk their lifes for trying to stand the group together. Digit was a leader whose loyalty to her family brought her to death when in 1977 she kept a tight rein on six pouchers and their dogs. Her death highlighted the inexorable human interference into the mountain gorillas habit in Central Africa. I hope Gaia has Digit in its glory and from this moment in our hearts.

In the name of gorillas (maybe they can't understand this lines but sign languaje) and mine, we would like to appreciate this time of reading and I sincerelly wish you a very happy 2010.

P.S. Here you are the link to the picture of Digit's tomb: click here.

A Wolf In Sheep's Clothing

We are used to the nice puppy which appears on TV advertising Scottex, one of the products of one of the biggest destroyers of ancient forests in the world: Kimberly-Clark. Greenpeace have been fighting the policy of the company since at least 2004 and, finally, both have got an agreement thanks to which by the end of 2011, Kimberly will begin to carry out a greener policy which takes into account the FSC policy (100% FSC? Who knows!).

I leave you a Greenpeace's video against the company which squatters this post and some more related links.

The links:

• Kleercut - Case Closed!
• Marc Gunther's Blog
  

Despite what I have said, I have my own compromise with the forests:

• Fisrt, I ask myself if it is completely necessary to use paper.
• Second, in case I finally needed paper, I'd use recycled for everything and in case it wasn't possible because of circumstancies, I would try to find some made from other sustanaible sources like FSC (the most restrictive) or PFEC among others.

That's all for today friends.

Destruction At Your Feet

I can and I must accept that an indian or a native wear shoes made of leather as a consequence of their hunter-gathering life. What I shouldn't accept is that we, supposed civilized people, make an abuse of that, not only because in the way we keep and kill animals but moreover we are destroying rain forests. As I have said many times, to be many people is not a question of space but resources.

In any case, if you continue wearing shoes made of leather, at least try them to last as much as possible and sign the petition I link below the video. Sign the petition to ask shoes makers to be more careful whith their methods of production. It's a good idea to have a business to earn money, but not at any price, it is also important to be res-pon-si-ble. And by the way, have you ever thought how many shoes makers produce in the poorest countries and sell their products in the richest? Are they pulling our leg?

That's all for today.

Sign The Petition

Everything Has Been Stolen to Us

At the end of 2006, in my spanish blog I wrote some lines that, Ana Pérez Sanjuán from Greenpeace, sent to the magazine of such NPO. I thought it was worthy of being posted in my blog. Some notes before beginning.: Galicia is something like a "state" in Spain, not exactly, but for giving you an idea. The document was written as a consequence of the wood fires that year.

"Galicia's Prometeos, far away from stealing the Fire to the Gods looking for the Light and Life, they vile and cowardly steal such fire to the men to put out not only their inheritance but also their sons, grandsons' laugh and hopes.

Those killers of the Life have taken away the colour with all his blends, the smell with all its frangances, the smell of the dew in the morning and night dew soft shiver. They have taken away the orange-coloured moonrise among the twisted branches of the carballo (a vegetable), at the same time that the red-coloured sunsets among the green cloak of the mountains.

They have stolen the beautiful sing of the birds, the sound of the crikets at night, the sound of the cicada in the morning. Where's the walking of the frightened wall lizard, the wild boar's footprint, the astonished eyes of the fox, the wolf's howling or the light crack of the deer and roe deer with their elegant gallop among multicolored ferns?

They have stolen to us all the life beings on the Earth, the jubilation, the laugh, the summer and all the seasons during long, long time... Some of us have almost fallen silent, anothers won't come back to feel and see the freshing beat of the forest heart. But, in that fight which lasted more than ten moons and hurt suns, the Nobles and Knights of this odd age will leave us alone once more in the battlefield.

Take care Lords and Knights of that which is ours and that which belongs to itself, because never it will have an owner, so it is known that, when de jubilation comes back to the forests and specters lie in wait for, they feed on the life itself because you don't wipe out them, the inhabitants of this region, all over the Kingdom and the Empire let forests and wounded animals to die. But, the Moon and the Sun which see this, some day, they will took revenge on this, on the specters evil and on the Lords and Knights of this odd age who didn't know to carry out their oath".

After these lines the only thing I can do is to add this quote by Great Chief Seattle: the white man will swallow all the Earth and nothing will be left, only a desert.

Happy week to everybody.

ForestLove

For more information click here.

One More Step

Little by little supermarkets are more concerned about responsible shopping. I don't know the reason, perhaps beacause "green" now is fashionable or perhaps because they answer to the interests of their customers. Everytime I have to buy a new product, the first thing I do is to check if it is ecofriendly, both manufacture and use. When we go shopping house products one of them are paper. We have two options, some times is possible to buy recycled paper and another ones it isn't. In this last case, we have to opt for paper which has an icon in its wrapper (in my case, I look for WWF's bear, the picture of this post).

The first time I saw the icon was great, it was cool to know that somebody was more or less concerned and responsible with the products he/she offered. In this way, I think, we costumers, have lots of things to say, we can opt for not buying certain products, sending e-mails to ask for more ecofriendly ones and so on. But of course, to get to that situation, we have to be informed and want to.

Big things are made with small ones so remember the moral: do your bit.

Here you have an interesting link to do little things.

Bye.

Have you ever wondered....

.......... why the trees attract rain? Saying the truth, I have been a long time wondering if that issue was true or only and idiom from the people without any scientific basis. Reading a magazin one sunday evening I came across the answer. In the magazine you could find an interview to a physicist who answered my question.

The process works as follows. Sun heats the seas and as consequence of it water steam holds over the sea surface, waiting for a current of air which drags it to land. As the land is normally colder than sea, the steam condenses when reaches the coast, up to the point that very early some mornings we can see little drops of water everywhere. In this point forests come into play, but forests no gardens (some people try to convice another that a forest is a little green spot, but that's not true). And why forests come into play? Because they "breath", and as a consequence they release more water steam that joins the one which comes from the sea. In that moment, the density is so high that atmosphere can't hold the water and that becomes rain. This is what happens more or less.

We have deforested the Mediterramean Sea in Spain. My opinion is that individual interests have prevaled over public ones. The consequence is that we have less rain. We have no enough forests to stop the rain and it scapes to nothern parts, increasing the volume and becoming into floods. The water is not realised litte by little but suddenly.

Now we have another problem, climate change is generating a hotter Mediterraneran Sea. Last year we got a record on temperatures and that supposes that the temperature diffrences between land and sea is minor, so is harder for steam to condense and become rain. Now the problem is not only scaping to the north, the problem is to generate the lovely rain.


Have a nice week.

270000

As you read, that is the number of trees that every day are cut down, in another words, those are the trees that every day go to the trash thanks to all tissues we use in different ways. I don't want you to use paper, I want you to take into account two things: one, you have to pratice a responsible use; two, you have to buy the paper to ecofriendly companies.

Respect to the point one, imagine you get into a toilette in a restaurant, the paper is not yours, of course, so that hasn't to be a reason to waste it as it was endless. Respect to the second point, there are companies that are nothing at all ecofriendly, there are lots of them which use chlorine to whiten and you know the chlorine is very poisonous for aquatic life. A lot of these companies tend to build their premises in the third world and to do whatever they want because there isn't any control to stop them. You have companies as well as Kimberly-Klark, which dedicate their work to destroy ancient forests in Canada. If the name of this company doesn't ring your bell, I can tell you they are the owners of Kleenex, yes!, that company which makes paper handkerchiefs. It also owns the brand Huggies, very well known in Spain and the very famous Scottex. If you want to check what I'm telling you, visit the page of Greenpeace dedicated to this issue.

Have a nice and an ecofriendly summer.