Impacts

Asunción, Paraguay--One week before the third meeting of the Roundtable on
Responsible Soy (RTRS) in Buenos Aires, Argentina [1], the Global Forest
Coalition, a worldwide coalition of Non Governmental Organizations (NGOs) and
Indigenous Peoples Organizations [2], have published an open call to NGOs to
withdraw themselves from the RTRS process [3]. The Coalition states that by
supporting the roundtable, NGOs are legitimizing the expansion of large-scale
soy monocultures that lead to massive deforestation, pesticide contamination,

Groups Condemn Biofuels as
"False Solution" During Brazil's President Lula Tour
of the Netherlands and Czech Republic

(Joint Release from Global Forest Coalition and Corporate Europe Observatory)

The Netherlands--Criticism is mounting denouncing Brazilian President Luiz
Inacio Lula da Silva's visit this week to the Netherlands and the Czech
Republic on a tour focused on promoting ethanol and other biofuels. The

Major Ice Chunk Collapses
in Western Antarctica. By Seth Borenstein, AP. March
25, 2008. "A chunk

Cape Wind privatizers are celebrating the recent Minerals Management
Service (MMS) green light for their industrial wind plants in public
waters off the Massachusetts coast in beautiful Nantucket Sound. That would be the
same Bush regime MMS that's leasing critical polar bear habitat to Big
Oil. Not surprizingly, MMS's evaluation of Cape Wind is "deeply
flawed". (see: http://www.wmass.indymedia.org/?q=node/171 )

U.S. Delays Global Warming Decision on Polar Bears. By Deborah Zabarenko, Reuters, January 8, 2008. "The U.S.

Apocalypse No! Part 4: The True
Sister and the True Brother

WORLD BANK HANDS OFF FORESTS December 10, 2007
BALI (INDONESIA), Dec. 10, 2007 Environmental groups at the United
Nations climate talks in Bali today urged governments to reject a new
World Bank initiative promoting the inclusion of forests in carbon
markets.
The World Bank initiative, known as the Forest Carbon Partnership Facility
(FCPF) is set to be launched on Tuesday 11th December in Bali as part of
the discussions on Reducing Emissions through Deforestation in Developing
countries’ (REDD).

Global warming is set to reverse decades of
social and economic progress across Asia, home to more than four
billion
people or 60 per cent of the world’s population, according to a new
multi-agency report published today called 'Up in Smoke: Asia and the
Pacific.'
The report--the fourth in a series, compiled by more than 35
development and environmental groups including Oxfam and
Greenpeace--says there isgrowing consensus about the huge challenges
facing Asia. However it notes "reason to hope" that there is now enough

Ocean acidity is increasing at a much faster pace according to marine scientists meeting in Canberra at the Coral Reef Futures 07 Forum, October 18-19, 2007. "It appears this acidification is now taking place over decades, rather than centuries as originally predicted. It is happening even faster in the cooler waters of the Southern Ocean than in the tropics. It is starting to look like a very serious issue." said Professor Malcolm McCulloch of the Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies (CoECRS) and the Australian National University.

Arctic summer sea ice is headed towards rapid disintegration as early as 2013, a century ahead of the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) projections, according to 'the Big Melt' (PDF), a new review of recent scientific literature on climate change produced by www.carbonequity.info. We have gone past the tipping point for Arctic sea ice and now we watch the disintegration of the Greenland and the West Antarctic ice sheets which will result in catastrophic changes in sea level of 5 metres or more in the next 100 years.