Protecting our home 🌳

Shell stops plan to reduce CO2

Dear earthlings,

Last week the UN announced that ‘climate breakdown’ has begun after record summer heat. We know that these intense news can fuel anxiety, however we hope that they will spark action instead. After generations of illusions in western society, let our generation be the one that finally reconnects with truth: nature.

🗞️ In Climate News

• 🇱🇾 Deadly flood devastate Lybia with over 20,000 people missing.

• 🌍 African leaders seek global taxes for climate change at Nairobi summit.

• 🔥 Burning Mud: unprecedented heavy rain strands 70,000 festival goers.

• ⛽ Shell quietly shelves a radical plan to reduce its carbon footprint.

• 🇧🇷 President Lula demarcates two indigenous territories and promises compensation to municipalities that reduce deforestation.

• 🇮🇩 Indonesia awards biggest Indigenous forest claim yet to Bornean Dayaks.

• 🇨🇳 China’s summer of climate destruction: extreme heat, heavy floods and crop failures.

• 🍷 Sweden is growing its wine industry due to climate change, meanwhile Italian Prosecco is at risk.

• 🫀 Study shows microplastics now running through our hearts.

📈 Cool Trends

• 🛍️ Home compostable seaweed packaging.

• 🌳 Fast-growing mini forests.

♾️ eco-stories

🌳 Protecting our Home

Dry leaves crunched under my feet. I looked at the dead plant material layered over the forest floor and glanced ahead to a group of workers from the Yorenka Tasorentsi Institute, who were sweeping this plant litter to create what looked like a pathway through the forest. Unfortunately they were creating a firebreak, a gap in vegetation that act as a barrier for the wildfire that was sweeping through the forest to my left. After an hour of grueling work, the workers found a log, they brushed off insects with their hands before sitting down to drink water and talk. I sat down on the end of the log, it was brittle and cracked under my weight, a sign of the many insects that occupied its core. I reached for the drink bottle attached to my camera bag. I drank water and looked to the workers as smoke blew over and around our heads, it was impossible not to breathe it in.

Ze, one of the workers, was seated next to me, and as the smoke accumulated in my lungs, I coughed. He raised his eyebrows then smiled. I realised this is not a new experience for him, he clearly has done this before, all of these men probably have. It’s a sad reality of life in the Brazilian Amazon, where fire activity is rapidly increasing. These fires are often caused by weather, but more often they are the result of the economic interests of farmers, who use fire to deforest and prepare their land for crops and pasture. Agriculture has been the most valuable sector of Brazil’s economy in recent years, so farmers are encouraged and supported in their practices as they fuel the country’s economic growth. But when farmers’ burning practices coincide with dry conditions, their fires can easily move, escaping their control, spreading across their property, and with the wind, to nearby land.

🌏 The Culture Club

🎧 What we’re listening to: Wildfire Munwurrk: short doc

📸 Profile of the week: @firesticks.alliance

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🎧 What we’re listening to: Overheard by National Georgraphic: This Indigenous Practice Fights Fire with Fire

🤯 Scary fact we learnt this week: 80% of global deforestation is a result of agricultural production.