October 29, 2009

News From TreeHugger: Thursday, October 29

photo: <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/fitri-agung/3103398633/">friti agung</a> via flickr.

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Editor’s Note: A weekly roundup from our friends over at TreeHugger. Enjoy!

Only One-Sixth of European Retailers Showing Sustainable Palm Oil Progress

Back in May, WWF said it would starting outing companies not living up to their sustainable palm oil commitments. After all, only a fraction of the certified sustainable palm oil being produced is actually being purchased. Well, their Sustainable Palm Oil Scorecard for 2009 has been released and only one-sixth of European retailers are making much progress.

In What World Can You Call Tetra Pak Green?

All sorts of effort has gone into making Tetra Paks using greener materials, but is it enough? No way. Green is reusable. Green is refillable. Green is not disposable and downcylable, for the lucky 20 percent of Americans who have access to it, and landfill for the 80% who don’t. Tetra Pak is the most elaborate greenwashing scheme ever, and they are doing a very good job of it.

Ecuador Moves Forward With Plan to Not Drill the Amazon in Exchange of Funds

We spoke about this campaign being in the making before, and about a presentation of it a month ago at the UN, but now it’s a fact: Ecuador is promoting the measure internationally to get funds, and says Germany, Spain and France have shown interest in backing up the plan. The country is also considering forming a consortium of countries with natural resources.

Illegal Logging Makes Indonesia World’s Third Largest Emitter of Greenhouse Gases

Indonesia is made up of 17,508 islands, most of which were totally covered by forest until about 50 years ago when that number dropped to 80 percent. But now, illegal logging and the burning of forests are making the country the third biggest emitter of GHG in the world (!) behind the U.S. and China.

More COP15 Expectation Management: UN Plans Post-Copenhagen Talks – Kerry Says We’ve Done All We Can

Though the grand exercise of managing expectations regarding the possibility of actually getting a global climate deal signed at the COP15 talks has been going on for a couple months now, here are the latest examples courtesy the United Nations, which is talking now about just having a framework in place for a legally binding deal, and Senator John Kerry, who is saying the Senate’s done all it can before December.

Good Way to End Paper Recycling Completely: Make Ethanol Motor Fuel From Paper Waste

Today’s printing and writing papers commonly have 20-30 percent recycled content. For fiber packaging materials, 60 to 100 percent recycled content is typical. It took decades for industry to reach those levels. Can you imagine what would happen if the paper industry had to price-compete against oil companies for waste paper feedstock? Recycled content of all manner of papers would surely decrease.

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

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