ANIMAL DEFENDERS

The law goes beyond the sale and manufacture of fur and also bars residents from donating fur products. “CA has no place for the inhumane & unsustainable treatment of animals,” tweeted state assemblywoman Laura Friedman who authored the bill. “Now for other states to follow in our legacy.” The law defines fur as “animal skin or part thereof with hair, fleece or fur fibers attached thereto.” For fur shoppers that means they will not be able to buy mink, sable, chinchilla, lynx, fox, rabbit, beaver, coyote and other luxury furs, according to The New York Times.

ROBERT HUNZIKER—Meanwhile, “Earth’s oceans continue to absorb over 90 percent of the excess heat trapped by greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.” It’s that source of ocean heat that’s primarily extinguishing marine life. As such, civilization in toto is subjecting itself to suicidal behavior by failing to listen to scientists and failing to enact emergency measures to convert fossil fuels to renewables. It’s a deadly situation, but still not resonating nearly enough to save the oceans.

ANTHONY PAHNKE—The point is this – if we do not know how to put pressure on the right actors who have been connected to destroying the Amazon, then our efforts will be for naught. Most of the reporting on the fires raging in the Amazon try to identify the guilty parties.  Some of those that have been identified include ranchers and loggers, as well as the rightwing government of Jair Bolsonaro for its lack of enforcing environmental regulations.  Yet, what we need to consider is that no single actor is responsible for destroying the rainforest, but instead corporate supply chains that crisscross our planet.

For over a decade, the nation branding campaign Brand Israel has sought to “wash” the crimes of occupation, apartheid and ethnic cleansing by carefully crafting the image of Israel as a progressive, forward-thinking oasis of modernism in the Middle East. The campaign has appropriated elements of both the LGBT and environmental movements to advance these goals. Such “pinkwashing” and “greenwashing” are unique in the world of state-sponsored propaganda campaigns.

BILL VILLERS—The prospect of the Green New Deal becoming morphed into Sustainable Development by another name is real, given the powerful forces so adept at co-opting and repackaging things to serve their own ends. The development/growth debate has long been dominated by business interests, economists, advertisers and corporate journalists, with biologists neglectfully absent. And yet, it all boils down to biology, for when species “overshoot” the capacities of their environments to support them, collapse is the result.