Word: rainforests
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...warming isn't slowed. A major Science study published in January found widespread increase in tree mortality rates in the western U.S., thanks in part to regional warming trends and growing water scarcity. Another study published last month, also in Science, found that even the seemingly limitless Amazon rainforest could be highly vulnerable to drought. And since living trees suck up CO2 from the atmosphere, massive tree mortality due to warming could produce a feedback effect, further intensifying climate change. In the end, we might need a bigger Biosphere 2, because we're on track to screw up Biosphere...
Expect a two-day slog through dense rainforest, bare-bones style camping and blisters. From Guatemala City, it's a short flight to Flores, where you can organize guides, mules and equipment through a local outfitter (try www.nitun.com). The trail proper starts at the village of Carmelita and the wise will arrive in dry season (November to May), when the rainforest is scorching but mosquito- and mud-free. The journey is utterly exhausting, of course, but your inner Indiana Jones will exult at your first glimpse of El Mirador - thought to be home to around 80,000 at one time...
Environmental groups, led by Greenpeace and the Rainforest Action Network, had enlisted eco-celebrities such as Robert Kennedy Jr. and Bill McKibben and registered more than 2,000 youth protesters from around the country for a march on the coal-fired Capitol Power Plant, which supplies steam and cooled water to Congress. They planned to shut down the plant by peacefully blocking the entrances, a textbook act of civil disobedience for which many expected - perhaps eagerly - to be arrested. The message was simple: the burning of coal, which accounts for some 40% of U.S. carbon emissions, "is destroying the planet...
Instead of selling fifty hectares of rainforest to lumber companies as many of their neighbors had, the Wanang clan of Papua New Guinea had a different idea: use the plot for scientific purposes...
...People are willing to put their reputations and their livelihoods and physical well-being on the line for the climate," says Scott Parkin, an organizer for the Rainforest Action Network who has been involved in the Dominion campaign in Virginia. The September protest in Wise County was just the latest in a string of nonviolent acts against Dominion's new coal plant, including a blockade of the company's Richmond headquarters in June...