Did you know you can buy Thin Mint Girl Scout cookies online? Their website says, “Girl Scout Cookies are SO much more than just a sweet treat? Every box you buy helps the brave and bold girls who sell them power unique experiences for themselves and their troops.”
If you care about biodiversity, the enormous variety of life on Earth, from whales to bacteria, please don’t buy cookies or anything made with Unsustainable Palm Oil. A 2021 report says “Girl Scout Cookies have “certified sustainable” labels on their products, but its cookies actually contain “mixed” palm oil, which means they’re made with a blend of sustainable and unsustainable palm oil.
According to the Orangutan Foundation International, “1,000 to 5,000 orangutans are killed due to palm oil. Both Bornean and Sumatran Orangutans are listed as Critically Endangered. Orangutan populations declined by as much as 97% in the 20th century, with an estimate of less than 40,000 Bornean and 7,000 Sumatran orangutans remaining in the wild.”
Changing the world
You have the power to change the world. Pay for the good things and stop paying for the bad things. Ethics deals with good and evil, a different perspective from making short-term profits.
Pay to grow soil
Herbicides and industrial agriculture seemed like progress when thinking about world hunger. But things didn’t work out. People are still hungry in America, and we have lost millions of acres of soil from excessive use of herbicides, tilling, and unsustainable farming practices. Climate change from extracting and burning fossil fuels cause extreme floods, making growing soil a top priority to survive.
Pay to let trees grow
Foresters want to harvest the Arkansas “forests” for timber, sawdust, and wood pellets. If you know Joe Fox, Arkansas State Forester, you know what I am talking about. Fox says standing trees only have value when you cut them down and sell them to sawmills. Forest owners have to pay their bills, why not pay them to let the trees grow instead of killing them?
Stop paying for weapons
The Saudis bought “beautiful” American weapons in 2017, and Qatar was attacked for not having enough weapons. Qatar has the best airline and flies in cows for milk. The United Arab Emirates was rewarded with an embassy and fighter planes, and the people of Palestine and Yemen got the wrong end of the weapons.
Stop paying for the Military Complex and the Department of War. Making, storing, selling, and using nuclear weapons as threats is unethical behavior.
Billions of dollars wasted at the Pentagon would pay for the war on coronavirus and provide aid to others suffering from the worldwide pandemic. The 2019 coronavirus is mutating to new highly transmissible varieties of coronavirus, the 2021 “new and improved atmospheric killing diseases.”
Please look next week for an update on the deadly Arkansas BioEnergy – West Fraser legal abuse. Sawdust is another name for fine particulate matter.
Stop paying subsidies for fossil fuels
Extracting and burning coal, oil, and gas has a global cost of over $5.3 trillion per year. What if instead of giving $20 billion per year in subsidies to the US Fossil Fuel industry and permits for pollution and carbon emissions, we pay small farmers to shift to regenerative agriculture to grow healthy food and carbon-rich soil?
Pay for the right things
Palm oil is destroying the rain forests. The Ethical Consumer website has a list of products made from palm oil and great information on sustainable alternatives. The World Wildlife Fund and the Union of Concerned Scientists also have information on sustainable palm oil alternatives.
The Orangutan Foundation International states “In Sumatra at least 10.8 million hectares have been opened up for palm oil plantations. This has had a devastating impact on biodiversity. Because most forests have been cleared through the use of fire, there is massive air pollution from smoke.”
Get paid to grow soil
Indigo Carbon, Mad Agriculture, and other organizations promote regenerative farming practices that are good for your farm and pay for the carbon credits you generate.
Ethical thinking provides a better way of seeing the world.
Dr. Luis Contreras
To stop making wood pellets in Arkansas, you have to show the Air Quality Division gives invalid air permits. Their system is designed to stop anyone from asking questions or trying to appeal their permits.
You have to pay a lawyer to present your case. But Arkansas lawyers don’t have to take your money and stop a permit, instead they will just take your money.
There is a story that needs to be told, but some stories are meant to keep secret
https://biomassmurder.org/docs/2017-11-30-biofuelwatch-draxs-coal-to-biomass-conversion-increases-levels-of-dangerous-small-particles-english.pdf
Ecology looks at the way local choices impact the world in the long term, the opposite of politics. Burning Arkansas, Alabama, Mississippi, North Carolina, and other forests to keep the lights on in the UK is a massive scam.
The first law of scams is “make the lie as big as you can, and counter any questions with false promises.”
Paying forest owners to let the trees grow is the best way to stop Drax
After years of claiming to have clean electricity, now they say there are many challenges to having negative carbon emissions.
Think about the logic behind Drax, they want to blame others for the failure to deliver their lies
https://www.drax.com/press_release/drax-kickstarts-application-process-to-build-vital-negative-emissions-technology/
The World Wildlife Fund says boycott are not the answer:
WWF believes that certification, complemented by other approaches and strong governance, will play an important role in ending irresponsible palm oil production.
Joining the RSPO and committing to responsible palm oil supply chains is an important first step that all stakeholders concerned with ensuring sustainable production can take.
https://d2ouvy59p0dg6k.cloudfront.net/downloads/wwf_position_on_po_boycott_november_2018.pdf
Stop paying subsides for fossil fuels … how did this start and why does it continue?
The US Congress keeps the money flow, but there are other reasons
Here are some of the answers:
https://www.eesi.org/papers/view/fact-sheet-fossil-fuel-subsidies-a-closer-look-at-tax-breaks-and-societal-costs
Palm oil is everywhere because is the best vegetable oil – but burning the rain forests and the unique species living in the forests is barbaric.
Stoping the demand is the best way to protect the remaining rain forests. This will happen only if we all get involved, and letting stores know there are other alternatives.
President Biden and his team can’t fix all the problems, 350 million wallets will make a difference
The Ethical Consumer has great information on palm oil free products
https://www.ethicalconsumer.org/palm-oil/palm-oil-free-list