Archive for the ‘Environment’ Category
NY Rican State Senator Serrano (and a Hot Colombian I Know) Want NY State to Adopt Earth Hour
9:52 am By Jennifer Woodard Maderazo · Activism|Environment|New York · Comments Off
27 Mar 2008A hot Colombian I know sent me this video the other day, informing me about the Earth Hour movement around the world.
I had my doubts about one hour of no electricity meaning anything, but if anyone could get me to try anything once, and in the name of the world to boot, it was this hot Colombian.
Later the same day, NY State Senator Jose Serrano’s resolution that passed the State Senate. The resolution requests that Governor David Paterson adopt 8 p.m., Saturday, March 29, 2008 as Earth Hour in an effort to encourage energy conservation.
Make your own personal commitment to Earth Hour by signing up here.
Timber Mill Raids in Brazil
7:42 am By Jennifer Woodard Maderazo · Brazil|Environment · Comments Off
14 Feb 2008
Not too long ago , I wrote about the alarming rate of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon. Well finally the Brazilian government has taken some action, raiding 8 illegal sawmills and confiscating 10,000 cubic meters of lumber.
Police began moving in on the sawmills in the town of Tailandia on Monday.The town, which is home to dozens of sawmills, is in the south of Para state, one of the worst-hit areas by Amazon deforestation at the hands of loggers.
Hopefully this wasn’t a one-off of the Brazilian government and they will continue to make sure that more of this precious resource is not lost.
Via / BBC
Sea Lion Massacre in the Galapagos
8:50 am By Jennifer Woodard Maderazo · Ecuador|Environment · 3 Comments
29 Jan 2008
Few people actually care when Latin American people get massacred but Latin American animals still get our sympathy. 53 sea lions, 13 pups, 25 youngsters, nine males and six females, were found with their heads smashed in on Pinta island, part of the Galapagos Islands, about 600 miles off the coast of Ecuador in the Pacific Ocean. Sometimes the sea lions are killed and mutilated. The skin are hunted for, and the teeth and genitals of the male animals are removed for use as a supposed aphrodisiac in Chinese medicine but their was none of that here, just someone who wanted to kill animals.
Via / BBC
Chop Chop : Rate of Brazilian Deforestation Up
9:39 am By Jennifer Woodard Maderazo · Brazil|Environment · Comments Off
24 Jan 2008
Green is the new black unless you’re the Amazon forest in Brazil which has recently seen a spike in deforestation.
In the last five months of 2007, 3,235 sq km (1,250 sq miles) were lost.
Officials say rising commodity prices are encouraging farmers to clear more land to plant crops such as soya.
Via / BBC
Mexico Proposes a Global Climate Change Initiative
3:26 pm By Maegan La Mala · Environment|mexico|World · Comments Off
13 Dec 2007
The Kyoto Protocol isn’t doing enough was the opinion of Mexico’s Environment Secretary Juan Rafael Elvira Quesada the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Bali today. Quesada is proposing on behalf of Mexico a global fund which would help developing countries take steps to help avoid global warming:
Facing up to global climate change is a shared responsibility that demands immediate action. The lack of action on the part of some cannot be an excuse for letting them impede our own efforts.
I mentioning those “some”, Quesada was clearly referring to the Bush administration, which has never accepted the terms of the Kyoto Protocol, leaving this country as non-compliant with its principles.
Quesada stressed that developing countries such as Mexico are extremely vulnerable to climate change, citing the example of the recent floods in Tabasco which were some of the worst in the country’s history.
Via / Milenio
Global warming and people of color
6:17 pm By Maegan La Mala · Environment|Politics|society · Comments Off
15 Oct 2007 
Today is the first annual Blog Action Day:
On October 15th – Blog Action Day, bloggers around the web will unite to put a single important issue on everyone’s mind.
In its inaugural year, Blog Action Day will be co-ordinating bloggers to tackle the issue of the environment.
Here at VL we are participating and I thought I’d add a Latino angle to an environmental issue.
As Al Gore scooped up the Nobel Peace Prize last week for his work in educating the world on the disturbing trend of global warming, and his enemies work double time to call him out as a hoax, the topic of climate change is getting a lot of media attention lately.
While many are shaken by the alarming images of melting glaciers, deadly heat waves and dried up ski resorts, some of us may ask what concrete effects climate change might have on our everyday lives.
São Paulo Just Says No to Billboards
5:05 pm By Jennifer Woodard Maderazo · Brazil|Environment|Marketing · Comments Off
24 Aug 2007Stepping out for a walk in any major city means being bombarded by images and words all with one aim: to get you to want something bad enough to buy it. Call it visual pollution. That’s what the mayor of São Paulo calls billboards and he feels so strongly about it that he made his city the first city outside of the communist world to put into effect a near-complete ban on outdoor advertising. The ban is part of the city’s “Lei Cidade Limpa” or Clean City Law .
Since then, billboards, outdoor video screens and ads on buses have been eliminated at breakneck speed. Even pamphleteering in public spaces has been made illegal, and strict new regulations have drastically reduced the allowable size of storefront signage. Nearly $8 million in fines were issued to cleanse São Paulo of the blight on its landscape.
Wow! I can’t even imagine this here in NYC. See a video story about the ban after the jump.
Dolphin Killer Caught on Video
3:23 pm By Jennifer Woodard Maderazo · Brazil|Environment · 1 Comment
17 Jul 2007
There’s nothing funny about killing dolphins but someone apparently forgot to tell that to a crew of Brazilian fishermen who were captured on video killing 83 dolphins. The video, broadcast on Brazilian television last night, showed the fishermen netting the dolphins causing the marine mammals to suffocate because they could not surface to breathe. A researcher went undercover aboard the fishing boat to monitor hauls of other fish.
The dolphin kill was filmed while the boat was off the coast of Amapa state, near the point where the Amazon River flows into the Atlantic Ocean. As the dolphins were hauled from the sea and piled on the boat’s deck, fishermen on board laughed after someone said, “Everyone’s going to jail after this filming!”
What’s really funny in a sad way is that no one has been charged or fined because authorities were still trying to identify the fishermen caught on video.
Daryl Hannah down for indigenous in Ecuador
11:57 am By Jennifer Woodard Maderazo · Celebrities|Ecuador|Environment · Comments Off
6 Jun 2007
Last year, Daryl Hannah was up in a tree with Joan Baez, trying to save an L.A. farm from being taken over by developers. This year, she’s got her feet on the ground in Ecuador, for yet another environmental struggle:
…Daryl Hannah traveled through the thick Ecuadorian jungle on Monday to see for herself why 30,000 villagers and indigenous people of the Amazon are suing the oil company Chevron.The oil giant faces a trial in this town, located 110 miles to the east of Quito, for supposedly failing to clean up the spill of hundreds of millions of liters of toxic water.
The inhabitants of Lago Agrio, Ecuador, are asking that Chevron pay 6 billion dollars in damages.
Via / El Universal
Image via Washington Post – AP
Ethanol to lead to tequila shortage?
5:17 pm By Jennifer Woodard Maderazo · Environment|Lifestyle|mexico · Comments Off
30 May 2007
While some have criticized a boom in ethanol production might lead to deforestation in Brazil, it might have yet another ugly effect on a country a little closer to home: Mexico. Please say it ain’t so:
Mexican farmers are setting ablaze fields of blue agave, the cactus-like plant used to make the fiery spirit tequila, and resowing the land with corn as soaring U.S. ethanol demand pushes up prices.The switch to corn will contribute to an expected scarcity of agave in coming years, with officials predicting that farmers will plant between 25 percent and 35 percent less agave this year to turn the land over to corn.
According to Reuters, the abundance of Mexico’s beloved agave led to an oversupply of tequila and agave prices so low it wasn’t worth it to farmers to stick with the plant. As the demand for ethanol increases, corn prices soar, so it’s bye-bye agave. Get ready to pay $50 a bottle for some crappy Cuervo.
Via / MSNBC
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