Historic Meeting of the Remaining Matsés Elder Shamans Concludes with Completion of First Indigenous Medicine Encyclopedia | June 2015 Field Update - Acaté Amazon Conservation

Deep in the farthest reaches of the Amazon rainforest, the last remaining elder shamans of the Matsés tribe came together from distant villages in a quest to save their ancestral knowledge from the edge of extinction. This meeting concluded over two years work and culminated in the first encyclopedia of indigenous knowledge written by Amazonian tribal shamans ever produced.

On May 16th, after more than two years of work, the leaders of Acaté and the Matsés met to finalize the Matsés Traditional Medicine Encyclopedia. This historic meeting was held over a period of five days in the Matsés village of Puerto Allegre on the Rio Yaquerana, one of the most remote villages and the last settlement before the river’s headwaters, a vast territory that contains at least one ‘uncontacted’ tribal group living in voluntary isolation...

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Big business declares war on science: The secret story of the Chamber of Commerce’s battle against the environment, global warming action

Driven by a fervor for profit and an anti-government frenzy, the Chamber is a fighting force for the 1 percent 

by ALYSSA KATZ

"...Caterpillar, Duke Energy, General Electric, PG&E, Dow Chemical, Alcoa, DuPont—-the inaugural membership of the Climate Action Partnership had much in common with the list of Chamber board members past and present..."

"...once environmentalists started looking at what the Chamber was actually saying in its case to the EPA, they were flummoxed. It wasn’t just calling for a showdown over issues where scientists hadn’t yet reached consensus or where there was a case to be made for the benefits of rising temperatures. The Chamber was literally demanding that settled science be opened for debate, with testimony from industry consultants contending that the oceans were not, in fact, turning more acidic or rising as polar ice melted..."

Excerpted from "The Influence Machine: The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Corporate Capture of American Life"

more at salon.com

Rapidly growing appeal of renewable energy, for institutional investors

Institutional Investor Appetite For Renewable Energy, Forbes.com, Christopher P Skroupa, 12 June 15 “…..Richard Rankin: Most people do not know how substantial renewable energy is or that, in a global context, renewable energy is competitive with and can replace conventional energy entirely.

more: Rapidly growing appeal of renewable energy, for institutional investors | Antinuclear