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Industrial seaweed will not cool the climate or save nature, new report says

Submitted by Laura Dunn on

Research shows that mass seaweed plantations pose a major threat to marine ecosystems and are unlikely to capture or permanently store significant quantities of carbon.

September 20, 2023 - A report published today by the international research organization ETC Group casts serious doubts on seaweed as an emerging “blue carbon” industry. Their research shows that mass seaweed plantations pose a major threat to marine ecosystems and are unlikely to capture or permanently store significant quantities of carbon.[1]

Solar Geoengineering could cause a climate disaster, we need to stop it

Submitted by Ronnie Hall on

Overshoot Commission report endorses unproven carbon removal technology, opens door to solar geoengineering
Esquema de geoingeniería solar, de la página de Sola Geoengineering Non-Use Agreement

MEXICO, PHILIPPINES, CANADA – As one of the first civil society organizations to raise the alarm about the dangers of geoengineering, ETC Group strongly opposes the Climate Overshoot Commission’s report launched in New York today, especially its endorsement of unproven carbon removal technology, and the potential for this report to open the door to solar geoengineering. (Image from Solar Geoengineering Non-Use Agrement).
 

The “Immaculate Conception of Data” – and why it’s a problem

Submitted by Ronnie Hall on

Episode 2 of 'Who will control the food system?'
Food Barons report cover art showing peasants resisting corporate digital giants
Audio: 

Tune into the next episode in our latest podcast mini-series, Who Will Control the Food System, where we uncover just who's pulling the strings of industrial agriculture, dissect the latest corporate strategies, and take inspiration from the peoples and movements fighting back.

Big Tech jumping on the food band wagon

Submitted by Ronnie Hall on

Episode 1 of 'Who will control the food system?'
Food Barons report cover art showing peasants resisting corporate digital giants
Audio: 

Industrial agriculture is not so much jumping on the “Food Systems Transformation” band wagon as trying to steal it!

Don’t fall for the UN’s new Food Systems Coordination Hub hype about “Transforming Food Systems for Planetary Health”. The current corporate agenda, championed by this new “Hub” is firmly focused on hijacking the UN’s existing food systems spaces to force through yet another phase of Industrial Agriculture – promoting its technofixes as solutions to the very problems that it itself has caused, including in relation to climate change and biodiversity loss.

No to geoengineers’ technofix gold rush, yes to Real Zero!

Submitted by Ronnie Hall on

Join civil society event at Bonn climate change "intersessionals"
Flyer repeating event details in text

Previously buried within the UNFCCC’s negotiating corridors and committees, a new technofix gold rush has been stealthily emerging in global climate change negotiations – with potentially disastrous implications for the world’s fight against climate change. 

Statement on the African Development Bank's Dakar 2 Summit

Submitted by Ronnie Hall on

“Climate smart agriculture” will worsen the climate crisis
Food Barons report cover art

As African heads of state travel to Dakar for the African Development Bank Group’s Dakar 2 African Food Summit, 83 African and international civil society organisations have signed a collective statement opposing the summit’s “climate smart agriculture” approach.

Mexico sets a global precautionary example by stopping solar geoengineering experiments

Submitted by Laura Dunn on

Further tests will not be permitted, say Mexican authorities

Mexico City, Mexico – On Friday January 13 the Mexican government announced that it will not allow solar geoengineering experiments in Mexico. This announcement came in response to Make Sunsets’ experiments over Baja California Sur, Mexico, where the two-man startup used weather balloons to spray sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere. This took place without the Free Prior and Informed consent of the Indigenous peoples whose territories were used for the experiments and without any permits or even a license to operate a business in Mexico.

Stop the U.S. start-up testing solar geoengineering in Mexico

Submitted by Laura Dunn on

Profit driven experiments reveal how quickly solar geoengineering research can lead to deployment

Photo credit: Marcus Woodbridge

Mexico City, Mexico – A longtime watchdog on geoengineering activities, ETC Group is sounding the alarm on two recent solar geoengineering tests that have released sulfur dioxide over Baja California Sur, Mexico as part of an experiment to block the sun’s warmth from reaching the earth.  A two-man start-up from the United States, calling itself Make Sunsets, is behind these tests and appears to be seeking to profit from the climate crisis.

A Bittersweet Bargain on Biodiversity

Submitted by Laura Dunn on

Despite some small victories, the critical principles of justice and precaution lost ground at COP 15 of the Convention on Biodiversity (CBD), as business, billionaires and biotech-backers brokered a deal for biodiversity that would work in their interest

Two years late – and supersized beyond any previous CBD meeting – COP 15 was always going to be a complex multidimensional chess battle. Once all sides met in Montreal’s enormous Palais des congrès, an army of corporate and philanthrocapitalist lobbyists and big delegations from biotech-friendly governments used their superior numbers to drown out (and often literally edit out) long-standing principles of precaution and justice.

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