The International Herald Tribune has a really nice article about a tribe in the Amazon that is fighting deforestation. The author recounts his previous experience of going into the Amazon and compares that to what it is like today. It actually starts off rather depressing since the environmental destruction is so prominent, but what makes the article so good is how hard the Kayapó is working to protect this invaluable natural resource.
“The Kayapó grand chief, Megaron, is leading the fight to preserve their lands that form the largest tropical rain forest reserve in the world.”
The tribe has had quite a few success in defending the forest from “development.” Let’s hope they never give up!
Last year India saw that biopiracy was damaging to the country and they reacted by documenting every plant and will release an encyclopedia of all the plants. They are specifically recording how these plants are used in traditional medicine in India, making it much harder for large foreign corporations to proclaim the use of plants as their idea.
“Brazil has published a list of more than 5,000 generic terms from the Portuguese language related to Brazilian plant biological diversity to raise awareness and prevent further misuse of trademarks that hinder Brazilian exports.
The Brazilian government has been, and is, involved in a number of trademark disputes with companies that, for example, take a name of a fruit in Brazilian Portuguese and trademark it to get exclusive rights to commercialise it under that name in a certain country or region.”
The Green Car Congress is reporting that U.S. sales of hybrids top 25,000. This is good news, because it means less pollution. GCC points out that SUV sales have decreased, which is good news in itself considering the mayor of London thinks SUV drivers are idiots.
“Buoyed by strong results for the Prius and the Camry hybrid, sales of hybrids in the US hit a new high in July, with 25,626 units sold—a 32% increase from July 2006.”
“New research from linguists at the University of Toronto suggests that instant messaging doesn’t deserve its reputation for spoiling syntax. In a study of 71 teenagers, researchers found that the teens showed a strong command of the language.
When chatting with friends, the teens cleverly fused different features of the language: written and spoken, formal and informal.”
Now, if only I can fix my use of the English language…
The Green Room is a BBC series of opinion based articles about environmental issues. In a recent issue George Meyer, long time writer for the Simpsons, talks about his take on humainty and our struggle to save the environment. I found it to be really poignant and funny.
The Green Car Congress is reporting that 