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For Immediate Release
August, 28 2019, 12:00am EDT
Contact:
Holly Hart, media@gp.org | 202-804-2758
Craig Seeman, media@gp.org
The Green Party Denounces Business Deals and Trade Policies Through Which Multinational Corporations Profit From the Destruction of the Brazilian Rainforest
WASHINGTON
Private concerns are gutting the Amazon rainforest, contributing to fires, the loss of plant and animal species, and global warming through the release of carbon as trees are cleared. More than 74,000 fires have burned approximately 7,200 square miles this year in the Brazilian portion of the rainforest.
"Brazilian politicians are lobbying U.S. businesses like Cargill and Burger King for contracts by promoting the Amazon region for reckless and exploitative ranching, logging and mining operations," said Craig Seeman, member of the Green Party's Animal Rights Committee.
"The cattle sector of the Brazilian Amazon, incentivized by the international beef and leather trades, has been responsible for about 80% of all deforestation in the region. The lax enforcement of rules and regulations by leaders in Brazil and the United States have set the tone for widespread pillage of protected areas in both countries."
Among other things, scientists recommend that we restore ecosystems and stop burning fossil fuels to avoid "irreversible loss in land ecosystem services required for food, health and habitable settlements."
"Greens have been at the forefront in calling for a strong international climate treaty," said Steve Newman, Secretary of the Green Party of Florida and a member of the Green Party of the U.S. Eco-Action Committee. "The climate treaty reached in Paris in 2015 is inadequate to address the climate change crisis, and the current impasse at the international level displays a dangerous lack of commitment toward addressing a climate emergency. The Green Party calls for legally binding commitments for reducing greenhouse gas emissions by at least 40% by 2020 and a 95% reduction by 2030 over 1990 levels."
The Green Party further calls for:
- the elimination of subsidies for fossil fuels, nuclear power, biomass and waste incineration and biofuels;
- acknowledge that the bulk of the U.S. military budget is an indirect subsidy for oil & gas corporations, and redirect that spending into sustainable energy production regenerative agriculture and "green jobs";
- work to provide a carbon neutral development path for developing countries to help them avoid burning cheap fossil fuels;
- a move to convert our food production to small-scale organic, regenerative agriculture (agroecology) systems to restore soil health, sequester carbon, foster biodiversity, discourage the currently unsustainable level of meat consumption, and secure robust ecosystem services for a sustainable future;
- acknowledgement and support the role of indigenous people and other local Brazilian activists who are fighting to save the rainforest. According to Amazon Watch's Moira Birss: "Indigenous people of the Amazon have been sounding the alarm about risks to the rainforest for years and resisting the destruction -- sometimes at the cost of their own lives. Now that the world is finally paying attention, it's important to also understand that governments and companies around the world are emboldening Bolsonaro's toxic policies when they enter trade agreements with his government or invest in agribusiness companies operating in the Amazon."
More Information
6 charts show why thousands of fires in the Amazon rainforest matter to the world
Sergent, James; Elizabeth Lawrence, George Petras. USA Today, Aug. 23, 2019
Fires are devouring the Amazon. And Jair Bolsonaro is to blame
Miranda, David. The Guardian, Aug, 26, 201
Amazon: "Global Emergency"
Mendonca, Maria Luisa; Christopher Poitier, Moira Birss. Institute for Public Accuracy, Aug. 27, 2019
GOP Lobbyists Help Brazil Recruit U.S. Companies To Exploit The Amazon
Fang, Lee. The Intercept, Aug 23, 2019
Fires in the Amazon could be part of a doomsday scenario that sees the rainforest spewing carbon into the atmosphere and speeding up climate change even more
Baker, Sinead. Business Insider, Aug. 22, 2019
Cattle Ranching in the Amazon Region
Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. Global Forest Atlas
You And Meat Can Save The Planet
Rowland, Michael Pellman. Forbes, Aug. 23, 2019
The Amazon Fires Reveal the Dysfunction of the Global Community
Foer, Franklin. Defense One, Aug. 25, 2019
2018 Outside Spending, by Donors' Industries
Center for Responsive Politics. OpenSecrets
U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
Biological annihilation via the ongoing sixth mass extinction signaled by vertebrate population losses and declines
Ceballos, Gerardo; Paul R. EHrlich, Rodolfo Dirzo. PNAS, Mar. 28, 2017
With Amazon Rainforest Ablaze, Brazil Faces Global Backlash
Andreoni, Manuela; Leticia Casado, Ernest Londono. NY Times, Aug. 22, 23, 2019
Additional Information
Green Party Platform: Ecological Sutainability
Green New Deal | News Stream
2019 Green Party Annual National Meeting
Green Party of the United States
https://www.gp.org
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Green Pages: The official publication of record of the Green Party of the United States
The Green Party of the United States is a grassroots national party. We're the party for "We The People," the health of our planet, and future generations instead of the One Percent.
(202) 319-7191LATEST NEWS
As Most Acts Bail, Trump Floats Replacing Freedom 250 Shows With 'Number One Attraction Anywhere'—Himself
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As an increasing number of artists cancel their scheduled performances at the "Great American State Fair" created by the Trump administration to celebrate the US semiquincentennial, President Donald Trump on Saturday called for scrapping the concerts and replacing them with a rally headlined by himself.
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Artists who have bailed on the concerts, also known as the Freedom 250 shows, include Young MC, The Commodores, Morris Day and The Time, Bret Michaels, and Martina McBride. Some of the musicians said they were misled about the partisan nature of the event.
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US Southern Command said in a statement that "Joint Task Force Southern Spear," the nine-month campaign ordered by President Donald Trump, "conducted a lethal kinetic strike on a vessel operated by Designated Terrorist Organizations."
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Former longtime Human Rights Watch executive director Kenneth Roth wrote on X: "Now more than 200 Trump summary executions—blatant murders."
"Legal experts agree: The Trump-ordered strikes on suspected drug boats are illegal extrajudicial killings because the military is not permitted to deliberately target civilians—even suspected criminals—who do not pose an imminent threat of violence," Roth said in a separate post.
Just Security editor-in-chief and New York University School of Law professor Ryan Goodman said that the "overwhelming consensus of experts, myself included, assess these to be murder because no armed conflict" is occurring, adding that they would be a "war crime if it were armed conflict."
Goodman said that, with 200 people killed, the strikes raise the question of whether the US is committing a "crime against humanity."
The boat strikes were fraught from the start. In the first known attack, US forces killed nine people in an initial strike and then two men clinging to the boat’s wreckage in a follow-up bombing.
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Israel Defense Forces soldiers interviewed for an article published Friday by The Associated Press described ongoing indiscriminate killing of Palestinians—including civilians—despite a purported ceasefire.
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Nadav Weiman, an IDF veteran who is now the executive director of the veterans' whistleblower group Breaking the Silence, told the AP that the military's permissive shoot-to-kill policy has "created a reality where countless civilians have and are being killed for crossing invisible lines."
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According to Gaza's Government Media Office, Israel has violated the ceasefire more than 3,005 times, resulting in more than 900 Palestinians killed and nearly 2,800 others injured, despite the truce.
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Israel claims that the entire length of the yellow line is now clearly marked. However, as Common Dreams reported this week, the IDF has incrementally shifted the boundary deeper into Gaza, where Israel now controls more than 60% of the coastal strip. This has left Palestinians sometimes waking up to learn they're in "open-fire zones" where they are subjected to being shot on sight.
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