State of the Amazon Rainforest and Hope for the World--New Ways of Thinking

Hi Everyone,

I just found this video of a film festival interview that I did in 2024. It is relevant today—about the Amazon Rainforest and how to create a sustainable world. It was at the Cinema Verde Environmental Film Festival. I hope you will take a few minutes to watch it--click here. (I had been talking a lot to people that day so my voice is raspy.)

In it, I talk about the Amazon Rainforest and 4 things we can do. The last one is the most transformative, but it will take a change in how we think about the way we do business. Corporations have funded the Heritage Foundation and its Project 2025. They have funded the mass deportations and the structural chaos destroying our beloved institutions that has been happening in our country. This is a CORPORATE coup—it is not just about one person or even a handful of billionaires—although they have been powerful influential bad actors. Corporations and super wealthy people are behind this huge threat to our democracy and our ways of life—so we need to really look at whether transnational corporations that are publicly traded are sustainable for the environmentally sustainable and socially just future we need. Richard Wolff (in his YouTube video The Cure for Capitalism) suggests that we look at cooperatives as an alternative to corporations because cooperatives would be run locally by local people who live and work where the business operates—so they would be directly affected by its policies and actions—and less likely to harm their neighbors or destroy their own drinking water with pollution for example. My suggestion is that we transition to nonprofits—which would be even more safe and sustainable. That way cooperatives are not competing with each other for profits. Nonprofits could co-exist, cooperate, and support each others’ missions. Realistically, everything can be corrupted if corrupt people are involved—BUT some economic structures and ways of doing business are harder to corrupt than others—and a nonprofit run as a cooperative—and not using a corporate model with an outside board—could be a much safer, more sustainable, equitable, and socially just model. Patagonia is a shining example. As its owner moved into his senior years, he transitioned Patagonia to become an ethical B corporation. From there, he transitioned it further to become a nonprofit with proceeds going toward its nonprofit mission related to environmental sustainability.

This is a business model worth considering—nonprofits that are run as cooperatives with local leaders from the community and employees running the nonprofit and making decisions together.

Being a nonprofit also means it can’t be publicly traded—which means that fossil fuel banks will not own majority stocks in it—and control its actions. Once a business is publicly traded, it is highly likely that one of the big fossil fuel funding banks like Vanguard or Blackrock will buy enough shares to control it—which usually only takes 5% stock ownership.

Nonprofits are safer from corrupt, bad actor investments.

Right now, we as average citizens, are donating money to nonprofit environmental and human rights organizations to fight for a safe environment, clean drinking water, human rights, etc.—while corporations lobby and even fund some of our main environmental government agencies and put people in key positions in our public offices. So our taxes are paying for public offices that are supposed to protect us, that are too often co-opted by big corporations—and then we end up donating to nonprofits like Earthjustice for example, to sue government agencies to make them do their job—for example, the EPA has been sued to force it to enforce government regulations to protect American citizens from pollution—which meant they had to stand up to corporations and force corporations to do things like clean up pollution or reduce emissions, etc. We are paying taxes for agencies to protect us—but too often they are protecting corporations—so then we are having to donate money to nonprofits to sue those same agencies to do their jobs! It is ridiculous. Corporations have too much power and too much influence in our government. They bankroll too many of our elected government officials and then corporate stooges get appointed to our key government agencies, making it hard for agency staff to do their job.

Now we have an administration that targets and/or fires the public servants in office who ARE doing their job fighting corruption because this administration is corrupt and its primary goal is to get richer—i.e. greed.

So here we are. Corporate power and billionaire power are a threat to our democracy. Even worse—their power and greed threatens the very ability of Earth to sustain human life, wildlife, and entire ecosystems. Not only do fossil fuel companies not want to give up their profits and their government subsidies to transition to solar and wind renewables—which we have ALL THE TECHNOLOGY WE NEED TO DO—but people with stocks in fossil fuels do not want to give up THEIR income from these investments in death and destruction.

This is ANOTHER reason why moving to nonprofits as a core business model would be an easy way to transition out of the stock market and its death dealing priorities. Only 18% of the stock market is now even owned by average people. Most of it is owned by large corporations, billionaires, etc. That means that billionaires and corporate executives are controlling the priorities of the large corporations and decisions that affect our daily lives, food, housing, electricity—and the lives of people all around the world. That has not been good for average people…

—and it is becoming even more dysfunctional with crypto and bitcoin—which are functioning illegally as currencies—but no one is enforcing that. It is illegal to create your own currency—but billionaires are doing it. Bitcoin is already interchangeable with the U.S. dollar in that in can be used to purchase things even though it is not legal tender and it is not issued by the government. Warren Buffett has said publicly that crypto and bitcoin are a scam.

The good news is that massive numbers of people and organizations are dumping billions of dollars of investments in fossil fuels and moving money OUT of fossil fuels. Religious organizations are moving their endowments out of fossil fuels. People are moving their money where their values are! This is going to happen more and more. Fossil fuels are losing value because solar and wind are cheaper, faster, easier, and more sustainable. The only thing propping up fossil fuels right now is government subsidies that our tax dollars are paying for.

You can sign this petition to end subsidies for fossil fuels and write your congresspeople to end federal tax subsidies for fossil fuels. You can find your congresspeople here.

It is time we stopped paying fossil fuel subsides with our tax dollars and time to start thinking about using nonprofits run as cooperatives by employees and local leaders—instead of corporations run by cold, greedy and indifferent corporate executives and soul-less billionaires. The more we share this idea with others, the more people will get used to the idea that things can be better in really big ways and we don’t have to have giant corporations running our lives. We can have a sustainable equitable world that is an economic democracy with human rights.