jalifiooo - Tumblr blog

jalifiooo · 1 year

Text

Artificial Environmentalism

The water shortages that are starting to happen all over the world aren't what you think. For example, Uruguay just recently had to dump a bunch of saltwater into their drinking supply to avoid a total drought. Not great for anyone with diabetes, kidney disease, or heart problems. For those people, they recommended drinking bottled water.

What's noteworthy is the top three consumers of water in Uruguay are cattle, soy bean, and eucalyptus. At this point eucalyptus is almost 6% of Uruguay's total land, and it was only introduced in 1990. Unlike cattle, which can be incorporated into seasonal crop rotations, eucalyptus pretty much dominates wherever it grows.

That's, yanno, bad. But getting into exactly why it's bad actually takes some setup, so this is pretty long and it's still just scratching the surface. This isn't doomerism, there are good answers, but the only way to have a good answer is to have a good understanding of the problem so hopefully you're willing to power through it, I'll do my best to be brief... ish.

See, way too many people think a tree is a tree, or that veganism will save the world or something. Thing is, people have lived in region, in population centers, with various forms of meat animals, for tens of thousands of years. What they didn't do was grow foreign plants to ship 5k mi away for plant milk and scented candles in California.

Eucalyptus trees give off eucalyptus oil and in the right areas this produces a blue haze. It's why the Blue Mountains in Australia are called blue. It's also flammable. They evolved in Australia specifically to cause fires. Add in a drought, and rich people putting their houses next to 'the forest view', and you're guaranteed to have a problem. Incidentally, that 'natural view' is also a lie. The oil they produce is so prolific they're killing off native birds like the short-bills when their nostrils clog and it's toxic to several local insect populations.

One of the largest purchasers of Eucalyptus outside of the lumber industry is cosmetics. It's used in everything from 'natural' air fresheners to 'organic' antiseptics.

Speaking of cosmetics... Melaleuca, one of the largest "organics" multi-level marketing companies in the US, is named for a breed of another invasive oily Australian plant that grows along side eucalyptus. Ever heard of "Tea Tree Oil"? That's melaleuca.

The company Melaleuca's CEO is Frank VanderSloot, who has never disclosed his net worth but whose income from the company was estimated by Forbes in 2004 at $1.4 billion, and he only has 55% controlling stock. Eucalyptus and tea tree oil is really good money. Not surprising corporations try to sell eucalyptus not only as room deodorizer and lumber (and folk MLM remedies), but as an 'investment opportunity'. The companies don't really care if you know the difference, and neither do the laws governing their agribusiness:

Incidentally, VanderSloot is also tied to the latest wreck of anti-queer legislation sweeping the US. He made Pres. Obama his personal target when the Admin pointed out he was a major contributor to the Romney campaign. He accused PBS of "promoting" homosexuality, and claimed reports of abuse in the Boy Scouts were a homosexual conspiracy. He's attacked Rachel Maddow and Mother Jones for their coverage of his anti-gay politicking, and his wife used the Melaleuca corporate call center after-hours to make robocalls in support of Proposition 8 in CA which would have ended gay marriage. These people have a very specific agenda, and they're more than happy to exploit the same communities for money that they're oppressing legally.

People like VanderSloot are why I don't trust oil heiresses who pay teenagers to throw cans of tomato soup on paintings or dump milk out at expensive shops. Publicity stunts are not policy, but they do convince a lot of people to look the other way and stop asking what you're doing with all your family millions.

Speaking of California, eucalyptus trees are also responsible for why the California and Rainforest fires were so bad a couple of years ago: they were encouraged by the government and are now one of the most prolific invasive species in Brazil, Uruguay, and the West Coast of the US. From the Oakland fire in 1991 to the Kincade fire in 2019, the Bay Area seems to burn a lot. Whelp, have a look at a map of the Fire Threat Assessment by the CA Public Utilities, and a map of where the local eucalyptus are the thickest. Incidentally Berkeley has the tallest and densest grove of Tasmanian blue gums in the world. Yeah, I can tell.

The point is, one problem indigenous environmental activists constantly encounter is their seeming disinterest in working closely (or sometimes at all) with orgs like GreenPeace or Wren, and the backlash they get as a result. First, there's the problem of individualizing the environment. "Carbon Footprint" was a concept invented by oil execs to make you feel guilty, while ignoring corporate-level damage. To put it bluntly, jet engines produce more pollution than your entire family ever will. Yet Wren's carbon calculator only asks how often you ride the bus.

Second, most of the 'solutions' they come up with are either absurd or bordering on malicious. For example, one of Wren's latest "projects" is covering ground with rock dust to change the pH of the soil so it captures more carbon. Which feels a whole bunch like the project to fill the atmosphere with dust to mitigate sunlight. Yes that is a thing, Bill Gates proposed it and it is absolutely demented. But they don't even know how much will wash off into local rivers and what effect that would have. Except, we do know, the Gulf Dead Zone already exists because of soil fertilizer around the Mississippi River, they could make the problem even worse.

But they advertise with vloggers, and they have a really cool website, so they're hoping you click through, download the app, and don't worry your pretty little head about the sheer mindlessness of it all. Similarly, when California tried to pull out some of the eucalyptus after the fire back in '91, a bunch of white college students stripped off their clothes and hugged the trees in protest. I guess they didn't know what they were supposed to do was throw tomato soup on the university president's door. Don't think, don't learn, just act! VanderSloot would be proud.

Similarly GreenPeace made quite the splash a few years ago when they vandalized the Nazca Lines in Peru for a publicity stunt. They didn't even go to the UN negotiation they were protesting. The negotiations weren't even taking place near Nazca. They were in Lima 200mi away. I wonder if any of them stripped naked and hugged a rock, just to really drive the point home. It's so bad some companies have given up entirely and are now marketing not actual solutions, but just higher res pics of the problem. Damn, just damn: "With our web and mobile apps, anyone can access satellite imagery to confirm stories and see the world from a new perspective."

Wonder how much water all that "disposable" fast fashion can soak up before it gets where it was supposed to go. At least I now have video of it in 4k I guess. It's why we don't trust 'visionaries'. Pretty pictures, a high-res photo, clever cartoons, a well worded book or two, if it's not from the people who have lived there and directly benefits them their way, it's just tourist self adulation, which is just socially acceptable narcissism.

And don't go thinking the soy is gonna solve the problem either. About a quarter goes to humans for their milk substitutes, and tempeh burgers, and then the other three quarters goes back into feeding the cattle. Vegan or not, it's sustaining the beef industry. With the handy knock-on of clearcutting the old growth forest so they can plant some eucalyptus groves when the soil is exhausted. I believe the Business Majors in the room call that 'vertical integration'.

This is going to keep happening as the heat belt widens and regions dry. This obsession with technological solutions for global warming is absurd when there's no comprehensive policy shifts, no monetary consequences to destroying ecosystems, and no benefit (in fact active discouragement) to engage with local indigenous populations. Isn't it interesting, in all this discussion of, say, the Australian bush fire, all the photos of koalas with burns, there was so little coverage of what's happening with the tribes.

One of the few standard source I found was an ABC story from 2mo before the fires. Indigenous leaders saying fire fighting without land management is pointless. Not surprising the "Gondor Calls For Aid" stories ignored them. The abject refusal to confront basic notions about environmental maintenance because it's spoken by brown people is absurd, but pretty average really. Much easier to center some white guy's new iPhone widget. Equally unsurprising is that, previous to ABC's November 2019 coverage, their last attempt at actually talking about indigenous solutions hadn't happened for five years.

There's a reason these connections aren't being widely discussed. There's a reason they want you to think a single election can fix all the problems. VanderSloot doesn't want people questioning why invasive trees are being sold as a health product, and sues anyone who looks into what his politics are, and it's the same reason why indigenous efforts are ignored. Because indigenous sovereignty and decade-long solutions don't fit neatly into their quarterly report, and don't make them money.

But equally, the solution doesn't fit neatly into a 30sec ramble from a breadtuber when they're finished with the Raid Shadow Legends ad read: stop ignoring the locals. Stop funding another tech bro's non-answer to environmentalism because a streamer advertised it. Don't fall for their marketing that buying from an MLM just because it's labeled "organic", or taking shorter showers, is somehow magically helping end a global climate crisis.

The reason this post is so long and still barely scratches the surface is because these issues are interconnected in deep and insidious ways. They can't be solved with the click of a button or tossing Spaghetti O's on the Mona Lisa. The people who have the long term solutions are the ones who were already living in those environments successfully for thousands of years, before the business men and trust fund grad students arrived. Ask them.

28 notes · View notes