Great Ape Diaries

Posted by admin on Feb 24, 2014

Diary #102 – Can $250 Billion Twist Even Tony the Tiger’s Arm?

Portland, OR - Kellogg’s emergence from the dark world of rainforest destruction denial last week was applauded in the environmental community and noted by the business and general media as well. More over it’s pressuring of Wilmar, controller of 45% of the world’s palm oil production-distribution chain, was celebrated. Kellogg’s PR machine was quick to act, “As a socially...

Posted by admin on Feb 19, 2014

Diary #101 – Climate Chaos Compromise

Portland, OR - Every morning I wake, wash my eyes, walk into my office and press the space bar on my computer and wake a slumbering digital dragon, one that has spent the night culling and collecting the flotsam of the cyberspace according to my curiosity. While it does, I fix a cuppa Earl Grey tea, listen to the Varied Thrushes clearing their winter throats and tuning up for spring, then return to my...

Posted by admin on Jan 27, 2014

Diary #100 – “How Fragile We Are”

Portland, OR - Editing through piles of images and video documenting deforestation in the tropical homes where gorillas, bonobos, chimps, orangutans and we live, when an email arrived reminding me of these lyrics by Sting – felt like a sound-track to my day. “Fragile” If blood will flow when flesh and steel are one Drying in the colour of the evening sun Tomorrow’s rain will wash...

Posted by admin on Jan 23, 2014

Diary #99 – Divestitures and the lessons of Apartheid – Have the dominos begun to fall?

Portland, OR - I read this morning a report regarding the Norwegian pension fund and insurance firm Storebrand which plucked my ‘hope-strings.’ According to a Bloomberg report Storebrand plans to divest itself from 11 palm oil companies over concerns of deforestation and over-arching unsustainability issues. This puts palm oil plantations on the company’s same investment blacklist as...

Posted by admin on Jan 17, 2014

Diary #98 – Where are your ethical and moral extremes?

Portland, OR - On the flight back from my last trip to Africa I finished a re-read of Tropic of Chaos, a multi-issue perspective on climate change by author Christian Parenti. Key focus of his argument in the Tropic is security—food, water, safety—not always an issue front and center in the Western climate change argument, one which often become abstracted in economic impact predictions, religion, and...

Posted by admin on Jan 10, 2014

Diary #96 – “Man must rise above the Earth…”

Portland, OR - “I spent part of today looking at maps – those “old fashion” paper kind, all spread out on the floor, great ape range state maps and maps if places no ape should be, like China and Albania, but do. Big sheets of paper – visualizations of the world that connects and makes sense in my brain – in a way google maps & earth cannot.” The above...

Posted by admin on Dec 9, 2013

Diary #95 – “No Deforestation, No Peat, No Exploitation” Will Wilmar Change The Game?

Portland, OR - On December 5th the world was overwhelmed by the end of a generation, the passing of Nelson Mandela. That same day, with scarcely a media whisper, another end may have begun. A potentially titanic shift in the battle against corporate palm oil’s destructive nature occured. Wilmar, the biggest palm oil conglomerate on the planet, issued a statement on its corporate website, a...