Tag: Amazon

The Vanishing Amazon Rainforest

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The Vanishing Amazon Rainforest

The Amazon rainforest is in peril. Experts predict there will be no rainforest in 30 years.

The Vanishing Amazon Rainforest 

The clock is ticking. The emergency real. Experts believe that in 30 years the Amazon rainforest will likely be, just a memory. . .

By Megan Wallin 

Ongoing Threat

The Amazon rainforest has been under threat for decades. Despite its indisputable ecological value and unspeakable beauty we are at risk of losing this incredible natural resource.  Brazil’s president, Jair Bolsonaro, has vowed to protect the forest and reduce harmful emissions. His words don’t match his actions. Unparalleled development continues, transforming forest into farmland or deforested deserts. The entire ecosystem has been disrupted, all for the price of temporary, but immediate profit.

A Ravaged Landscape

According to Reuters, Brazil’s ecological losses have increased 1.8 percent just during 2020, losing roughly 1,062 square kilometers of forest to greed and corruption. But logging isn’t the only issue to blame in this scenario. Farmland conversion, wildfires, droughts and pollution have ravaged the land. More than one billion acres of rainforest have been transformed into public, government or miscellaneous use since the year 1990.

Losing Value

The worth of an intact and thriving Amazon rainforest amounts to approximately a whopping $8.2 billion , but the forest is losing its value both economically and environmentally.  This world wonder spreads across Brazil, Peru, Columbia, Ecuador, Bolivia, Venezuela, Guyana, Suriname and French Guiana. The Amazon rainforest extends over millions of miles, and provides a safe habitat for thousands of tropical animals. Furthermore, it is home to at least 500 tribal communities.

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Jeff Bezos: On To The Stars

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Jeff Bezos: On To The Stars

In 3 decades Jeff Bezos has gone from selling books in his garage online to the richest man in the world.

Jeff Bezos: On To The Stars

By William Jones and D. S. Mitchell

 

A Gifted Child

A gifted child born to a teen mom, Bezos grew up never knowing his biological father. Reportedly the father was a top-rated unicyclist and circus performer. Jeff’s mother soon married a Cuban immigrant who had fled the Communist revolution. Miguel Bezos had his life shattered when his elite private Jesuit school was closed and his family’s lumberyard seized.

Passion And Struggle

When Jeff Bezos first started an online book shop in his garage in 1994, even he would have struggled to envision the sheer size and impact of Amazon today. With the internet still in its infancy, Bezos’ foresight on all things digital, combined with his passion for retail, enabled him to devise a revolutionary model for how consumers would one day purchase their goods. Fast forward 27 years, and Amazon has the infrastructure and the know-how to capitalize on an e-commerce market that continues to sky-rocket in popularity and profit.

Jeff Defined E-commerce

Bezos ran the mammoth technology corporation across three decades. Under his leadership, Amazon has become a dominant force in online retail, cloud hosting, media production, and artificial intelligence. Bezos helped define e-commerce as we know it and made ordering from Amazon the default for millions of shoppers locked in through the Prime subscription service. But his true master-stroke may be Amazon Web Services, a computing and cloud storage service that millions of companies now turn to. Amazon Web Services, Inc. is a subsidiary of Amazon providing on-demand cloud computing platforms and APIs to individuals, companies, and governments, on a metered pay-as-you-go basis.

Permeated

Journalists have speculated whether Bezos’ near-pathological competitiveness is a product of his early abandonment, similar to that of fellow tech overlord Steve Jobs. No doubt equally formative to a young boy was Bezos’ adoptive father and his view of the world. In fact, during an interview Jeff Bezos told  Brad Stone, author of The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon, that their home life was “permeated” by complaints about totalitarian governments of both the Right and the Left.

Poor Working Conditions and Monopolistic Practices

While Bezos’ stewardship of the company can be seen as a heroic mission to give everyday shoppers low-cost access to any item under the sun, his ethos has contributed to poor working conditions and harmful monopolistic practices. By 2011, Amazon’s workplace culture was toxic. A negative series of headline-grabbing reports defined Amazon workers as poorly paid, ceaselessly surveilled, and overworked. Reportedly, the company ruthlessly pushed employees to maintain a breakneck pace, to such an extent that both physical and emotional well-being was jeopardized.

Debate, Criticize, and Disagree

Bezos created a culture in which everyone from the lowest peon to the highest-ranking executive is expected to match his devotion. This approach has resulted in spectacular levels of staff turnover. A declared enemy of “social cohesion,” Bezos pushed his underlings to reject compromise and instead fiercely debate and criticize colleagues when they disagreed. One former employee described it as ​“purposeful Darwinism.” Known for withering put-downs — “Are you lazy or just incompetent?” ​”Did I take my stupid pills today?”—Bezos also isn’t above pulling out his phone or, in some cases, simply leaving the room when an employee fails to impress.

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EV: The Obvious Future

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EV: Electric Vehicles The Obvious Future

By D. S. Mitchell

*”Adoption of a new technology like EV’s (electric vehicles) may seem slow or look like it’s never going to happen, until it passes a threshold… and then it just takes off.” Reda Cherif for the International Monetary Fund

Slashing EPA Annual Budget by Over 30%

When Trump won the 2016 presidential election I knew the attack on the environment would move forward like a bulldozer in a butterfly garden. In Trump’s first year in office he pulled the United States out of the landmark Paris climate deal, paving the way for the continued reckless burning of fossil fuels. The Paris Climate Accord is non-binding on signers, but focuses on a global effort to hold the Earth’s temperature rise to fewer than two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial temperatures. The consequences of failing to limit greenhouses gases and thereby their destructive effects is a future most of us do not want to imagine.

High Jacking the Mission of the EPA

In March of 2018, Trump proposed slashing the EPA annual budget by over 30%.  Since 2017 the EPA has lost more than 700 employees, including 200 scientists. Meanwhile the disgraced and the now thank God departed, Scott Pruitt, wasted Agency money on a 24 hour security detail, expensive air travel, and sound proof booths for his office. Rather than protect the environment and work with the world to limit green house gas production this administration wants to subsidize coal, and ramp up oil exploration in previously protected wilderness areas and vulnerable off-shore sites.

EV Promises Reduced Air Pollution

Despite the bad news on so many U.S. environmental fronts there is good news in the automobile industry. Automobile manufacturer’s world-wide are committing to the EV.  They see the handwriting on the wall.  The governments of Europe, China, and India are committed to reducing air pollution. Part of that vision will be enabled by electric vehicles. The mass acceptance of the EV will consequently cut the production of fossil fuels and their consumption. Perhaps that is the reason coal, and gas producers are in such a hurry to mine and pump fuel reserves while they still have an opportunity. Because they, more than any other industry, recognizes the world is changing.

Horse and Buggy Days

There is a growing understanding that gas and diesel-powered vehicles will soon join the horse and buggy, and the dial telephone. New studies support a rapid acceleration process and a gathering  momentum of  the coming EV tsunami. Surprising as it may seem The International Monetary Fund and Georgetown University predicts that more than 90% of all passenger vehicles in the U.S., Canada, Europe and other wealthy industrialized countries will be EV by 2040. Some studies are even more bullish than the IMF projections. In fact, there are predictions that by 2030, ninety percent of all U.S. vehicles will be EV. That is a mere 12 years away.

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