In public testimony at the Department of State Lands in Salem on Tuesday, December 10, 2019, OICR urges the members of the Oregon State Land Board to leave the Elliott State Forest inviolate and inviolable, with a complete ban on roads and logging. For sources and readings, please click on the image
"CODE RED FOR HUMANITY"
“The alarm bells are deafening, and the evidence is irrefutable,” warns UN Secretary-General António Guterres. “Greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel burning and deforestation are choking our planet and putting billions of people at immediate risk.”
Synthesis Report of the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report: "Climate Change 2023"Contribution of Working Group III to the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report: "Climate Change 2022: Mitigation of Climate Change" (March 21-April 1, 2022)
Contribution of Working Group II to the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report: "Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability" (February 27, 2022)
IPCC Press Release "Climate change widespread, rapid, and intensifying — IPCC" (August 9, 2021)
Contribution of Working Group I to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (August 7, 2021)
The Global Forest Goals Report 2021, United Nations Department of Economic and Global Affairs
The State of the World's Forests 2020, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations
Summary for Policymakers, 2019 Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services
AN URGENT REPORT
DEVASTATING UNITED NATIONS REPORT ON BIODIVERSITY AND ECOSYSTEMS, THE MOST COMPREHENSIVE ASSESSMENT OF ITS KIND TO DATE, MAKES CLEAR THAT WE MUST ACT NOW, AND IN CONCERT, TO SAVE WHAT IS LEFT OF OUR WORLD
1,000,000 species threatened with extinction. Nature’s Dangerous Decline “Unprecedented.” Species Extinction Rates “Accelerating.” Current global response insufficient. Indigenous and local knowledge drawn upon as models for the first time in addition to scientific and governmental sources. “Transformative changes” needed to restore and protect nature. Opposition from vested interests can and must be overcome for public good. Past predictions seriously underestimated the damage and devastation
ACTION NECESSITATED NOW
“The overwhelming evidence of the IPBES [Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services] Global Assessment, from a wide range of different fields of knowledge, presents an ominous picture. The health of ecosystems on which we and all other species depend is deteriorating more rapidly than ever. We are eroding the very foundations of our economies, livelihoods, food security, health and quality of life worldwide”
—IPBES Chair Sir Robert Watson
Stories of the Hour
In Memoriam: Homero Gómez González and Raúl Hernández Romero
“Even in the darkest of times we have the right to expect some illumination, and that such illumination may come less from theories and concepts than from the uncertain, flickering, and often weak light that some men and women, in their lives and works, will kindle under almost all circumstances and shed over the time span that was given them on earth.”
—Hannah Arendt, Men in Dark Times
Homero Gómez González. Image Credit: Televisa
Raúl Hernández Romero (l) and Homero Gómez González (r). Image Credit: Red Digital
The Mexican environmental activists Homero Gómez González and Raúl Hernández Romero were brutally murdered at the end of January 2020 for their work devoted to saving Monarch butterflies. The Manager of El Rosario Monarch Butterfly Preserve, part of the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve, a UNESCO World Heritage site, and the Mayor of El Rosario, Michoacán, Mr. González had created the 370-acre reserve from land his family had formerly logged, transforming it into a refuge for the millions of Monarch butterflies that yearly survive the trek from Canada to Mexico. “Come and see this marvel of nature!” he exclaims in one of the last videos he posted to Twitter before his murder. “[The butterflies] are lovers of the sun, the souls of the dead,” a reference to indigenous legends about the butterflies. (See David Agren, The Guardian, Thursday, January 30, 2020). On January 29, his body was found floating in a well not far from his reserve. Three days later, the body of his colleague Raúl Hernández Romero, a tour guide at El Campanario Monarch Butterfly Sanctuary, was discovered not far away.
What's New?
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!["Films for Now" Seminar [#6]: "Gaslight" (see Merriam-Webster's recently-announced Word of the Year)](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/599112efcd39c3b3ad2118b0/1670286309854-4BLZJBZTT2GT5WXOWDEA/FFN_GASLIGHTING_NOTEXT.png)
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Events
![Readings for Now [#15]--Part II (Hannah Arendt's The Origins of Totalitarianism) (November 10, 2022).jpg](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/599112efcd39c3b3ad2118b0/1fec3bba-3899-43a9-9986-804c34316392/Readings+for+Now+%5B%2315%5D--Part+II+%28Hannah+Arendt%27s+The+Origins+of+Totalitarianism%29+%28November+10%2C+2022%29.jpg)
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![Films for Now" Seminar [#5]: "Parasite," with Kyu Hyun Kim, University of California, Davis](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/599112efcd39c3b3ad2118b0/1647561908208-IQTDYNX21IRYNHLXCCXO/1625524744_What-do-we-know-about-the-series-adapted-from-Pong.jpeg)
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