No,  I am not talking about a term to refer socialism. In climate talks, REDD stands for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation. It is the foreseen mechanism to tackle deforestation at a global level.

Climate talks in Barcelona were interrupted yesterday by a series of protests from African nations. The African delegates  expressed their frustration with the current climate talks and policies.

In the year 2055 an old man asks..could we have saved our selves?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

That's the amount of CO2 acceptable in the atmosphere for a more stable climate.  Right now we are at 387 ppm, which is not the safest for our planet. Getting back to 350 means that we have to find and implement many solutions, from cleaner energy to diet change. This is not an easy aim, but it's a vitally necesary one. 

There are 48 days left to the COP15 in Copenhaguen. So why is this such a big deal? Althought its going to be a lot of paperwork and more talking than anyone can stand for two weeks, this conference is hopefully going to decide on some global action to slowdown climate change.The UNFCCC process is hoping to set up policies for the post- Kyoto  (post 2012) regime.  There has been preliminatory talks in Bonn in June, Bangkok at the begining of this month, and talks in Barcelona are coming up next weeks; however, nothing is yet set in stone.

 

 

 

For some reason I cannot embed the other videos. However, I highly recomend you to check them out to get a wider view of what is going on right now on the media and the Swine Flu.

This is ridiculous...

Blaming Swine Flu on immigrants ... stay away from them. 

We are in for a good old fashion scare-off .... Jon

When Indigenous issues around the world are being reported, we usually run into terms such as “uncivilized”, “primitive”, “from the stone age” and “underdeveloped”.

The Indigenous People’s Global Summit on Climate Change ended yesterday in Anchorage, Alaska. It brought together indigenous groups from 80 different nations to gather their points of view and their suggestions, to later present it in the UN’s Conference of the Parties (COP).

We all saw the interesting frame of Obama and Chavez shaking hands and smiling to each other in the Summit of the Americas.  This is an interesting frame given the countries increasing differences and after Chavez called Bush “the devil” in many occasions.  The US is ready to change its approach to Latin America, and start working with them, after the greater distance created after the events of 9/11.

 

Where do your taxes go to? Many people are just used to pay taxes without even wondering where do they go to. Today many people  in the US are participating in the War tax resistance to avoid giving part of their income to sustain the wars going on.

With the economic crisis in place, it seemed that everything was just about money. I wondered where the environment fits in all this, when few of the major newspapers provided an analysis of how to solve the economic crisis without forgetting the environment.

Can design help save newspapers?

Eye-pleasing layouts, graphs and a good news content could help save print newspapers.Concise information, points of view and an easy to digest approach, can help bring back newspapers to the breakfast table. No need to struggle to switch from page to page or find information.This might not be the only way of saving newspapers, but I think it could be a popular

One of United State's eradication strategies of the coca plant in Andean courtiers is aerial fumigation of illegal crops. Studying about the environmental effects of herbicides and pesticides on human health and biodiversity made me question about the nature of these herbicides and the effect they can have on people.

 Dr Mark Axelrod, came to St. Lawrence University a couple of weeks ago to give a talk about Environmental policies and their place in international treaties and agreements. He talked about his theory of the "Chilling Effect" of Environmental agreements in International negotiations.

The health effects of pollution can be seen in a short or long term. Sometimes years have to go by for us to see the effects of some chemicals, groundwater pollution or air pollution in human health. Corporations and industries in many places in Latin America are polluting the environment and the consequences are starting to show up.

The exploitation of natural resources to feed false created needs keeps expanding. We have to keep feeding the treadmill of production that runs our system by destroying our environment and disregarding native communities. Despite the already made mistakes of unlimited natural resource exploitation, we keep making these mistakes over and over again.

The US has had a great presence in Latin America since the region's independence. Latin America was not only regarded as the US' backyard, but a strong territory for security, natural resources and human resources.

The Revolutionary Armed Force of Colombia (FARC ) are known world wide because of its kidnapping of political hostages which they use to put pressure on the government in order to get more political control. The FARC originated as a guerrilla movement after its establishment in 1964 as the military wing of the Colombian Communist Party.

Dignity and Defiance; Stories from Bolivia’s Challenge to Globalization

This past weekend I attended the conference Dignity and Defiance at Smith College, North Hampton; one of the speakers,  Jim Schultz  is the founder and executive director of the Democracy Center in Cochabamba, Bolivia. Jim works  “to advance human rights through a combination of investigation and reporting” of the political and social processes in Bolivia.

Once some presidents get in power, they might like to stay in power. This could be for personal reasons or for the simple awareness that one term is not enough to achieve all their presidential goals. Do you think Obama will  be able to make a lot of progress in four years? Maybe not as much progress as we would like to.

A new constitution is something that has to be really well studied, planned, approved and fought for. Nothing to be taken for granted. The laws and destiny of a country are in the hands of some that write the constitution. After a referendum, Bolivia approved the new constitution his past Sunday 25^th with a 58% of the votes.