Groupthink

  This is heartening news; the Ecuadorian people voted in a referendum to halt oil drilling in Yasuni National Park, located in the Amazon rain forest. The park is also home to several First Nations tribes, including some who've chosen isolation from modern culture and are uncontacted. The Waorani community lobbied for this change. I'm sure the oil companies will not go down without a fight, and the country stands to lose nearly $160 billion over the next two decades, so this decision was not taken lightly. And there may be actions to try to prevent the winner of the presidential election from taking office. Mining will also be halted in parts of the Choco Andes forest. From Raw Story; https://www.rawstory.com/ecuador-votes-to-halt-oil-drilling-in-amazon-reserve/

Image from CCE News Hey all; I've decided to start up the "Eco-news" and Eco-tips" posts that I used to do on kinja. Sadly, I didn't save those kinja posts, but there's a lot of new stuff happening. It's easy to get really depressed about the environmental situation these days, but progress IS being made on a number of fronts, and North America, especially the U.S. is NOT the entire world. So for the first new Eco-News post, here's some good news from Kenya; in 2020 over 92% of electricity was supplied by renewable sources! It's not the only country either, and I'll feature some of the others in future posts. For comparison, Kenya has a population of nearly 54 million, while Canada has a population of less than 39 million, so it's not a huge population, but not a tiny country, either. Kenya is leapfrogging over the whole electrical grid thing, and many people are going straight to roof top solar, while those of us in more developed countri...