September 25, 2009- Earth Overshoot Day

Today is Earth Overshoot Day, meaning that at the end of this 267th day of our calendar year, humanity will have used the biosphere's entire capacity for the year 2009.
When we wake up tomorrow, we will be in "ecological deficit" and will start utilizing resources at a rate faster than what the planet can regenerate in a calendar year. To put clearly, we have used in less than 10 months what the Earth normally takes a whole year to produce - in terms of natural resources and in terms of CO2 quota - the CO2 Earth has the capacity to reabsorb by forests or seas.

According to the Global Footprint Network, which measures human impact on the Earth, "we currently maintain this overshoot by liquidating the planet’s natural resources. For example we can cut trees faster than they re-grow, and catch fish at a rate faster than they repopulate. While this can be done for a short while, overshoot ultimately leads to the depletion of resources on which our economy depends."

Overshoot started in 1986. Up until then, humanity consumed resources and produced carbon dioxide at a rate consistent with what the planet could produce and reabsorb. Ten years later, in 1996, humanity was using 15 percent more resources in a year than the planet could supply, with Earth Overshoot Day falling in November. In 2009, with our growing population and energy demands, we are now requiring resources at a rate of 40 percent faster than the planet can produce them.

The "good" news is that in 2008, Earth Overshoot Day fell on September 23rd, so it looks like we have gained two days in a year. I'm not sure why that is, if it's a result of successful measures governments have taken to curb their CO2 emissions or if it's simply that in time of crisis people consume less. The bad news though, is that despite that gain, we are still 11 days behind the 2007 Overshoot Day and that we need way more and faster progress for the Earth to get back at its sustainable rate before it is too late.

Not surprising, the United States is the biggest ecological deficit spender and if all people adopted the American lifestyle, with its emphasis on large homes, mobility and voracious use of energy, the world's population would need 5.4 "Earths" to meet its needs.

Canada (with a lifestyle of 4.2 "Earths"), Britain (3.1), Germany (2.5) are also singled out as huge consumers of resources.

As a New Yorker, I rely for the most part on public transport, as a majority of people do, and I'd like to think my carbon footprint is minimal- in fact New Yorkers have some of the smallest carbon footprint in the nation. However, a simple walk around the block is enough to illustrate the amount of consumption and - as a result- waste this city produces. Garbage bags line up the sidewalk on a daily basis - with the rats that go with it. New York has got to be one of the dirtiest city I have ever seen, and still hasn't figured out how, or found the financial resources to, have a proper waste management system in place. I guess this is another issue, but I think we can all play our part to reduce our consumption, recycle more and waste less.

Democratic Republic of Congo - part I

It seems the Democratic Republic of Congo has followed me...my grandfather worked there in the 1950s and my aunt was even born there. Fifty years later, when interning at WITNESS I worked on a project for a DRC-based NGO working on demobilizing child soldiers, and then while interning at the UN during grad school, I found myself in the elevator with Joseph Kabila- then (and still) president. It was only a matter of months until I made my first trip there and to my surprise, within the next year and a half, my 2nd and 3rd trip.

Working there as a filmmaker for a humanitarian organization, I had the chance to be working on the field most of the time and interact with locals from whom I heard both funny stories and others that left me perplexed. While I got use to being pointed out as the “muzungu” (white person) everywhere I went, the reactions varied from curiosity, to laughs, to occasional fear. Some kids would actually start running or crying at my sight!.. My Congolese friends explained that besides the possibility that they might be coming across a white person for the first time (and probably wondering what kind of disease had made me lose my color) their fear stemmed from stories they might have heard… of the white cannibals that eat human flesh. Ironic right? To think that those myths we might have heard at some point about Africans, be reflected back to us.

The sad part is that these perpetuated myths are not so far from the truth.. While the white man now comes in paternalistically as Congo’s “savior”, coming to develop the country, he (and it really was just men) was its tyrant for many decades.

It is only after reading King Leopold's Ghost by Adam Hochschild that I now have a better understanding of where all these stories come from. The Heart of Darkness, made famous by Joseph Conrad (which in turn inspired the film Apocalypse Now) depicts Congo as it was under its owner, the King of Belgium, Leopold. The term “owner” is deliberate as indeed Congo started not as a Belgium colony but as the King’s private property.


The particular myth of white men eating human flesh (which my Congolese friends truly believe as fact) comes from the terrible history of the Congo under Leopold, who it is interesting to note, never set foot in the country that made his fortune.

Henry Morton Stanley, who is famous for his expedition to find David Livingstone, helped Leopold establish his claim on the Congo. While Morton was very harsh with his porters, who died by the hundreds along his expeditions, it actually pales in comparison to the Belgium officers (though it is no less excusable).

Indeed, the way King Leopold made his fortune was through the collection of rubber that grew wildly in the Congolese jungle and was in high demand at the time throughout Europe. The Belgiums forced Congolese men to spend days in the jungle to fulfill their rubber quotas. This has enormous repercussions. Agriculture was abandoned, as men did not have time to work their fields, leaving little food and entire villages starving; families were separated for months, and Congolese started controlling their population, not wanting to put more children on this Earth, that would live a humiliating life, serving the white men. Women would also be kidnapped and held hostage by the Belgiums in order to force men to go to work. Officers would routinely burned and killed entire villages to spread their message to others that that was what could happen if you did not submit to the rubber regime.

On those occasions, European officers demanded proof that each cartridge used by their soldiers had been used to kill someone and not “wasted”. The standard proof was a right hand from the corpse…except that often soldiers did use a cartridge to hunt an animal and cut off a hand from a living man (and even children!!) to bring back. On some occasions, the sadistic officers cut other body parts too.

As a result of King’s violent rule over Congo, it is estimated that 10 million Congolese died– about 50% of the population at the time.


We were shocked to hear about hands and feet being cut off by Charles Taylor- backed rebels in Sierra Leone during the country’s violent civil war. Another lasting image of Africa ingrained in our brains, about these “savages”. No doubt that these rebels are indeed savages. But we should be careful about not stereotyping it as an “African” thing and look back at our own Western history.

History, we know, is written by the victors. And Belgiums seem to have gone into collective amnesia and just skip over that sad heritage of their past. But history explains the present and we must not forget.

This sad episode does have a positive effect today, one well-described in Hochschild's book.
The campaign to reveal the truth behind Leopold's atrocities in the Congo led by Roger Casement, and a former shipping clerk E.D. Morel, became the first mass human rights movement. It carved the path for successors like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch that assure that we never be blind to these inhumane acts again.

CRUDE

Just saw another amazing documentary: CRUDE.
Films like these are the reason why I want to work in documentary filmmaking. To bring light to social injustices, give a voice to the voiceless, raise people's awareness about issues and hopefully enable CHANGE to happen.





Crude, by Joe Berlinger, explores the lawsuit - now in its 16th year- being fought by a true hero, lawyer Pablo Fajardo against ChevronTexaco on behalf of 30,000 inhabitants of Ecuador’s rainforest. Since Texaco's first arrival in Ecuador's Amazonian jungle in the 1960s, its indigenous populations have been suffering from serious environmental damages, fatal health issues, and the disintegration of their community, as a result of the oil magnate's lack of safe practices and lack of caring and respect for the indigenous population.

As expected now the multi-billion corporation just doesn't want to pay for the damages it has caused.

A good article on the whole case was featured in Vanity Fair in 2007.

Chevron's technique is to have the trial spread over years, even decades, knowing that sooner or later the plaintiffs will run out of money for the lawyers. This is the same technique used by food giant Monsanto against small farmers, as highlighted in Food Inc. One by one farmers go bankrupt, as they cannot sustain the legal fees to battle the giant.


Just 5 days ago, the judge in charge of the Chevron trial had to step down after attacks from the corporation. The trial which was only months away to being concluded will now go on indefinitely as a new judge comes in.


While many characters in the film were inspirational, others came out as the face of the "evil" corporation and all that is wrong with it. Chevron's environmental scientist (find the oxymoron!) interviewed in the film claims to see no relation between the oil leaks and toxic wastes all over the region and the cancers and skin diseases that have since plagued the locals and their young children. According to the filmmaker himself, the woman interviewed not only seemed sincere but, he thinks, actually really believes every word she said. Another case of the banality of evil? No matter what excuse we may find her, I don't know how some people sleep at night.

Ripple of Hope

Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope ... and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance. --Robert F. Kennedy