Author: The CNCL Team

What Are Eggs For?

Apart from the fact that many birds are protected by law, why would it never occur to us to help ourselves to the eggs of a blue tit or a crow, a chaffinch or a jay, or any of the birds whose antics give us so much pleasure in our gardens or on our window sills? Well it’s obvious, isn’t it? These birds need their eggs. It would be unforgivable to take their eggs. We all know that and we’d never dream of it. So what’s different about hens?

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The Vegan Meat Revolution Could Help Save the Planet – And Fast-Food Chains Are Finally Taking Notice

A few years ago, convincing meat-free “meat” was nothing more than a distant dream for most consumers. Meat substitutes in supermarkets lacked variety and quality. Plant-based burgers were few and far between in major fast food outlets – and meaty they were not. But realistic alternatives to environmentally damaging meat are now big business – and global fast food chains are finally starting to take notice.

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Palestine and Kenya: Our Historic Fight against Injustice Is One and the Same

The occupation of Palestine is not a “conflict” – as the Israelis like to present it. Israel is a colonial power that is ethnically cleansing an entire indigenous population in order to legitimize and grow its colony. Submit or fight. These were the two choices facing Kenyans during their anti-colonial struggle. Like them, we Palestinians have also chosen to fight for our dignity – for ourselves and our children. We will not let our dream of freedom die.

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Should Zoos Exist?

The idea that keeping animals in captivity is morally acceptable has long been questioned by those who argue that zoos infringe upon animals’ freedom. In recent years, an increase in research on the ethics of captivity has helped to dispel the misconception that critics of zoos are simply anthropomorphizing the animals they say they’re trying to help.

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Good News From Iceland: No Whaling This Season

Good news in our work means animals thrive and we therefore celebrate it. That’s how it was for me this morning when I woke up to the report that there will be no whaling in Iceland this summer. Something my colleagues at Humane Society International and I have fought since Iceland resumed whaling in 2003.

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Ireland Will Ban Fur Farms, Saving Thousands of Minks!

Minks are the most common animals to be farmed for fur. Unfortunately, they are subjected to terrifying lives of misery. But fortunately, people are realizing that such cruelty cannot go on. The Czech Republic banned fur farms, Los Angeles banned fur, and big fashion houses like Coach and Chanel have also gone fur free! Other places that have put fur bans into place include San Francisco, India, Sao Paolo, and more. Now, Ireland is joining the list!

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The Mass Extinction No One Is Talking About

“Every two weeks, the world loses a language. Out of approximately 7,000 languages spoken on earth today, at least half will have fallen silent by the end of this century,” artist Lena Herzog told an audience at New York’s Museum of Modern Art in the spring of 2018. In a world in which English increasingly dominates global conversations and cultures, every part of Herzog’s statement will seem staggering: the vast diversity, the rapid loss, the impending extinction.

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An Honorable Course in Iran

President Trump expressed concern that 150 people could be killed if U.S. airstrikes against Iran had been carried out last week. We must ask how many people could die because of economic warfare against Iran.

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We Have Less Than a Millisecond Left

If we lay the age of the Earth out over a calendar year, that would amount to 518,264 years per hour or 144 years per second. So if we have 10 or 11 years until the point of no return, as climate scientists have repeatedly told us, that means we have a millisecond left before midnight in which to change our society completely to avoid turning the Earth into a piping hot fajita.

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Why Isn’t Honey Vegan?

As you journey into adopting a vegan lifestyle or continue your plant-based lifestyle, you may have come across another vegan that has chosen to not eat honey. This may have made you think, “Isn’t honey OK for humans to eat, as it is not hurting a bee?” Well, we have some facts about bees, their honey, and the important role they play on our earth.

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Burning Down the Future

The hulk of Grenfell Tower, its charred sides covered by sheets of white plastic, stands as a mute and ominous testament to the disposability of the poor and the primacy of corporate profit. On June 14, 2017, a fire leaped up the sides of the 24-story building, clad in highly flammable siding, leaving 72 dead and 70 injured. Almost 100 families were left homeless. It was Britain’s worst residential fire since World War II. Those burned to death, including children, would not have died if builders had used costlier cladding that was incombustible and if the British government had protected the public from corporate predators. Grenfell is the face of the new order. It is an order in which you and I do not count.

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The Time Has Come for a Global Minimum Wage

The International Labour Organization (ILO) is celebrating its 100th anniversary this June. In the wake of a devastating world war, its mission was transformational: to realize social justice and the rights of workers everywhere. But now, 100 years later, exploitative working conditions remain the norm, more people than ever live in poverty, and the richest 1 percent are on track to own two-thirds of all global wealth in a decade. While no single policy could solve these problems entirely, one in particular would be a decisive step forward. At its centenary conference, the ILO should call for a global minimum wage.

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Solidarity with Glenn Greenwald

Last week, the Intercept exposed Lula’s persecution for the farce that it was. Now journalist Glenn Greenwald, his family, and the Intercept are under attack by Bolsonaro and his followers. They deserve our solidarity.

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Choosing Hope

Sean Casleton interviews Noam Chomsky / Boston Review Noam Chomsky and Scott Casleton discuss socialism, anarchism, and the fight for progress in U.S. politics today.  There is always the temptation to think of one’s own era of...

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Connecting the Dots: Insane Trade and Climate Chaos

Imagine a world where food routinely gets shipped thousands of miles away to be processed, then shipped back to be sold right where it started. Imagine cows from Mexico being fed corn imported from the United States, then being exported to the United States for butchering, and the resulting meat being shipped back to Mexico, one last time, to be sold.This may sound like the premise of some darkly comic, faintly dystopian film – albeit one geared towards policy wonks. But it’s no joke – in fact, it is the daily reality of the global economy.

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Himalayan Glacier Melting Doubled Since 2000, Spy Satellites Show

The melting of Himalayan glaciers has doubled since the turn of the century, with more than a quarter of all ice lost over the last four decades, scientists have revealed. The accelerating losses indicate a “devastating” future for the region, upon which a billion people depend for regular water.

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The 7 Reasons Why Nuclear Energy Is Not the Answer to Solve Climate Change

There is a small group of scientists that have proposed replacing 100% of the world’s fossil fuel power plants with nuclear reactors as a way to solve climate change. Many others propose nuclear grow to satisfy up to 20 percent of all our energy (not just electricity) needs. They advocate that nuclear is a “clean” carbon-free source of power, but they don’t look at the human impacts of these scenarios. Let’s do the math…

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Exhausted Polar Bear Wanders Into Siberian City

A starving polar bear has strayed hundreds of kilometers from its natural Arctic habitat and wandered, exhausted, into the major Russian industrial city of Norilsk in northern Siberia. Climate change has been damaging polar bears’ sea-ice habitats and forced them to scavenge more for food on land, bringing them into contact with people and inhabited areas.

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Boaty McBoatface Finds Missing Climate Change Link at Bottom of Ocean

Boaty, a high tech research submarine, recorded rising temperatures that show increasing turbulence deep within the Southern Ocean caused by intensifying winds from Antarctica. The turbulence is causing warmer water closer to the surface to mix with colder water at the bottom, which contributes to rising sea levels, because warm water takes up more space than cold water.

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Meat Industry to Blame for Massive Dead Zone, New Analysis Says

According to a recent analysis by environmental protection organization Mighty Earth, America’s largest meat companies are to blame for the Gulf of Mexico dead zone. The analysis shows that huge meat companies have constructed slaughterhouses, processing facilities, and industrial farms in areas throughout the Mississippi River basin that are prone to flooding.

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Talking About Weather, Fruit and Vegetables

Reading the daily litany of the disasters that we humans are wreaking on our dying planet through our irresponsible actions, my attention was snagged by news of the storm-wrought crop failure and the resulting declaration of a ‘natural emergency’ in parts of France. In sawing off the branch our species is sitting on, we must never forget that our victims, our fellow species, are sitting on it alongside us, helpless passengers on our self-driven journey to ruin. And so it was that I found my thoughts wandering on the subject of crops.

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Why Is Veganism on the Rise?

If you asked for vegan food 20, 10, or even five years ago, you’d be met with surprise or even an eye-roll. Vegans were once stereotypically thought of as hippies, pictured sitting around eating nothing but lettuce in flower crowns. Fast forward to 2019, and times have changed. Times have really, really changed.

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Canada’s House of Commons Has Declared a National Climate Emergency

OTTAWA – The House of Commons has passed a motion declaring a national climate emergency, and supporting Canada’s commitment to meet the Paris Agreement emissions targets. Conservative MPs voted against the motion, but it still passed 186-63 with the support of the Liberals, New Democrats, Bloc Quebecois and Green MPs. The motion was was put forward by Environment and Climate Change Minister Catherine McKenna.

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US Foreign Policy Exposed

In the last week, the realities of US foreign policy have been exposed by a leaked audio tape, a leak about a US attack on the Russian electrical grid, and US attempts to extradite Julian Assange. All the information points to a foreign policy that violates international law and standards, perpetrates wars and conflict and seeks to undermine press freedom in order to commit its crimes in secret. This is not new information to those of us who closely follow US foreign policy, but these new exposures are broad and are in the mass media where many millions of people can view them and gain a greater understanding of the realities of US actions around the world.

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‘Blatant Theft’: Netanyahu Unveils Illegal Settlement Named ‘Trump Heights’ in Occupied Syrian Territory

In what critics denounced as an obscene celebration of land theft and a violation of international law, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday showed his appreciation for U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision to recognize the occupied Golan Heights as Israeli territory by unveiling a new illegal settlement named “Trump Heights.”

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The Coming Show Trial of Julian Assange

The publication of classified documents is not a crime in the United States, but if Assange is extradited and convicted it will become one. Assange is not an American citizen. WikiLeaks, which he founded and publishes, is not a U.S.-based publication. The message the U.S. government is sending is clear: No matter who or where you are, if you expose the inner workings of empire you will be hunted down, kidnapped and brought to the United States to be tried as a spy. The extradition and trial of Assange will mean the end of public investigations by the press into the crimes of the ruling elites. It will cement into place a frightening corporate tyranny.

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We Are Witnessing Imperial Decline in an Age of Planetary Decline

Never before in history has the rise and decline of imperial powers taken place in the context of the decline of the planet itself. Trump change, the rising political temperature stirred by the growing populist right, is taking place in the context of (and, worse yet, aiding and abetting) record global temperatures, the melting of ice across the planet, the rise of sea levels and the future drowning of coastlines (and cities), the creation of yet more refugees, the increasing fierceness of fires and droughts, and the intensification of storms. In the midst of it all, an almost unimaginable wave of extinctions is occurring, with a possible million plant and animal species, some crucial to human existence, already on the verge of departure.

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25 Vegan Athletes (Parts 1 and 2)

These 25 vegan athletes prove that a plant-based diet gets results. With improved recovery times, and improved performance in their respective sports, plant-based protein is a powerful fuel source.

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The Gulf Of Mexico’s Expanding Dead Zone

Bad news is flowing towards the Gulf of Mexico. The catastrophic rains that have pummeled the Midwest this spring are flooding streams and rivers with farm runoff, fertilizers and sewage runoff that will soon hit the Gulf, greatly expanding the dead zone in the fishing grounds there. Scientists say that about 8,000 square miles of the Gulf will be affected, driving away crab, shrimp and fish as the water loses its oxygen. Marine ecologist Nancy Rabalais of Louisiana State University has been studying the Gulf waters since 1985, and she joins us now on the line.

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Capitalism Isn’t ‘Broken’. It’s Working All Too Well – And We’re the Worse for It

Capitalism is not broken. It is working all too well, concentrating money in the hands of the few by exploiting the work of the many. Runaway climate change, war, mass migration, widespread poverty and ever-increasing authoritarianism are the inevitable results of an economic system that rewards corporate actors for their absolute commitment to profit, regardless of the broader consequences.

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The Climate-Health Connection: Infectious Disease

Driven by the burning of fossil fuels like coal and oil, our world is getting warmer and warmer – putting real people’s lives are in danger. But not just from the searing heat, violent storms, and rising seas most think of first when the conversation turns to our changing climate. The climate crisis is also making us sick – and it’s only just getting started.

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Climate Change Is Bad for World Peace

As the global climate crisis worsens, so will armed conflicts. This depressing conclusion was made in a study published June 12 in the journal Nature. It brought together a panel of experts from various disciplines (economics, political science, environmental science, etc.) to analyze the threat that climate change poses to global security; the outcome does not look good.

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How the Pentagon’s Forever Wars Are Killing the Planet

Brown University released a report revealing that the Department of Defense is “the world’s largest institutional user of petroleum and correspondingly, the single largest producer of greenhouse gases (GHG) in the world.” According to the report, the DOD released approximately 1.2 billion metric tons of greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide, between 2001 and 2017.

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G20 agrees to tackle ocean plastic waste

Group of 20 environment ministers agreed on Sunday to adopt a new implementation framework for actions to tackle the issue of marine plastic waste on a global scale, the Japanese government said after hosting the two-day ministerial meeting.

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Disinformation and False Accusations of Anti-Semitism: Permitting Israel’s Slow Motion Genocide of Palestinians

The convoys of ambulances packed with medical supplies, (Viva Palestina 2009) grew out of an inspirational idea put forward by George Galloway. Both within the UK and indeed globally, individuals were/and continue to be shocked by the brutal attacks on a largely defenceless population living under siege in Gaza. The Israeli ‘Operation Cast Lead’ of 2008/9 left around 1,440 people dead and many more thousand injured. Ten years on, Gaza continues to face a slow genocide so the motivation to place blame on those who speak out about these outrageous war crimes and crimes against humanity, are well entrenched within the establishment and media.

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‘The US Has No Real Moral Authority to Talk About Freedoms’

A former US diplomat to Cuba, Wayne Smith, wrote once that Cuba “seems to have the same effect on American administrations that the full moon once had on werewolves.” It comes to mind as you hear of National Security Advisor John Bolton denouncing Cuba’s “malign influence and ideological imperialism”—to an audience including veterans of the failed Bay of Pigs invasion, no less—as the reason for renewed sanctions on the country. We’ll talk about what’s happening with Netfa Freeman of the Institute for Policy Studies.

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Mending Hearts: How a ‘Repair Economy’ Creates a Kinder, More Caring Community

Repair is discouraged by unavailable replacement parts, glued assemblies and tamper-proof cases that are difficult to open. So we discard things rather than fix them. Much research suggests this harms more than the natural environment. It also affects our mental environment. There’s a connection between the way society treats material objects and the way it treats people. Returning to an economy of repair could help create a kinder, more inclusive society. By mending broken things we might also help mend what’s broken in ourselves.

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Artifishal: New Film Asks, Have We Reached the End of Wild?

That salmon sitting in your neighborhood grocery store’s fish counter won’t look the same to you after watching Artifishal, a new film from Patagonia. Artifishal looks specifically at how fish hatcheries and fish farms threaten wild salmon populations, which in turn has ecosystem-wide effects — all because of our desire to eat these culturally significant species.

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Britain Becomes First Major Country to Commit to Legally Binding Zero Emissions Target

Theresa May will make the UK the first economy in the G7 to legislate for zero emissions. The CCC report also confirmed that even if other countries followed the UK by setting a zero emissions target, there was still just a 50/50 chance that the planet would remain below the recommended temperature of 1.5 degrees Celsius by 2100. Anything above that guarantees a shift in climate that will threaten human life.

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Arctic Sea Ice Extent Just Hit a Record Low for Early June; Worse May Come

Arctic weather variations are too complex to predict in advance, but 2019 has made a strong start toward possibly beating 2012 for the lowest annual ice extent record. Records aside, the Arctic sea ice death spiral and the extreme weather it can trigger are adversely impacting agriculture, infrastructure, economics and human lives.

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The Future of Democracy

The word democracy derives from the Greek words that means “people govern.” Generally, it is assumed throughout the world that the democratic way of decision-making is the best possible and therefore, the most acceptable. The only problem is that nobody knows what exactly it means.

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The Thought Police Are Coming

If Julian is extradited and tried, it will create a legal precedent that will terminate the ability of the press, which Donald Trump has attacked as “the enemy of the people,” to hold power accountable. The crimes of war and finance, the persecution of dissidents, minorities and immigrants, the pillaging of the ecosystem and the ruthless impoverishment of working men and women to swell the profits of corporations and consolidate the global oligarchs’ total grip on power will no longer be part of public debate. First Julian. Then us.

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A Soldier’s Defense of Chelsea Manning and Julian Assange

It’s a matter of principles over personalities. Whether one loves or hates Chelsea Manning and Julian Assange is besides the point. The First Amendment freedom of the press is at stake now. So consider this a desperate plea from a career soldier: pay attention! Defend those who subvert the military and government’s secrecy regulations. In such times real patriotism involves breaking the rules.

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Sudan’s Campaign of Nonviolent Resistance

As dawn broke on Monday, June 3, Sudan’s Transitional Military Council (TMC) began a violent crackdown against pro-democracy protesters in the capital of Khartoum in response to a nationwide general strike the previous weekend. Despite the government’s endless attempts at coercion, the people of Sudan have continuously shown the fortitude to continue protesting and the courage to remain nonviolent.

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In the Fight Against Climate Change, Humans and Wildlife Are Allies

Climate change is accelerating at a breakneck pace, already affecting about half of all threatened mammal species and a quarter of threatened birds. And according to a study published in Science last year, if nothing is done to curb our carbon emissions, nearly 50 percent of the planet’s insects, which make up the foundation of food webs all over the globe, could disappear by the end of the century.

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Why Greta Thunberg Is Vegan

Thunberg has been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. She is also a vegan – recognizing the environmental impact of animal agriculture. Here is a look at some of her most powerful speeches.

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Why Do We Think We Own The Earth?

For far too long, humanity has regarded itself as ‘outside’ Nature. We think we are exceptional. Our ‘intelligence’ rarely produces long-lasting benefits to anything but ourselves. There is only one thing that makes humanity truly exceptional; our desire to own and control everything, partnered by our horrible ability to destroy what we try to control.

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The Healing Power of Gardens: Oliver Sacks on the Psychological and Physiological Consolations of Nature

The role that nature plays in health and healing becomes even more critical for people working long days in windowless offices, for those living in city neighborhoods without access to green spaces, for children in city schools, or for those in institutional settings such as nursing homes. The effects of nature’s qualities on health are not only spiritual and emotional but physical and neurological. I have no doubt that they reflect deep changes in the brain’s physiology, and perhaps even its structure.

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Greenpeace Campaigners Stop BP Rig Bound for North Sea, Stalling Fossil Fuel Giant’s Plan to Extract 30 Million Barrels of Oil

Three Greenpeace campaigners halted a British Petroleum oil rig off the coast of Scotland on Sunday as it prepared to leave for the North Sea to drill oil wells. Carrying enough provisions to last several days aboard the rig, the climate action advocates pulled up to the 27,000-ton vessel in small boats as it attempted to leave Cromarty Firth, bound for the Vorlich oil field where BP plans to access up to 30 million barrels of oil.

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Congress Can End the Yemen War This Summer, Despite Trump

Despite what Trump thinks, Congress has the power to end U.S. participation in the Yemen war in the coming weeks. Through consideration of NDAA and defense appropriations, and even legal action, Congress can end our complicity in war crimes and send a clear signal to the executive branch that unconstitutional U.S. participation in the Saudi-UAE coalition’s military campaign in Yemen must end. The question is, will they?

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9 Easy Ways You Can Protect the Oceans

The ocean is astonishing, but it’s also deteriorating. A report published in the journal Current Biology in 2018 found that 87 percent of the world’s oceans are dying. Just 13 percent of oceans have intact marine ecosystems “untouched by the damaging impacts of humanity,” The Guardian reported last year.

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Homo Sapiens: Not a “Machine”!

There is no such thing as “my body.” I am a human organism (Homo sapiens), synergistically comprised of organs, tissues, and fluids. Reciprocally interacting, deviation-reducing processes maintain an essentially balanced “steady-state.”

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How Mining Corporations Plunder the Global South

With nearly 60 percent of the country’s population living below the poverty line, it seems completely reasonable to suggest that Zambian people are deserving of a greater share of the lucrative financial returns generated by their country’s mining industry. In summary, it is our hope that this research helped illustrate how the combination of both wage exploitation in the context of the Zambian mining industry along with corporate rent-seeking practices in the global extractive sector contribute to the larger pattern of underdevelopment in the Global South.

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Making the Leap to Electric

In Europe, the transport sector is currently responsible for over one-quarter of Europe’s CO² emissions — with 45% of that coming from road transport alone — putting it dead center in our climate emergency. It’s choking our communities with air pollution while rapidly heating our planet.

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Paul Hawken: Will Unregulated Corporate Capitalism Be Our Downfall?

Paul Hawken, one of the most important environmental authors, activists, thinkers and entrepreneurs of our era, has dedicated his life to sustainability and changing the relationship between business and the environment. Below, read an edited version of his talk from 2002, where he spoke passionately and eloquently on corporate capitalism and control, wealth disparity, social injustice and how each of those issues plays into ongoing environmental degradation.

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Extinction Emergency – We Need Action Right Now to Save New Zealand Dolphins

Human activities are pushing some marine species towards extinction, including some of the smallest dolphins in the world. Collectively known as New Zealand dolphins, Hector’s and Māui dolphins live only around the coast of New Zealand and they are dying in fishing nets at a rate that will see them extinct if we don’t change our behaviour around them and remove the destructive fishing nets from their home.

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