Posted on

Just Fight

Trump Admin creative tactics to fight climate change, despite themselves.

See? It matters how news is contextualized.

Brazilian farmers were sure a Swedish-Finnish multinational was planting eucalyptus trees on public land. And they were right:

Surrounded by nearly 100,000 hectares (247,000 acres) of eucalyptus plantations, Baixa Verde is a rare example of a local victory over a multinational in Brazil. The rural settlement owes its existence to nearly two decades of legal battles over land rights – but the fight is not over yet.

After fighting to retain their land, the families now face an unprecedented security crisis marked by armed clashes, arson and death threats, part of a wave of violence driven by a land dispute that has escalated since 2024.

Conflicts over land rights have long been an issue in the region. Obtaining property titles is commonly deemed to legitimise land grabs from traditional communities, and local people had suspected that Veracel Celulose – a pulp-production company jointly owned by the Swedish-Finnish company Stora Enso and the giant Brazilian pulp manufacturer Suzano – was planting eucalyptus trees on public land.

In 2008, Ercilio Souza, one of the founders of the Baixa Verde settlement, and Juenildo Oliveira Farias visited government archives to review public documents. They found the page that proved the 1,300 hectares in dispute were owned by the government. “We always knew that it was public land,” says Souza.

With the document in hand, they assembled 91 local families and joined the Fight for Land Movement (MLT), a ​​political and social organisation fighting for agrarian reform. Its first action was to occupy an area of a eucalyptus plantation used by Veracel, accusing the company of using public land.

Stories like this one may quickly disappear but we should give them more credence, if not prominence (attaboy, Guardian). Rather than the binary – this is great/that is awful –take some time to unpack a story and understand its complexities as a throughway, as appropriate. Be critical. Withhold the benefit of the doubt until it is deserved.

Also, wtf, Swedish-Finnish conglomerate, get your act together.

Image: A eucalyptus plantation in Baixa Verde owned by Veracel Celulose.  Photograph: Sara Van Horn (Guardian)

Posted on

Going Away

Not me, this time – malheureusement. But oil refineries. They’re going away. They’re not leaving today. But they’re going away. The article makes for an almost wistful, Christmas Eve nostalgia for how, pretty soon, we’re not going to have them to kick around any more. And boy will we regret that. Except we won’t.

Gasoline demand, which many analysts had long expected to keep rising for decades, is down sharply in the recession. And refiners are increasingly convinced that even after the economy recovers, demand will not grow much in coming years because of the rise of alternative fuel supplies and the advent of tougher efficiency standards for automobiles.

…

Plagued by boom-and-bust cycles of rapid expansion followed by sharp belt-tightening, refining companies have often struggled to operate at a profit. That is a contrast to the production side of the oil business, long a road to riches.

“Oil production creates wealth, but oil refining has often destroyed it,” said Costanza Jacazio, an analyst at Barclays Capital in New York.

Even so, these are unusually harsh times for oil refiners. The recent drop in gasoline demand could result in more refineries being closed in the coming year.

Talk about shock and… aw. But this has very little to do with eco-anything, really. It’s just an economic situation, itself in transition, and away from where the fossil fuel industry thought they would ever go or be, which is not far from here – or actually about 2007. This is itself a problem with the imagination of your average B-school go-getter, seeing just far enough to be able to carve out their own little piece of the bottom line as it exists as the status quo. Then having the proclivity to channel all remaining energy into protecting that little slice of heaven. Instead of being able to recognize the shortcomings even of a system beneficial to them and foresee workable, if not equitable, adjustments to that system. Imagination fail, like a tractor beam. Like a circle, baby.

And this is transferrable to many issues and realms, including the political and HCR. If you doubt that, check out another op piece today, and witness the depravity that was Phil Gramm circa 1993. Hunted with dogs, indeed.