Pause to Think

As mentioned here previously, palm oil plantations — promoted by corporations marketing biofuel and other first world luxuries — come at the expense of forests, biodiversity, and the indigenous peoples that inhabit ecologically intact territories. As the consumption of these luxuries proceeds in tandem with fraudulent green initiatives like REDD, the corporate lobbyists’ slush funds for bribing politicians are replenished by consumers of these products.

We don’t need these products, but we do need the forests, and buying into phony green marketing campaigns is yet another example of ceding citizenship and humanitarian responsibilities to patronizing politicians and their corporate owners. Allowing them to steal indigenous peoples’ forests under the pretense of climate change prevention is a self-deluding exercise indulged by the indolent and self-centered who unfortunately conflate consumerism with activism.

Once the title to indigenous lands becomes sufficiently clouded by state propaganda and corporate advertising, the resultant political climate legitimizes such practices as ethnic cleansing and genocide. Watching this holocaust unfold in Colombia and Malaysia should give those duped by the UN climate charades pause to think.

One thing to think about is the cumulative effect of deforestation from massive hydropower projects now under development in combination with the palm oil plantations. The colossal industrialization of the last remaining forests for energy and food export is not only driving World Bank schemes like REDD, it is generating a refugee crisis worldwide.

As the noted Brazilian liberation theologian Leonardo Boff observes, “There could be 100 million climate refugees in the next five to seven years. The market is not going to resolve the environmental crisis”.