Tag: biodiversity

When We Destroy Forests, People Die

On By southwerkIn Business Ethics, Capitalism, Economic Justice

In Brazil, organized crime and a wave of loggers and prospectors have murdered and raped their way across the Amazon Basin. In Asia, forest destruction and the immense fires that resulted have devestated many lives. These are terrible, terrible crimes but a twenty year study finds that there is collateral damage in the form of heat related illness.

(This is from a book of detective stories from more than 120 years ago. It is dramatic and indicates important issues are about to be resolved. I am using it for my writing on this occasion.)

In the United States, we have the largely unpunished and uninvestigated murders of indigenous women although there is a local, state and federal preference of a kind of quasi-legal seizure and destruction of natural resources. Of course, no intelligent human being can fail to mention the massive corruption of our current regime, its wholesale destructions of regulations and enforcement agencies, not to mention the “open for business” attitude that if a corporation has a problem, arrangements can be made.

I want you to understand that I am well aware that greed and evil are international problems and that while deforestation is a more dramatic crisis in east Asian and South America, the United States and its corruption are in no way exempt for causing and profiting from forest destruction.

What kind of collateral damage are we talking about? Over the last twenty years, over half a million have died from heat related illness and many, many millions more have suffered such illness.

I don’t see much need for a business ethics analysis. Destroying huge swaths of the planet to make money is wrong.

There should fines, imprisonment and shaming. The people who do these horrible things should have their pictures published and their names removed from colleges, dorms and cultural institutions. They should at all times be exposed for the destructive cockroaches that they are. But be well aware, a good and moral society would not just rely on shame but would punish them for their crimes.

James Alan Pilant

Jonathan Watts writing for The Guardian has an article: Deforestation has killed half a million people in past 20 years, study finds.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/aug/27/deforestation-has-killed-half-a-million-people-in-past-20-years-study-finds

Deforestation has killed more than half a million people in the tropics over the past two decades as a result of heat-related illness, a study has found.

Land clearance is raising the temperature in the rainforests of the Amazon, Congo and south-east Asia because it reduces shade, diminishes rainfall and increases the risk of fire, the authors of the paper found.

Deforestation is responsible for more than a third of the warming experienced by people living in the affected regions, which is on top of the effect of global climate disruption.

About 345 million people across the tropics suffered from this localised, deforestation-caused warming between 2001 and 2020. For 2.6 million of them, the additional heating added 3C to their heat exposure.

Report Reveals America Now Receives More Power From Renewables Than Nuclear (via Climate Connections)

On By southwerkIn business ethics

The President has tossed Social Security on the negotiating table. The new jobs report is a horror story worthy of Stephen King. Sometimes, you think the world is just going to pieces. Just when you think good news is impossible to come by, you get some (at least, I hope that is how it works).

Take a look at this. We can build a better energy future. We are already starting to do it.

James Pilant

by Tafline Laylin, inhabitat.com, July 6 2011  http://tinyurl.com/3zl8lwa A recent report published by the U.S. Energy Information Administration reveals that America now receives more of its energy from [so called] "renewable" sources than it does from nuclear generation plants. In the first three months of 2011, the country’s biomass/biofuel, hydropower, wind, geothermal, and solar energy generation plants produced a combined 2.245 quadrillion … Read More

via Climate Connections

Nuclear lessons for Malaysia (Part 2) (via For A Better Malaysia)

On By southwerkIn business ethics

To use or not to use nuclear power? This article focuses on Malaysia but the issues are the same everywhere on our planet.

Costs, safety, and most important, trust, are the primary elements. That trust is on the list might surprise you. But I can’t help but feel the soothing hand of corporate PR every time I read some right-wing blog’s assurances that the amount of radiation is inconsequential and the constant, continuous claims that the technology is better now. Didn’t they say that after Chernobyl? Didn’t they say that after Three Mile Island, etc? It’s one of the classics, reassuringly pointless.

I am tired of PR. If the nuclear industry had ever been in anyway honest over the last fifty years I would feel differently but there is no trust here and without trust there can be no agreement.

This posting is an intelligent analysis and I enjoyed it.

James Pilant

Radiation is invisible and cannot be recalled. In a nuclear crisis, there will be many questions about radiation. As the Japanese people are now discovering, it is a nightmare trying to make sense of the uncertainties. How do you know when you are in danger?How long will this danger persist?How can you reduce the danger to yourself and your family?What level of exposure is safe?How do you get access to vital information in time to prevent or mini … Read More

via For A Better Malaysia

New Paradigms Needed (via Zielona Grzybnia)

On By southwerkIn business ethics

Thinking allowed! Wow, I’d like to see more of this.

This essay is entirely correct. We are in the middle of a new age and those that wave the flag while endlessly repeating the failed answers of a disastrous last fifty years are simply out of touch. We are going to have to change and pretense doesn’t cut it.

It’s time to go to the next step. What are the paradigms? Let’s state what the basic principles are going to look like from the worm’s eye view.

As a member of the intelligentsia, I get the new paradigm thing. Around here, paradigms come and go like falling leaves.

Whether I understand them or not is not that important. How can they be stated in a way that is persuasive to a new generation? How can they be stated in such a way that those clinging to the nonsense of the past will realize they have to move on?

Read the essay. I’m sure we will see more from this blog.

James Pilant

Through all its history humanity has been facing challanges which often seemed unsolvable. Nevertheless, we have been able to achieve a solution every time so far – sometimes better, sometimes worse, but we’ve done it. Today again we face a whole spectrum of huge challanges: the climate change with all its facettes. Biodiversity reduction due to general damages to ecosystems all over the world. Poverty and undernourishment. There are many proposa … Read More

via Zielona Grzybnia