In Hell and High Water, Joe lays out his proposals for how to slow down our greenhouse gas emissions in the first half of this century (giving us the breathing space to eliminate them in the second half). His program primarily consists of deploying existing technology, and is quite doable, should we find the political will.

His last proposal, however, is “stop all tropical deforestation, while doubling the rate of new tree planting.” I’ve always considered this to be the toughest item on his list to acheive. So it is encouraging to find a group that is working directly on pieces of the problem. Rainforest Action Network (RAN) has launched a campaign to stop U.S. agribusiness expansion in the rainforests. In a recent action they have asked Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) to sign a pledge to halt their palm oil madness. In particular, the pledge asks ADM to “once and for all commit to halting all direct or indirect engagement with companies that destroy tropical rainforest ecosystems for industrial biofuels.”

RAN is using a tactic that they have honed over the years: find a small number of U.S. companies connected to a problem and highlight that association to tarnish their public image until they back down from fostering the problem. It is often the case that a targeting a few high-profile firms provides significant leverage that would not be possible targeting individual plants or farmers. For example, at a RAN press event held at the ECO:nomics conference in Santa Barbara, Ed Begley Jr. said,

“An ADM subsidiary, the Wilmar Group, is the world’s largest producer of palm-based biodiesel and is clearing tropical rainforests in Indonesia that are among the last remaining habitats of the critically endangered orangutan. U.S. agribusiness giants ADM, Bunge and Cargill account for 60 percent of the funding for Brazil’s booming soy crop. Soy has become a leading cause of deforestation in the Amazon as Brazil has overtaken the United States as the world’s largest exporter of soy, largely due to American farmers planting more corn for ethanol.”

This effort is part of RAN’s Rainforest Agribusiness (defending forests, family, farmers and our climate) campaign, which is one of four main thrusts. As part of their Global Finance (ending destructive investment) campaign, RAN has also been fighting the Wall Street investment banks to end their funding of coal power plants, and they have been quite dogged about pursuing their quarry. Their other campaigns are Freedom From Oil (jumpstarting Detroit), Old Growth (preserving endagnered forests).

Learn more about RAN’s ADM pledge petition.

– Earl Killian

Related Posts

• For Peat’s Sake, Stop the Palm Oil Madness
• Report: Palm Oil Drives Deforestation
• Can Biofuels Be Made Sustainably?
• The Debut of Deforestation Diesel

The multi-year saga of the Bush administration’s fight to avoid recognizing global warming’s threat to the polar bear heated up last week. On Thursday, March 20, Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA), chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, sent a letter to Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne asking him “to appear before the Committee as soon as possible for an oversight hearing” on the “considerable delays in taking final action” over the Endangered Species Act listing of the polar bear. Boxer told him that the hearing would be planned for April 2 or 8.

The following day, Lyle Laverty, Assistant Secretary for Fish, Wildlife, and Parks, faxed back a response at 5:56 PM:

I understand Secretary Kempthorne called you on March 17, 2008, and expressed his commitment to testify before the Committee on the polar bear proposal once a decision is made on the issue. I also understand the Secretary committed to calling you on Tuesday, April 1, 2008, with an update on the progress towards a decision.

Boxer immediately responded, calling the offer of a telephone briefing and a hearing after a decision has been made “wholly inadequate,” and again requested the April 2 or 8 date for a hearing discussing “this serious breach of the Department’s duty to follow the law.”

This fight began in 2005, when the Center for Biological Diversity petitioned the Fish and Wildlife Service to declare the polar bear endangered by global warming’s assault on Arctic sea ice. Since then, the administration has violated repeated Endangered Species Act deadlines — the latest this January — when it instead announced it would speed through a multibillion dollar sale of drilling rights in the very same Arctic seas.

It has been nearly a month since Fish and Wildlife Service director Dale Hall — who is under investigation for his part in the delays — stated in a February 28 House Appropriations Committee hearing that his agency had submitted its decision on the polar bear listing to Secretary Kempthorne.

This post ends with a Climate Progress exclusive: James Hansen’s response to the NYT‘s Andy Revkin piece commenting on Hansen’s (draft) article on why we need a CO2 target of 350 ppm. But first the backstory.

Revkin used me as the “balance” for his piece:

Some longtime champions of Dr. Hansen, including the Climate Progress blogger Joe Romm, see some significant gaps in the paper (it is a draft still) and part ways with Dr. Hansen over whether such a goal is remotely feasible.

I complained directly to Revkin about the first part of that characterization. I was going to let it go at that, but then I got e-mails from people directing me to a media interview of Hansen (and Mark Bowen, whose new book is Censoring Science: Inside the Political Attack on Dr. James Hansen and the Truth of Global Warming). The reporter cited Revkin’s quote directly to Hansen to argue the paper is “controversial.”

Well, obviously, the reporter should have called me directly, rather than taking some hearsay characterization from another member of the media. But that just isn’t the state of journalism today. [Note to media: You don't need to cite me in order to say that a paper saying we need to go back to 350 ppm is "controversial" -- it's kind of obvious, given that we're at 385 ppm, rising 2 ppm a year, and not currently doing anything to stop emissions from rising, let alone concentrations, but I digress.] Anyway, at that point I felt obliged to write Hansen an email titled, “I don’t see ‘significant gaps in the paper’ “:

I complained to Revkin about that characterization.

I think it is a solid and important paper and told everyone to read it:
http://climateprogress.org/2008/03/17/hansen-et-al-must-read-back-to-350-ppm-or-risk-an-ice-free-planet/

I just say you don’t know how much we can overshoot and for how long, which your paper acknowledges. You quite naturally take a conservative approach — best not to overshoot too much for too long. Since I don’t believe we can possibly get to 350 ppm this century, I interpret your paper to say that we should shoot to stay below 450 ppm this century [almost certainly politically impossible but worth a shot] and 1) plan on going to 350 by 2150 and/or 2) waiting to see if the science becomes clearer on the overshoot issue and we need to act faster.

I don’t think we disagree about much on the technical side. On the action side, you need a WWII-scale effort ASAP for decades. Whether we can get 450 or 400 or 350 with such an approach is something neither of us knows for sure.

Hansen forwarded my email to Revkin with this cover note (which he has given me permission to reprint):

Read more