Each week find a round-up of selected news and resources related to global ethical issues and positive solutions that you can use in your solutionary teaching/work.
Here’s some recent news worth knowing:
Small steps toward positive solutions …
- Employees at some of the major technology companies in the US are calling for those companies to “put ethics and values before profit” and to refuse to work on projects that violate fundamental human rights.
- Uruguay has passed a law guaranteeing certain rights for people who are transgender, including a certain percentage of public jobs for transgender people.
- Rwanda and Ethiopia have announced that both countries now have “gender-balanced” Cabinets, with at least 50% of women making up their Cabinets.
- The Yok Don nature reserve in Vietnam has launched a trial “ethical elephant experience,” in which formerly captive elephants who were forced to give people rides are now free to roam the park and be seen in their natural habitat by tourists.
In the courts …
- A US Court of Appeals has allowed a child-slavery lawsuit against Cargill and Nestlé to proceed, and the entity bringing the suit, IRAdvocates, has announced plans to file suit against additional chocolate companies, like Mars.
- Washington State’s Supreme Court has ruled that “sentencing youth offenders to life in prison without parole is unconstitutional.” Youth under 18 who are convicted of a crime are no longer eligible for a minimum sentence of life in prison.
- The US Supreme Court has chosen not to hear an appeal to a decision that found three paint companies liable for “creating a public nuisance” in California by “promoting the use of lead-based paint while knowing that lead dust was harmful to children.”
We must do better …
- The Trump administration is sending an estimated 5,200 troops to the southern US border in anticipation of the arrival of thousands of Honduran refugees who are seeking asylum in the US. This troop deployment “appears to be the largest U.S. active-duty mobilization along the U.S.-Mexico boundary in decades.”
- China has announced reversal of a 1993 ban on the trade of tiger bones and rhino horns. The new rules allow the sale, use, import, and export under “special circumstances,” such as “medical and scientific research, educational use, and as part of ‘cultural exchanges.’”
- A new World Health Organization report notes that more than 90% of the world’s young people are “breathing toxic air.”
- A new World Wildlife Fund report reveals that global wildlife populations have fallen by 60% since 1970, with animal life populations dropping by as much as 89% in some areas. A WWF executive said that “We are the first generation to know we are destroying our planet and the last one that can do anything about it.”
- The US Interior Department has approved a plan to drill for oil in the Arctic. Hilcorp Energy has been approved to drill for oil in the Beaufort Sea, a project that would be the first “fossil fuel production facility in federal waters in the Arctic.”
- Researchers have noted that 90% of nearly 300 wildlife protected areas in countries in Africa have budget shortfalls, which may result in “severe and ongoing declines” of protected species, such as lions.
- On a factory farm in California (US), three women were each charged with a grand theft felony for trying to rescue a dying calf who was dumped in a pile of dead cows.
Did you know? …
- Doctors in Shetland (Scotland) have been authorized by the health board to begin providing “nature prescriptions” to their patients to help treat conditions such as mental illness, diabetes, heart conditions, stress, and more. Doctors can now send their patients birdwatching, hiking, and beach walking.
- More than 50 “influential organizations and people” in Scotland have signed onto a national “position statement” to make playing and learning outside “a fundamental part of growing up in Scotland.”
- An increasing number of parents who work in the tech field in Silicon Valley are putting restrictions on how and when their own children use technology.
- Lion cubs and other wild animals are being abandoned and confiscated in countries around Europe as more people seek new ways to try to show their status and disposable incomes.
The post What’s New Wednesday 10-31-18: News & Resources for Educators & Solutionaries appeared first on Institute for Humane Education.