If you're reading this...

by citisven

...you are probably on a computer. Or some sort of hand-held device. Smart phone. Pod. Pad. Berry. Tablet. Insert [catchy name of the next latest greatest cool and hip new gadget about to hit the market].

What the manufacturers of these shiny new objects fail to tell us is what goes into making them and what happens after we're done with them.

Annie Leonard, the producer of the acclaimed The Story of Stuff video, just released her latest work, The Story of Electronics.

I think it's well worth watching and pondering.

continued at Daily Kos....

EcoJustice: The best of grassroots in the Congo.

by rb137

In December, one of the HEAL Africa counselors was dispatched from Goma to Lubutu, a seven hour drive, to advocate for a woman that needed legal help. The woman was a patient in a hospital where a nurse raped her. She was poor and powerless to prosecute him without HEAL Africa's help.

When the counselor intervened, the hospital administration fired the nurse, and he was sorely indignant at losing his job. He had been well paid, so his family lost their standard of living. Tribal leaders in the local villages saw this as a grave injustice, and began to make dire threats. They threatened to kill the counselor, and they promised to band together and sabotage HEAL Africa's operations throughout the region.

continued at Daily Kos....

EcoJustice: "What I do" and What it Means to be Ruined.

by rb137

My interest is in conflict resolution, and when I can, I volunteer my skills as an analyst and writer to help bloody circumstances in Democratic Republic of Congo. I've been writing about it a lot lately, because conflict minerals are getting some action in congress.

This is an EcoJustice issue because mineral rights are at the root of this horrible violence. And it's more than a regional war. It is a looming climate threat. Many ecology groups work to stop the conflict; the Dian Fossey Foundation was one of the first. The heart of Africa's ecology lives in the Congo basin, and it is threatened by the instability. Our industry empowers the warlords that destablize the country. As we put wealth and technology into their hands, their power to plunder increases.

But the violence and suffering does not make the whole story. There is hope and grassroots action taking the country to a new place. One of the groups behind this excellent work is my favorite NGO, HEAL Africa.

continued at Daily Kos....

EcoAdvocates: Wind Farms, Cities, & Urgent Action on Conflict Minerals and Burning Sea Turtles

by citisven

While no one technology or source of energy can or should claim to be the exclusive savior in our quest to find alternatives to fossil fuels, offshore wind power has moved beyond symbolic feelgood status and become one of the most promising contenders to be an economically viable source of energy.

Aside from the obvious environmental benefit that a malfunctioning turbine or platform doesn't annihilate entire ecosystems, windmill technology has come a long way since its early days. You know it's not just pretty talk when energy companies are investing billions in offshore wind parks. That's exactly what's happening in the North Sea, where major international power companies are currently staking out the future of Europe's energy supply off the coasts of Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Ireland and Britain.  

continued at Daily Kos....

EcoJustice: Action -- Help create conflict-free green technology.

by rb137

The Second Congo War, also called Africa's World War, killed 5 million people between 1998 and 2003. It was the largest war in Africa's history; it involved eight African nations and more than twenty armed militias. Although there was an agreement between the warring parties in 2003, the conflict continues in the eastrn region of the Democratic Republic of Congo. It continues because of the metal mines that the armed groups fight to control.

There is an action item at the end of this diary that will certainly help save lives and impact suffering: The Senate Financial Overhaul Bill contains a provision that requires companies that use targeted metals to annually report where they buy them. The House Financial Services Committee is reviewing the Senate bill during the next two weeks.

We need to preserve that provision as a necessary first step in conflict relief. These metals are used in clean energy and green technology, as well as medicine and industry in the US across the board. Transparancy is key to resolving this war.

continued at Daily Kos....

EcoAdvocates: Where the Buffalo Don't Yet Roam

by Meteor Blades

"The buffalo are disappearing rapidly, but not faster than I desire. I regard the destruction of such game as Indians subsist upon as facilitating the policy of the Government, of destroying their hunting habits, coercing them on reservations, and compelling them to begin to adopt the habits of civilization."   – Secretary of the Interior Columbus Delano, Testimony to Congress, 1874 The Wasichus [white men] did not kill them to eat, they killed them for the metal that makes them crazy, and they took only the hides to sell. Sometimes they did not even take the hides, only the tongues. You can see that the men who did this were crazy. Sometimes they did not even take the tongues; they just killed and killed because they liked to do that. When we hunted bison, we killed only what we needed. And when there was nothing left but heaps of bones, the Wasichus came and gathered up even the bones and sold them."   – Lakota shaman Black Elk in Black Elk Speaks, 1932 By 1870, the great herds of buffalo, or American Bison, that had in the 1500s roamed everywhere except present-day New England, were limited to 11 Western states and territories. There were still millions of them, perhaps 40 million. The massive slaughter that began in earnest in 1874 ended nine years later. By 1890, only 500 bison remained, and the devastated, decimated tribes who had depended on them were confined to reservations. Today, there are around 400,000 fenced bison in commercial herds, most of them genetically intermixed with cattle breeds and sold for meat domestically and abroad. But over the past 23 years, there has been a movement to repopulate the lightly populated areas of the West with vast new herds of genetically pure bison. That idea began with Deborah Epstein Popper and Frank J. Popper in a 1987 article in Planning, The Great Plains: From Dust to Dust.

continued at Daily Kos....