I feel so lucky to have worked with the Center for Diversity Education at UNCA on the planning committee for the first annual Everybody’s Environment Conference at the Wesley Grant Southside Community Center here in Asheville. I’m also grateful that Dogwood was able to be a sponsor. Our goal was to bring diversity to the local conservation community.
The biomass industry is one more instance of the corporate greed that concentrates wealth in the top 1% of our society, increasing inequality while ravaging the resources of and giving little in return to the communities that bear the consequences. On Blog Action Day 2014, Dogwood Alliance highlights and applauds the community power and resistance that is growing in opposition to biomass and calls on policy makers and biomass corporate executives to stop destroying our forests and our communities. We call on Enviva to halt destructive practices and invest in solutions that work in partnership with communities and the environment.
It’s encouraging to see forests emerge as a major point of focus with the release of the New York Declaration on Forests. Since launching the Our Forests Aren’t Fuel campaign last year, I have been scratching my head in disbelief about the contradiction that exists when it comes to global forest climate policies. Over recent years, there has been a suite of initiatives aimed at reducing carbon emissions from forest loss and degradation, which admittedly accounts for 20% of global carbon emissions. As part of the New York Declaration of Forests, three European nations – UK, Norway and Germany – announced increased global funding for reducing deforestation and increasing forest conservation.
Why are emissions reduction decisions being made in the real world based on a financial framework at a fraction of the cost of the actual value and real world benefit of carbon? Why are decisions concerning the forests of the South, the lungs of the nation, being made at the fraction of the true cost of carbon?
Last week the world lost one of its best, brightest, and most fun environmental champions, Lenny Kohm. Lenny was a long time champion of wilderness, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, ending mountaintop removal, and protecting forests and communities across the Southern US.
