Future Earth and Eco Solutions Highlight Environmental Disasters

Competing cable TV media are beginning to roll out some good series on the environment, highlighting the issues of climate change, deforestation, and those who are causing the extinction of some of man’s closest relatives like orangutans, (which are considered 97% human) and other amazing animals. The Sumatra and Indonesian rain forests are being destroyed and it’s about time someone in the media noticed and started informing the public. In Indonesia, the forests are being burned and chopped down for the planting of palm trees, for the making of palm oil. If you use palm oil in anything, know that you are contributing to the ‘slash and burn’ destruction of these very complicated and necessary rain forests and their ecosystems.

Last Sunday night there were some serious climate-change and environmental shows on cable news TV. The one I ended up watching was called 100 Heartbeats, a show that’s part of the new series called “Future Earth” on MSNBC. It’s a new series, and it looks promising. 100 Heartbeats is about animals on the brink of extinction and how some humans are attempting to prevent their permanent demise. According to MSNBC:

“100 Heartbeats,” is the second premiere in MSNBC’s landmark Future Earth series, and famed naturalist Jeff Corwin tells the story of the “Sixth Extinction.” The sixth extinction event is what we are at the beginning of, right now. And there is very little “natural” about it. Here is a video from the beginning of “100 Heartbeats”:

Jeff Corwin also wrote a book with the same title: 100 Heartbeats: The Race to Save Earth’s Most Endangered Species

It’s incredibly disturbing to know such magnificent creatures are being killed or driven out of their homes, their environments destroyed, and could soon be extinct. Orangutans may be extinct in the wild in 20 years. Even Great White sharks have survived every extinction event thrown at them in the past, but they probably won’t survive the current one, caused by humans. Their habitats are being destroyed, the oceans acidified and polluted. The oceans themselves will one day not be able to support life at all if we keep on with business as usual.

Also shown last Sunday night and as part of a continuing series, CNN International was running a segment on preserving the rain forest habitats of orangutans on their Eco Solutions show. The situation for the orangutan habitat has been dire for years, so it’s good the corporate media is pointing this out.  It’s not just the animals we have to worry about, it’s the rain forests themselves. CNN reported that 85% of Sumatra’s forests are already destroyed and gone for good. Of about 30,000 orangutans left in the wild in the world, there are only about 6,000 orangutans left in the wild in Sumatra, according to CNN.

The Eco Solutions show clips are on this CNN site. Here is the website of the 100 Heartbeats show on MSNBC. It’s worth watching if you love animals and creatures of all kinds. I’m sure that’s the point of these shows, in part, to show how a disrespect for earth and a separation of ourselves from our own habitat is leading eventually to massive environmental destruction. The respect humans used to have for the earth and nature is decreasing instead of increasing, as more and more people live in cities. We need to get back to our natural origins and as humans, stop being so divorced from the planet we live on, these shows suggest. Human beings are no longer “of” the very planet that supports their life. Could native peoples ever have conceived of being responsible for the death and destruction of so much, and much of it done on purpose? I doubt it.

What is Indonesia doing about this environmental degradation? They are deporting climate change protesters.

“Indonesia Deporting 2 More Climate Activists, 2 Reporters”

On Nov. 16, two Greenpeace activists from Germany and Italy and two members of the press from India and Italy, all of whom were traveling on valid business and journalist visas, were picked up and detained by Indonesian police.

They were on their way to meet the villagers of Teluk Meranti, who have been supporting Greenpeace in its efforts to highlight rainforest and peatland destruction in the Kampar Peninsula — ground zero for climate change. The police also took into custody an activist from Belgium who had been working at our Climate Defenders Camp there.

Despite the validity of their travel documents and the absence of any wrongdoing, two of the activists and both journalists are now being deported by immigration authorities on questionable and seemingly contrived grounds, even though no formal deportation permits have been issued.

Just a few days before, immigration authorities deported 11 other international Greenpeace activists who participated in a non-violent direct action in an area where Asia Pacific Resources International Holdings Ltd., or APRIL, one of Indonesia’s largest pulp and paper companies, is clearing rainforest and draining peatland on the peninsula. . . . “

Read more here.

If this is the regular response of governments, things are more corrupt than we thought.  It’s probable that people in the governments of these countries (Kenya? Indonesia?) may be getting kickbacks to look the other way when the trees and the land and the animals are destroyed.

In “100 Heartbeats,” the second premiere in MSNBC’s landmark Future Earth series, famed naturalist Jeff Corwin tells the story of the “Sixth Extinction” — caused by people and which can only be stopped by people. Keep checking futureearth.msnbc.com for information about the next premiere, “Future Earth: 2025,” which will air on Dec. 20. You can catch “100 Heartbeats” on MSNBC again on Thanksgiving at 11 a.m. ET.