Breaking Green

Send us Fan Mail New Zealand is a "GE Free zone" meaning that all produce grown in New Zealand can be guaranteed free of genetic engineering (GE) and GMO traits. Companies are allowed to do research with genetically modified organisms but according to current New Zealand law such organisms must be proven safe before they are allowed for use for farming.  Yet as New Zealand heads into its...

Send us Fan Mail Marginalized communities are frequently targeted for the placement of toxic projects. Protest and community organizing has been an indispensable strategy in seeking environmental justice and fighting for those living in minority, poor and indigenous communities. But now, so-called critical infrastructure laws are springing up around the United States in what appears to be a coordi...

Send us Fan Mail Deforestation of Brazil's Amazon rainforest is a well-known threat to the world's environment, but the loss of natural biodiversity to so-called "green deserts" resulting from expanding non-native eucalyptus plantations for pulp and paper production, is a lesser known ecological and social disaster that is likely to worsen if genetically engineered trees are us...

Send us Fan Mail On February 3, 2023 a train derailed in East Palestine, Ohio, causing an environmental disaster of historic proportions. It was a Norfolk Southern train, which was over a mile long and carrying hazardous materials, including over 100,000 gallons of vinyl chloride. Three days later, a so-called control to burn toxic materials from the crash released an unknown chemical soup into th...

Send us Fan Mail Ahead of a meeting of African Union Heads of States in Addis Ababa Ethiopia, numerous civil society organizations called on the African Union not to Geoengineer the African Continent. The organizations noted that geoengineering is a false techno-fix that can only provide an excuse for the Global North to continue relying on fossil-fuel based energy generation in light of the ongoi...

Send us Fan Mail It is 90 seconds to midnight on the Doomsday Clock. In large part due to developments in the war in Ukraine, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists  moved the hands of the infamous timepiece forward. Just weeks earlier the Department of Energy announced the first reported controlled fusion reaction that was touted as a breakthrough for national defense and the future of clean energ...

Send us Fan Mail In December 2022, at the 15th Conference of the Parties of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity in Montreal, 188 countries adopted a new Global Biodiversity Framework to supposedly create strategies to halt biodiversity loss. The framework has been touted as a sweeping agreement to protect biodiversity by turning 30 percent of the planet’s land and oceans into protected areas...

Send us Fan Mail Founded in 2003, Global Justice Ecology Project believes in the fundamental equality of all peoples and the intrinsic value of the natural world. Global Justice Ecology Project's mission is to identify, expose and address the intertwined root causes of social injustice, ecological destruction, and economic domination. In this episode of Breaking Green, we talk with Anne Peter...

Send us Fan Mail For decades, the Forest Stewardship Council also known as the FSC has had a core policy of prohibiting the commercial use of genetically engineered or genetically modified trees in its certification program. But that ban is currently under threat as commercial interests push for a plan that would have the FSC overseeing test plots of GE trees in what has euphemistically been calle...

Send us Fan Mail As oil dependent nations seek to shore up their supply while the war between Russia and Ukraine rages, some African Nations seem eager to provide more access to fossil fuels. This was evidenced during the September minister’s meeting in Egypt, when representatives from various African nations called on world leaders to “avoid approaches that encourage abrupt disinvestments from fo...

Send us Fan Mail During the cold war, the united states military conducted covert weapons development testing in what the Army identified as a "densely populated slum district". The spraying of zinc cadmium sulfide along with what evidence suggests was a radiative substance centered on a region that included the Pruitt Igoe housing complex. The film Target St. Louis, which has won the Ur...

Send us Fan Mail Carbon capture and storage is often thought of as a new technology to help fight climate change. But it has been around for fifty years and was first developed by gas companies and used to enhance oil recovery from depleted fields.  Today, tax credits are being offered to subsidize the technology as a response to global warming. A September 1st story in The Guardian  highlighted a...

Send us Fan Mail The inflation Reduction Act is being heralded by many environmental groups as a major victory in the fight against global warming. But the bill has provoked criticism that it funds harmful false solutions and that environmental justice organizations, communities that they represent, and their concerns were ignored as the $360 billion deal was made. In this episode of Breaking gree...

Send us Fan Mail With the catastrophic failures at Chernobyl and Fukushima, nuclear power has been the cause of some the worst environmental disasters in history. But, the realities of global warming have created an opportunity for this flagging industry to attempt a comeback by rebranding as a green alternative to fossil fuels. This rebranding concerns those who have worked to reign in the troubl...

Send us Fan Mail Shawnee Showdown, a film by Cade Bursell, was screened at the Yale Environmental film festival earlier this year. It documents the colorful and successful protests to prevent logging in the Shawnee National Forest in Southern Illinois during the late 1980s and early 1990s.  The protests along with legal efforts were successful in winning a 17 year moratorium on logging. Now, activ...

Send us Fan Mail In 1904, at the Bronx Zoological Park, chestnut trees were dying from a spore borne blight brought to the United States by Japanese chestnut trees that were imported by commercial nurseries. The American chestnut is now referred to as functionally extinct and forests where they were once the dominant species have long since transitioned from Oak chestnut to Oak hickory forests. In...

Send us Fan Mail On March 6th, Famed Civil Rights Lawyer, Dennis Cunningham died of cancer. He was 86. In his long and varied career Cunningham successfully represented Attica Prison Inmates, members of the Black Panthers. He also represented Earth First! organizers Judi Bari and Darryl Cherney in a case they won against the FBI and Oakland police for violation of their civil rights when they were...

Send us Fan Mail Radioactive waste from the building of the first atomic bomb sits in a landfill with a below ground fire. Dawn Chapman who was featured in HBO's Atomic Homefront  tells Breaking Green how the EPA is again delaying removal seven years after agreeing to a new cleanup plan pressured by the community. Dawn and other activists from the region promise more pressure as they plan a t...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode of Breaking Green we talk with long-time activist Alejandra Parra about her experiences during the People’s Uprising in Chile and the hopes of recognizing environmental, social and economic reforms in the new Chilean constitution. In 2019, Chile experienced intense nationwide protests against neoliberalism with calls for sweeping reform. In response the United Nati...

Send us Fan Mail  The UN Conference of Parties in Glasgow is now behind us.  Despite all the hype leading up to the meeting, did the Glasgow Pact provide results or did the nations of the world miss yet another opportunity for real change and hope for averting planet wide environmental disaster? Is Climate Change even a problem that can be addressed by the Nations of the world or are certain inter...

Send us Fan Mail As many nations promise net-zero emissions to fight climate change, corporate interests continue to promote offsets as opposed to the actual reduction of greenhouse gas emissions at the source. So-called nature-based solutions promote a green economy that commodifies nature and reduces ecosystems to a balance sheet of commodities to be traded for license to destroy and pollute els...

Send us Fan Mail Climate change threatens more catastrophic flooding, fires and even food insecurity. In response, agricultural companies are promoting what they call climate safe agriculture. But are huge agriculture companies concerned for our collective food future, or are they leveraging the very real threat of climate change to promote more industrial monocultures, genetically engineered crop...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode of Breaking Green, we talk with  eminent environmental scientist, Dr. Michael Dorsey, about the recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report and current UN effort to address our collective future. The IPCC has issued a code red on climate change. The report states that there is an imminent risk of hitting the internationally agreed upon limit of 1...

Send us Fan Mail Breaking Green talks with biologist Dr. Rachel Smolker about false solutions to climate change.  The ravages of Global Climate Change are becoming more apparent every day, and people and nations are becoming more desperate for solutions. But there is increasing concern that agreements within the United Nations annual climate conferences are being driven by corporate interests that...

Send us Fan Mail Breaking Green interviews Orin Langelle, photojournalist and Co-founder of Global Justice Ecology Project, about carbon colonialism and the UN's program, Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD). REDD allows trading of the carbon stored in forests, mainly in the Global South, to offset emissions from polluters mainly in the Global North. It shifts t...