For every second that passes, over one acre of forest is cut down worldwide, yet we in our isolated, man-made world, continue on with our everyday lives. This is both alarming and understandable; many people may recognize that deforestation and the destruction of natural habitat is an issue, but it is an issue that doesn’t impact their lives directly. With most of the world’s population living in cities, people grow up only knowing the urbanized world and are thus not as connected to the natural world or it’s protection. When they hear about logging in the Amazon or mining in Myanmar it’s hard for people to relate to since their only experience of that part of the world is through the pictures, videos, or stories they read. What we consider normal and what we experience everyday are forests after they have been stripped bare and refurbished with our familiar modern infrastructure of roads, buildings, houses, and cement.
It wasn’t always this way though. For the most part of humans’ time on earth we have lived in and were a part of the natural world. Even once we began to create civilizations — Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, Rome — our destruction of the environment was limited by our lack of technology and relatively small population. Only in the last 200 years have we really seen our power to destroy increase to levels that enabled us to ‘tame’ the wilderness in ways we never thought possible. As a result, over half of the world’s forested area have been cleared to date, leaving very few areas untouched. The forests that still stand are primarily in fast-developing third world countries, hungry to join the global economy and willing to cut down a few, or many, trees in order to do so. These forests are home to millions of species of plants and animals, some yet to be discovered, and also in many cases indigenous people.
The Amazon rainforest was once home to many indigenous tribes. Sadly, this number has decreased significantly in the past 60 years as the ‘white man‘ has travelled deeper and deeper into the forest. These outsiders are loggers, cattle ranchers, and miners and when they move into an area it usually means the end for the indigenous tribes in the area. When tribes first come into contact with outsiders, they often lose many of their members (especially the older ones) to foreign diseases that the white men bring with them. Those that survive the initial contact are then faced with the challenge of trying to protect the land and forest they call home from being cleared and turned into pastures and fields. Property owners have been known to be quite brutal to any natives they discovered on ‘their land’, and since law enforcement is notoriously weak in these areas, they don’t hesitate to kill any of the indigenous tribe members who get in their way.
One person who was willing to stand up for the forest and indigenous people was Chico Mendes. Originally a rubber-tapper by trade, Mendes realized that since both the indigenous people and the rubber-tappers depended on the forest, it would be beneficial for them to come together over their shared interest. He created a Rubber Tapper’s Union in his home municipality and became a key supporter of the Workers’ Party or PT, a political party that aimed to improve workers’ pay and reform land use. Though Mendes’ actions sparked the creation of a few protected reserves in his local community, his actions never amounted to much locally other than angering the ranchers. Internationally he had much more success. His call to save the Amazon came at a time when the environmentalism movement was really starting to catch on and he was invited to speak in front of the U.S congress, the United Nations, and many other international governments. Unfortunately Mendes’ life at home eventually caught up with him and he was shot by one of the ranchers sons on December 22, 1988, just two weeks after he turned 44. Due to his fame worldwide, one of the largest investigations Brazil has ever seen was launched to bring in those responsible, however, once the media attention died down most of those responsible for his assassination never faced any punishment.
Since the death of Mende’s, much has been done to protect what remains of the Amazon as well as the culture of those tribes that call it their home. However, the lack of substantial law forces in small communities to uphold anti-logging and other similar laws, the same problem that Mendes’ faced within his home state, continues to undermine the central government’s attempts to conserve and protect the remaining rain forest. One solution that is being employed by the Surui tribe is the use of internet and GPS technology to monitor and protect the forest. With the help of Google Earth Outreach, the tribe is now able to show where illegal logging is taking place and, just as importantly, map the locations of importance to their culture and mythology so that some of their culture can be preserved. As Denise Zmekhel, a filmmaker who has worked extensively with the Surui, put it, “All of the exposure that Google brought literally put them on the map”.
While it may have some flaws, the partnership with Google is promising. It solves the problem of a dysfunctional and corrupt local government without relying on outside officials being sent in, something that often creates more problems between the local people and government than it solves (think Highland Park, MI). Putting the technology in the hands of the indigenous people empowers them to be an active participant in helping to ensure a better future for themselves. This is not the story with every tribe in the Amazon though, not by a long shot. Says Denise, when asked what she thought the current situation in the Amazon was like, “Well, for some people it’s good, but for some people it’s awful.”
Denise also has another saying, it goes like: “After your forest is gone you will have nothing left to sell anymore” Though she said this in reference to the indigenous people of the Amazon, the government of Canada might well wish they listened to her 30-40 years from now. They are currently in the process of deforesting and destroying an area of the Boreal forest roughly the size of Florida, not for the trees or land space, but for the ground underneath the forest. The ground in this area isn’t the same as the dirt you would find out in your backyard though, millions of years of compression, heat, and bacteria has transformed the dead plant and animal material into a substance called bitumen. Bitumen is essentially oil-soaked sand that has the appearance and viscosity of tar, hence how the project received its nickname the ‘Tar Sands’.
The tar sands were discovered over a hundred years ago when the first reports of an “inexhaustible” field of petroleum began to trickle back to the government. However, it would take scientists the next 70 years, billions of dollars from the canadian government, and the interest of American entrepreneurs to finally develop a process by which to separate the oil from the sand. This process, which requires three barrels of water just to produce a single barrel of oil, is extremely energy intensive requiring the tar sands industry to burn through enough oil everyday to heat six million homes. When compared to a conventional barrel of oil, each barrel of oil derived from the tar sands produces three times as much greenhouse gasses and also has a higher combustion emission intensity as well.
The Canadian Government and oil companies around the world have jumped fully into the tar sands project, investing a total of $200 billion (over 60% of all global oil investments); a total that makes it the world’s largest capital project as well as the largest energy and construction project the world has ever seen. Meanwhile, as the three-story excavator’s carve away the forest floor and dizzying mazes of pipes are constructed to melt, collect, and route the bitumen to processing facilities, no in-depth analysis of the project’s environmental impact has ever been done. Ninety percent of the total water used, enough to supply a city of 2 million people, ends up being held in the world’s largest impoundment of toxic waste. These collections, referred to as the tailings ponds, leak or seep water into the groundwater along the Athabasca river (the world’s third largest watershed). Though the effects are not confirmed, mainly due to Canada’s lack of a water policy and dismal enforcement of pollution, communities downstream have documented many instances of rare cancers over the years.
Most Canadian’s view the tar sands as a necessary step to make Canada an energy superpower and support their economy in the future. However, if they stopped and looked back at the history, they would see that turning your communities over to the hands of a corporation that mines resources has very detrimental economic, environmental, and societal effects in the long run. Take Butte Montana for example. From the 1880’s till 1983, Butte was home to one of the largest copper mines in the world and virtually run by the Anaconda Copper Mining Company. Though workers were always battling for better pay and working conditions, Butte’s economy was booming and was it one of the largest cities to the west of the Mississippi for generations. Once most of the copper reserves were gone and mining in Butte was no longer profitable, the mining industry packed up and moved out, taking with it the jobs that the people depended on for a living and leaving behind The Berkeley Pit; the largest pit lake and Superfund site in the country. This is very easily how Canada’s tar sands project could end if the government doesn't change the course it is on.
“Stay where you are. Find your own Calcutta. Find the sick, the suffering and the lonely right there where you are — in your own homes and in your own families, in your workplaces and in your schools. … You can find Calcutta all over the world, if you have the eyes to see.”
-Mother Teresa
If you don't live on the front lines of the war on the remaining forests of the world, you can still help the environment without moving to the Amazon or Alberta, Canada. Pay attention and observe the world around you; you might notice an opportunity for you to make a difference in your state, city, or even right in your backyard. People are already doing this everyday, so it is very easy to get inspiration and ideas. Take Marion Stoddart of Groton, Massachusetts, a normal women who wanted her children to be able to enjoy the Nashua river which flowed through their town. Like other rivers during the 1960’s it had become extremely polluted to the point that it was a game to guess which color the river would be each day. Through her dedication and vision, Massachusetts became the first state in the country to pass a clean water act (1972) and the Nashua river has been restored to the point where it can now be enjoyed by the public for swimming, kayaking, fishing, and other activities.
For those are want to get their feet wet before diving headfirst into a project as time consuming as Marion’s, there are many other simpler ways to get started. Producing and transporting food for the growing population is using increasingly more energy as the source is moving farther away from your mouth. Because of this, many attempts are being made to increase gardening in large cities. Many different ways to convert urban sprawl into a space that can produce food are being experimented with. In New York city, gardens have been started on rooftops, in abandoned parking lots, on barges, in windows, and even in the back of a pickup truck (Truck Farm, 2011). On the other side of the country in Berkeley, California, residents have also created public gardens to provide the public with fresh food and a sense of where their food comes from. They have even taken it a step further, implementing a new lunch plan in their public school system which teaches children the importance of eating healthy (Lunch, Love, Community).
When asked how change comes about, Helen De Michiel, who is closely involved with the Berkeley food initiative said, “There has to be the will...on a local and regional level.” You can be that will. You might not realize it yet, but one day, something happening in the world will catch your eye, move your heart, and ignite your passion. Those who choose to act on those feelings are known as environmentalists, scoffed at as radicals, and dismissed as too idealistic. You can live your life however you want to, but in the end it comes down to this: people who want to make a difference have to be different and people who want to the world’s forests from being cut down have to stand up for what is right.
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