The air is filled with smoke.
It hurts to breathe. Forests are burning all over the world, and now from New York to Siberia, we're suffocating. The truth is that forest fires are connected to global climate change, but also to deforestation.
Cutting down beautiful, ancient forests can kind of turn them into Swiss cheese, with the sun heating forests all around each hole in the canopy, drying it out and making fires more likely. The Amazon for example, is on the verge of turning from a carbon sink to a carbon source.
The major culprit for forest destruction? Agriculture!
Seven high risk commodities are responsible for much of the world's deforestation. They are cattle, soy, pulp and paper, palm oil, cocoa, coffee, and rubber.
Think of them as the 'seven deadly sins of deforestation.'It doesn't have to be this way. We can stop deforestation by passing bold, beautiful laws that protect forests, just like the European Union did recently, like New York State is poised to do, and like the Governor of Colorado
made history with a 'deforestation-free Executive Order'.
Sign now to urge all other U.S. Governors to pass Executive Orders like Colorado did! And to push through Deforestation-Free Procurement Bills like the one about to become law in New York! The new Colorado regulations bar government procurement of commodities that are killing forests, and also to some extent protect the rights of Indigenous Peoples living in at-risk forests, from land-grabbing and attacks. What happened in Colorado and in the EU, and what is about to happen in New York, can be fairly described as huge victories for forest protections -- and it is time the rest of the country steps up.
Saving forests is essential for humanity. We need these lungs of the planet, in order to survive and thrive as a human civilization. Like Katniss in the Hunger Games might say: "If they burn, we burn with them."
Sign the petition now if you agree and want to be a forest hero!