11 ms·

Big Banks Are Putting Rain Forests in Peril

192 points by azuajef 10y ago

marricks 10y ago
What this annoyingly ignores is one of the biggest contributors to deforestation, animal agriculture. 80% of the deforestation in the Amazon has been for cattle and their food[1]. It makes sense, people eat a lot of animals, animals need a lot of food. Blaming banks is an easier group to blame then ourselves and our own choices, though. [1] http://globalforestatlas.yale.edu/amazon/land-use/cattle-ranching http://globalforestatlas.yale.edu/amazon/land-use/cattle-ran...
- peller 10y ago
  Animal agriculture is also a huge contributor to the global climate change problem. Again, basically swept under the rug. My suspicion is that many powerful people feel (rightly or wrongly) that the subject of enforcing diet is simply too untenable for them to take up without all hell breaking loose. (What do you mean I can't eat my meat!?) ...And that's not to mention all the "standard issues" clouding their judgment and priorities.
  - marricks 10y ago
    It's funny because there are some easy changes governments could make which aren't even in telling people what to do. We literally give billions to animal ag industries in subsidies, we could just stop that. Take it a step further and use that money to actually fund alternatives so they're substantially cheaper for the public. The fact that almond/coconut milk is more expensive than cow milk speaks volumes about how the system is set up. Another step, which the FDA almost did this year, is advise people to eat less animals because it's awful for the environment. In general just making the message more visible would help. The last one is kind of telling people what to do, but the FDA already does that anyway so it's not too much of a change.
    - ant6n 10y ago
      Is almond milk really better than cow milk in terms of impact?
      - Lewton 10y ago
        Why was this (ant6n's) post downvoted? It's a legitimate question https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/shortcuts/2015/oct/21/almond-milk-quite-good-for-you-very-bad-for-the-planet https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/shortcuts/2015/oct/...
        r00fus 10y ago
        I was about to rebut you, but the facts remain: The largest supplier (by far) of almonds in the world is California. So yeah, if you drink almond milk it's likely sourced from CA using up precious water that is causing the CA central valley to literally sink [1], as much as several inches a month (ie, several feet so far). However, almonds pale in comparison to cows or other livestock in terms of water usage (esp when used as meat) - while consuming large quantities of almonds may not be sustainable, it's a lot better than eating meat... just may be as water-unsustainable as drinking local milk (if you live in CA). [1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/nov/28/california-central-valley-sinking-farmers-deepwater-wells https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/nov/28/california-c...
        ant6n 10y ago
        But meat cows and milk cows are not the same thing. You need to grow a whole cow to have the meat of one cow, but if you grow one milk-cow you have the life-time supply of one cow. The water to meat (weight) ratio may be in the thousands or ten thousands, but the water to milk ratio may be in the oughts or tens.
        botexpert 10y ago
        Milk cows carry a baby every year which puts more pressure on metabolism needs. Milk is more energy and water inefficient than meat ( same scale comparison).
  - tluyben2 10y ago
    I notice that especially men get very defensive about their perceived meat entitlement. Seems to point to education and environment. Here on HN threads you can also see men getting aggressive when there is a suggestion (even with supporting articles) that it is unhealthy etc. Seems not unlike when it was first suggested that smoking was bad as that was also perceived 'real manly'. Same with guns. With alcohol a bit less but also and with sugar almost not. Seems to correspond with what is shown in culture (books, tv etc) and education as more and less butch.
    - ashark 10y ago
      It's hardly just men. There are plenty of women with the "meal (and certainly dinner) = meat" notion in their heads.
      - tluyben2 10y ago
        Didn't say just men; I just see, especially for red meat, men are vocal and aggressive about it. Maybe it is just places I go to ;) But I have seen it all over the world. Some places more than others.
    - gozur88 10y ago
      "Perceived meat entitlement"? Can't imagine why you find people getting defensive.
      - tluyben2 10y ago
        Not to me... Waiters to people and people to waiters, people at people at parties etc. What would you call it though? This thread is about killing life because rich folks want meat? If that is assumed true, then is that not a feeling of entitlement people have for some reason?
        gozur88 10y ago
        I suspect the problem is people are unhappy with your assumption of the entitlement to tell them what they ought to be eating.
  - arzt 10y ago
    Swept under the rug because there hasn't been a proven viable alternative that creates enough food to support modern human organization. Growth is the be all, end all of capitalism and agriculture is the 10,000 year old basis for it's existence. Until society rewrites the social contract, we're stuck with it and there are going to be articles like this one written that continually cast it into doubt.
    - mark_edward 10y ago
      Agriculture and meat aren't the same thing.
      - arzt 10y ago
        This article references deforestation whose root cause is a desire to to create land for grazing, so in this case it seems to be.
  - jimmaswell 10y ago
    It's a tradeoff. Maybe most people just don't think slowing climate change is worth reducing meat consumption.
  - nathancahill 10y ago
    It's not even meat. All we have to do is cut beef. Pork, lamb, chicken, rabbit and fish (in that order) have exponentially less environmental impact. Downvoters tell me why you disagree?
    - peller 10y ago
      You make a valid point that there are varying degrees of offense. There's this thing called the "feed conversion ratio"[0] that measures how much input it takes to get the desired output. But for all meats, even fish, the ratio is above 1 (it takes more food than is produced). I would be curious to see where insects fall on the spectrum; I've heard they're very efficient protein producers for the physical space they take up, but I'm having trouble locating any specific data to back that up. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feed_conversion_ratio https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feed_conversion_ratio
      - nathancahill 10y ago
        That's true, however, the bigger issue with beef is the methods used to raise cattle in tropical countries. Farming cattle involves clear-cutting large swaths of forest to create fields that have 2-3 years of use for cattle before the soil is completely degraded. Then new land must be cleared. Cattle methane is another huge problem. Neither of those issues are factored in to the "feed conversion ratio".
      - ssalazar 10y ago
        > for all meats, even fish, the ratio is above 1 (it takes more food than is produced) That seems like basic physics(?) How could it possibly be below 1 for anything that doesn't photosynthesize?
        peller 10y ago
        Yea. The reason I called out fish is that they have the advantage of more-or-less not needing to support their own body weight to move around, unlike land-based animals, and therefore they have the closest ratio to 1.
  - belorn 10y ago
    In an other article, I just did some hasty estimates of diet vs commuting. If you drive for more than 5 minutes, you will cause a higher climate effect than any diet choice. Eat just the nicest climate friendly food, and drive for more than 5 minutes in one direction and you end up doing more harm than an meat eating cyclist. Which also mean that working from home would be the biggest cultural change to fix the environment, and much more effective than any cultural change in diet.
    - peller 10y ago
      Interesting. I think what would be so hard about doing such an estimation is that most of the damage is just so far removed from us end consumers. It seems to me, very hard to extrapolate what one gallon of gas burned or one hamburger of meat eaten actually equates to on the production end of the spectrum. Care to share any more details?
      - belorn 10y ago
        For estimates, I used https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/jul/21/giving-up-beef-reduce-carbon-footprint-more-than-cars https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/jul/21/giving-u... for meat vs vegetarian, and carbon-footprint for 5m commute was provided by a comment here on HN, but I remade them this time. Using https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=307&t=11 https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=307&t=11 we get us co2 per gallon, and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_economy_in_automobiles#Fuel_economy_statistics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_economy_in_automobiles#Fu... gives average miles per gallon, which with units (gnu tool) translated it to about 8.6 miles for 3kg co2. 8.6 miles is, depending on driving speed, a reasonable estimated of 10m driving. So if a person commute time to work is 5m, and 5m back, the co2 should be similar to a person who eat meat-rich diet but who work from home.
        peller 10y ago
        Giving the meat vs vegetarian study authors the benefit of the doubt with respect to their calculations of greenhouse gas emissions from "production, transport, storage, cooking and wastage of food", and considering that on the commuting side of the equation you're only considering the emissions from burning gasoline (ignoring drilling/extraction, refining, and all the transportation that happens in the middle), the disparity must be even worse than you suggest. Perhaps a little ironically, the headline of the Guardian article says exactly the opposite.
- codecamper 10y ago
  I hope they will soon figure out how to lab grow meat.
  - marricks 10y ago
    I do too, but at the same time, meat isn't particularly healthy for you anyways?[1] At least red meat is awful for you. Plenty of alternatives exist* at the moment though they're not always cheap. We have the opportunity for a two-for-one here by replacing more harmful products with plant based alternatives. Things like the impossible burger people already rave about. It could be more of a marketing challenge, just making faux meats seem sexy and attractive to people. Luckily it's a growing industry so we'll see more investments in them, along with faux meats. * if you live near a somewhat alternative food store like Whole Foods, Trader Joes, etc. Kind of a big if. [1] http://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/cutting-red-meat-for-a-longer-life http://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/cutting-red-me...
    - codecamper 10y ago
      taco bell bean burrito! lived on that for 3 years through university. :)
    - enraged_camel 10y ago
      >>I do too, but at the same time, meat isn't particularly healthy for you anyways? At least red meat is awful for you. Please stop making stuff up.
      - marricks 10y ago
        Asking for a source is good! Claiming something is made up without any evidence to support it, less so. I honestly figured it was so well known of a fact it didn't need support. Below is one, though. http://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/cutting-red-meat-for-a-longer-life http://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/cutting-red-me...
        10y ago
- codecamper 10y ago
  What I took from the article is that there is maybe a chink in the bank's armor for a creative environmentalist legal group to go after. They have published documents saying how green they are. And they are not sticking to it. Banks operate with other peoples money. Many of those people would not be happy to learn that their money was invested in things the banks said they would not support. Maybe banks could be held liable.
- tmptmp 10y ago
  This. It also annoyingly ignores the problems created by increasing human population which is already very huge now. The huge and increasing human population is a very big problem the humanity is facing as it puts an enormous pressure on environment. This is not to say that banks are innocent but the article puts a skewed view that is misleading.
- forgotpwtomain 10y ago
  > It makes sense, people eat a lot of animals, animals need a lot of food. Blaming banks is an easier group to blame then ourselves and our own choices, though. In Indonesia forests are being burned to make space for palm oil plantations not cattle ranches. Your comment and propaganda of an alternative agenda is rather off-base I think.
sambe 10y ago
Otherwise known as "banks lend money to people". Pantomime villains sell newspapers, 2008 and all that. Much like technology that can be used for good and bad, I prefer to live in a world where services are available to all without discrimination – knowing that some people will do things I disagree with using those services – than a world where some random person's morals are used to restrict those services to certain groups. I find it pretty weird to see people gleeful that a far right party cannot get campaign funding, but those same people baulk at any criticism of democracy. The bank probably doesn't care about the party politics, but it does care about it's reputation. Trying to call the banks out for who they lend money to is probably effective but – IMO – chilling.
- jadslkfjdslk 10y ago
  I definitely agree that there should be as little discrimination as possible, but I don't think it has to be an anything goes mentality. I don't subscribe to"if it's legal, a company should do it." There are a lot of things a company can do within the bounds of the law that people find morally reprehensible. In the article, the NYT is making an argument to say that this business behavior is morally reprehensible. Not that it should be illegal or not allowed. It's up to the individuals reading the articles to take any action, if they feel it's necessary. For instance, not using that company for their services.
- tacostakohashi 10y ago
  The banks are an attractive target because they are large household names with high profile offices in the cities. So much more convenient for protesting than actually going to Borneo to hit the real perpetrators. The logical conclusion to this kind of targeting of banks that have a huge number of uncontroversial clients, and a handful of controversial (but legal) clients is that they will start turning away the business to protect their reputation, and someone else will set up a bank that specializes in shady clients, has an obscure and often changing name, anonymous offices, and generally doesn't care about its reputation. Would that be better? Obviously not, but it's effectively what activists are ask for.
  - codecamper 10y ago
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
josscrowcroft 10y ago
The most shocking stats from this article that jumped out at me and made my heart sink: "The world has lost 60 percent of its population of Bornean orangutans since 1950, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature. In July, the Bornean orangutan was listed as critically endangered." "About 15 percent of the world’s historical forest cover remains intact, according to the World Resources Institute. The rest [85%] has been cleared or degraded or is in fragments." "Climate concerns have been brought into sharp relief by the impending presidency of Donald J. Trump, who has called climate change a hoax. Mr. Trump has said he will pull the United States out of the Paris accord, a commitment by 95 countries to take concrete measures to reduce planet-warming carbon emissions."
- sn9 10y ago
  The most shocking for me, from the section titled "The Deadly Haze": >"Daily emissions from Indonesia’s forest fires last year at times exceeded emissions produced by all economic activity in the United States. A recent Harvard and Columbia study estimated that the fires caused at least 100,000 premature deaths across Southeast Asia. The World Bank estimates that the fires cost Indonesia’s economy $16 billion."

192 points by azuajef 10y ago

What this annoyingly ignores is one of the biggest contributors to deforestation, animal agriculture. 80% of the deforestation in the Amazon has been for cattle and their food[1]. It makes sense, people eat a lot of animals, animals need a lot of food. Blaming banks is an easier group to blame then ourselves and our own choices, though. [1] http://globalforestatlas.yale.edu/amazon/land-use/cattle-ranching http://globalforestatlas.yale.edu/amazon/land-use/cattle-ran...

peller 10y ago
Animal agriculture is also a huge contributor to the global climate change problem. Again, basically swept under the rug. My suspicion is that many powerful people feel (rightly or wrongly) that the subject of enforcing diet is simply too untenable for them to take up without all hell breaking loose. (What do you mean I can't eat my meat!?) ...And that's not to mention all the "standard issues" clouding their judgment and priorities.
- marricks 10y ago
  It's funny because there are some easy changes governments could make which aren't even in telling people what to do. We literally give billions to animal ag industries in subsidies, we could just stop that. Take it a step further and use that money to actually fund alternatives so they're substantially cheaper for the public. The fact that almond/coconut milk is more expensive than cow milk speaks volumes about how the system is set up. Another step, which the FDA almost did this year, is advise people to eat less animals because it's awful for the environment. In general just making the message more visible would help. The last one is kind of telling people what to do, but the FDA already does that anyway so it's not too much of a change.
  - ant6n 10y ago
    Is almond milk really better than cow milk in terms of impact?
    - Lewton 10y ago
      Why was this (ant6n's) post downvoted? It's a legitimate question https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/shortcuts/2015/oct/21/almond-milk-quite-good-for-you-very-bad-for-the-planet https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/shortcuts/2015/oct/...
      - r00fus 10y ago
        I was about to rebut you, but the facts remain: The largest supplier (by far) of almonds in the world is California. So yeah, if you drink almond milk it's likely sourced from CA using up precious water that is causing the CA central valley to literally sink [1], as much as several inches a month (ie, several feet so far). However, almonds pale in comparison to cows or other livestock in terms of water usage (esp when used as meat) - while consuming large quantities of almonds may not be sustainable, it's a lot better than eating meat... just may be as water-unsustainable as drinking local milk (if you live in CA). [1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/nov/28/california-central-valley-sinking-farmers-deepwater-wells https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/nov/28/california-c...
        ant6n 10y ago
        But meat cows and milk cows are not the same thing. You need to grow a whole cow to have the meat of one cow, but if you grow one milk-cow you have the life-time supply of one cow. The water to meat (weight) ratio may be in the thousands or ten thousands, but the water to milk ratio may be in the oughts or tens.
        botexpert 10y ago
        Milk cows carry a baby every year which puts more pressure on metabolism needs. Milk is more energy and water inefficient than meat ( same scale comparison).
- tluyben2 10y ago
  I notice that especially men get very defensive about their perceived meat entitlement. Seems to point to education and environment. Here on HN threads you can also see men getting aggressive when there is a suggestion (even with supporting articles) that it is unhealthy etc. Seems not unlike when it was first suggested that smoking was bad as that was also perceived 'real manly'. Same with guns. With alcohol a bit less but also and with sugar almost not. Seems to correspond with what is shown in culture (books, tv etc) and education as more and less butch.
  - ashark 10y ago
    It's hardly just men. There are plenty of women with the "meal (and certainly dinner) = meat" notion in their heads.
    - tluyben2 10y ago
      Didn't say just men; I just see, especially for red meat, men are vocal and aggressive about it. Maybe it is just places I go to ;) But I have seen it all over the world. Some places more than others.
  - gozur88 10y ago
    "Perceived meat entitlement"? Can't imagine why you find people getting defensive.
    - tluyben2 10y ago
      Not to me... Waiters to people and people to waiters, people at people at parties etc. What would you call it though? This thread is about killing life because rich folks want meat? If that is assumed true, then is that not a feeling of entitlement people have for some reason?
      - gozur88 10y ago
        I suspect the problem is people are unhappy with your assumption of the entitlement to tell them what they ought to be eating.
- arzt 10y ago
  Swept under the rug because there hasn't been a proven viable alternative that creates enough food to support modern human organization. Growth is the be all, end all of capitalism and agriculture is the 10,000 year old basis for it's existence. Until society rewrites the social contract, we're stuck with it and there are going to be articles like this one written that continually cast it into doubt.
  - mark_edward 10y ago
    Agriculture and meat aren't the same thing.
    - arzt 10y ago
      This article references deforestation whose root cause is a desire to to create land for grazing, so in this case it seems to be.
- jimmaswell 10y ago
  It's a tradeoff. Maybe most people just don't think slowing climate change is worth reducing meat consumption.
- nathancahill 10y ago
  It's not even meat. All we have to do is cut beef. Pork, lamb, chicken, rabbit and fish (in that order) have exponentially less environmental impact. Downvoters tell me why you disagree?
  - peller 10y ago
    You make a valid point that there are varying degrees of offense. There's this thing called the "feed conversion ratio"[0] that measures how much input it takes to get the desired output. But for all meats, even fish, the ratio is above 1 (it takes more food than is produced). I would be curious to see where insects fall on the spectrum; I've heard they're very efficient protein producers for the physical space they take up, but I'm having trouble locating any specific data to back that up. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feed_conversion_ratio https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feed_conversion_ratio
    - nathancahill 10y ago
      That's true, however, the bigger issue with beef is the methods used to raise cattle in tropical countries. Farming cattle involves clear-cutting large swaths of forest to create fields that have 2-3 years of use for cattle before the soil is completely degraded. Then new land must be cleared. Cattle methane is another huge problem. Neither of those issues are factored in to the "feed conversion ratio".
    - ssalazar 10y ago
      > for all meats, even fish, the ratio is above 1 (it takes more food than is produced) That seems like basic physics(?) How could it possibly be below 1 for anything that doesn't photosynthesize?
      - peller 10y ago
        Yea. The reason I called out fish is that they have the advantage of more-or-less not needing to support their own body weight to move around, unlike land-based animals, and therefore they have the closest ratio to 1.
- belorn 10y ago
  In an other article, I just did some hasty estimates of diet vs commuting. If you drive for more than 5 minutes, you will cause a higher climate effect than any diet choice. Eat just the nicest climate friendly food, and drive for more than 5 minutes in one direction and you end up doing more harm than an meat eating cyclist. Which also mean that working from home would be the biggest cultural change to fix the environment, and much more effective than any cultural change in diet.
  - peller 10y ago
    Interesting. I think what would be so hard about doing such an estimation is that most of the damage is just so far removed from us end consumers. It seems to me, very hard to extrapolate what one gallon of gas burned or one hamburger of meat eaten actually equates to on the production end of the spectrum. Care to share any more details?
    - belorn 10y ago
      For estimates, I used https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/jul/21/giving-up-beef-reduce-carbon-footprint-more-than-cars https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/jul/21/giving-u... for meat vs vegetarian, and carbon-footprint for 5m commute was provided by a comment here on HN, but I remade them this time. Using https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=307&t=11 https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=307&t=11 we get us co2 per gallon, and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_economy_in_automobiles#Fuel_economy_statistics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_economy_in_automobiles#Fu... gives average miles per gallon, which with units (gnu tool) translated it to about 8.6 miles for 3kg co2. 8.6 miles is, depending on driving speed, a reasonable estimated of 10m driving. So if a person commute time to work is 5m, and 5m back, the co2 should be similar to a person who eat meat-rich diet but who work from home.
      - peller 10y ago
        Giving the meat vs vegetarian study authors the benefit of the doubt with respect to their calculations of greenhouse gas emissions from "production, transport, storage, cooking and wastage of food", and considering that on the commuting side of the equation you're only considering the emissions from burning gasoline (ignoring drilling/extraction, refining, and all the transportation that happens in the middle), the disparity must be even worse than you suggest. Perhaps a little ironically, the headline of the Guardian article says exactly the opposite.
codecamper 10y ago
I hope they will soon figure out how to lab grow meat.
- marricks 10y ago
  I do too, but at the same time, meat isn't particularly healthy for you anyways?[1] At least red meat is awful for you. Plenty of alternatives exist* at the moment though they're not always cheap. We have the opportunity for a two-for-one here by replacing more harmful products with plant based alternatives. Things like the impossible burger people already rave about. It could be more of a marketing challenge, just making faux meats seem sexy and attractive to people. Luckily it's a growing industry so we'll see more investments in them, along with faux meats. * if you live near a somewhat alternative food store like Whole Foods, Trader Joes, etc. Kind of a big if. [1] http://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/cutting-red-meat-for-a-longer-life http://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/cutting-red-me...
  - codecamper 10y ago
    taco bell bean burrito! lived on that for 3 years through university. :)
  - enraged_camel 10y ago
    >>I do too, but at the same time, meat isn't particularly healthy for you anyways? At least red meat is awful for you. Please stop making stuff up.
    - marricks 10y ago
      Asking for a source is good! Claiming something is made up without any evidence to support it, less so. I honestly figured it was so well known of a fact it didn't need support. Below is one, though. http://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/cutting-red-meat-for-a-longer-life http://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/cutting-red-me...
      - 10y ago
codecamper 10y ago
What I took from the article is that there is maybe a chink in the bank's armor for a creative environmentalist legal group to go after. They have published documents saying how green they are. And they are not sticking to it. Banks operate with other peoples money. Many of those people would not be happy to learn that their money was invested in things the banks said they would not support. Maybe banks could be held liable.
tmptmp 10y ago
This. It also annoyingly ignores the problems created by increasing human population which is already very huge now. The huge and increasing human population is a very big problem the humanity is facing as it puts an enormous pressure on environment. This is not to say that banks are innocent but the article puts a skewed view that is misleading.
forgotpwtomain 10y ago
> It makes sense, people eat a lot of animals, animals need a lot of food. Blaming banks is an easier group to blame then ourselves and our own choices, though. In Indonesia forests are being burned to make space for palm oil plantations not cattle ranches. Your comment and propaganda of an alternative agenda is rather off-base I think.

sambe 10y ago

Otherwise known as "banks lend money to people". Pantomime villains sell newspapers, 2008 and all that. Much like technology that can be used for good and bad, I prefer to live in a world where services are available to all without discrimination – knowing that some people will do things I disagree with using those services – than a world where some random person's morals are used to restrict those services to certain groups. I find it pretty weird to see people gleeful that a far right party cannot get campaign funding, but those same people baulk at any criticism of democracy. The bank probably doesn't care about the party politics, but it does care about it's reputation. Trying to call the banks out for who they lend money to is probably effective but – IMO – chilling.

jadslkfjdslk 10y ago
I definitely agree that there should be as little discrimination as possible, but I don't think it has to be an anything goes mentality. I don't subscribe to"if it's legal, a company should do it." There are a lot of things a company can do within the bounds of the law that people find morally reprehensible. In the article, the NYT is making an argument to say that this business behavior is morally reprehensible. Not that it should be illegal or not allowed. It's up to the individuals reading the articles to take any action, if they feel it's necessary. For instance, not using that company for their services.
tacostakohashi 10y ago
The banks are an attractive target because they are large household names with high profile offices in the cities. So much more convenient for protesting than actually going to Borneo to hit the real perpetrators. The logical conclusion to this kind of targeting of banks that have a huge number of uncontroversial clients, and a handful of controversial (but legal) clients is that they will start turning away the business to protect their reputation, and someone else will set up a bank that specializes in shady clients, has an obscure and often changing name, anonymous offices, and generally doesn't care about its reputation. Would that be better? Obviously not, but it's effectively what activists are ask for.
- codecamper 10y ago

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

josscrowcroft 10y ago

The most shocking stats from this article that jumped out at me and made my heart sink: "The world has lost 60 percent of its population of Bornean orangutans since 1950, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature. In July, the Bornean orangutan was listed as critically endangered." "About 15 percent of the world’s historical forest cover remains intact, according to the World Resources Institute. The rest [85%] has been cleared or degraded or is in fragments." "Climate concerns have been brought into sharp relief by the impending presidency of Donald J. Trump, who has called climate change a hoax. Mr. Trump has said he will pull the United States out of the Paris accord, a commitment by 95 countries to take concrete measures to reduce planet-warming carbon emissions."

sn9 10y ago
The most shocking for me, from the section titled "The Deadly Haze": >"Daily emissions from Indonesia’s forest fires last year at times exceeded emissions produced by all economic activity in the United States. A recent Harvard and Columbia study estimated that the fires caused at least 100,000 premature deaths across Southeast Asia. The World Bank estimates that the fires cost Indonesia’s economy $16 billion."