EU criminalises ecocide
Bruno Manser, environmental legend
Dear earthlings,
The environmental legal space is gaining traction, from Australia to Europe we hope these news will inspire action as accountability and justice prevail 👏
🗞️ In Climate News
🗽 New York State sues PepsiCo for generating significant share of state’s plastic pollution.
🇪🇺 EU criminalises environmental damage ‘comparable to ecocide’.
👩🎤 Taylor Swift postpones Rio de Janeiro concert due to ‘extreme temperatures’.
⚖️ Activists win court ruling to stop seismic blasting for gas off Western Australian coast.
🇪🇺 EU agrees to ban exports of plastic waste to poor countries from 2026.
🇧🇷 Amazon River tributary falls to lowest in over a century amid Brazil drought.
🇺🇸 Texas: Republican-controlled school board votes against climate textbooks.
🇮🇹 Extreme drought in northern Italy mirrors climate in Ethiopia.
📈 Cool Trends
♾️ eco-stories
🇨🇭 Bruno Manser, environmental legend
Bruno Manser is a unique soul: a Swiss medical student turned Alpine herdsman turned member of the Penan nomadic tribe turned Malaysian Enemy of the State turned international environmental activist turned environmental legend.
Bruno grew up in a normal family in the outskirts of Basel, Switzerland in 1954. From a young age he was fascinated by nature: he would insist on camping in his home’s backyard, even if it snowed. In seventh grade, during a school trip in the mountains, he took some morning glory seeds knowing they have similar properties to LSD, resulting in him getting too high to continue the trip. At age 19 his strong convictions on freedom, Taoism and Zen-Buddhism lead him to refuse the Swiss mandatory army service, which led to him being in prison for four months.
During his twenties, after dabbling in medical school, he decided that being close to nature was the only way to achieve true freedom, prompting him to leave for the mountains of Garubunden where he enrolled in Agricultural studies and lived for several years as a herdsman. During his time in the Alps he realised a different understanding of meaning, he mustfind and know people who live self-sufficiently and without money, people that couldn’t be found in Switzerland. So he organised a journey to Borneo, a trip that will radically transform his life and purpose.
🌏 The Culture Column
📺 What we’re watching: Song From the Forest
📸 Profile of the week: @ecocidelaw
📚 What we’re reading: The Great Derangement, Amitav Ghosh
🤯 Scary fact we learnt this week: thousands of whales are killed each week in ship strikes.