Yikes. Without going into all the reasons why you shouldn't give to the Red Cross (they tend to divert large percentages of the disaster funding they receive to administrative; re-allocate/pool funding for unrelated disasters regardless of the intent of the donor. Yes, they do have access - but they often show up late; they are rife with inefficiencies / hot-line numbers they distribute don't work, etc.)

I don't have any alternative links / orgs to offer that are better to give to(yet), but if you really want to make sure the bulk of your 10.00 goes to benefit the Haitian people, I would look to give to a smaller, local organization with a sense of the (former) terrain and a pre-established relationship with the community.

Other alternatives for Haiti: Partners in Health https://donate.pih.org/p...tribute/haiti_earthquake
Doctors Without Borders http://www.doctorswithou...=4147&cat=field-news
Oxfam Haiti relief https://www.oxfam.org.uk...iti-earthquake/index.php

Wyclef Jean's $5 text donation place for Haiti is YELE to 501501 if the Red Cross doesn't do it for ya.

Or Oxfam America

https://secure.oxfamamer...Idr004=h0ibbudje2.app28b

Thanks, SashaUndercover! Perfect~! (And always, adoring link king Flo.)

You knew it wouldn't be long before this Assbag had to open his mouth and spew his hate...

BTW, I made a donation to Doctors without Boarders this morning after reading the link posted by Sasha.
Thank you Sasha and Brad

Here's an org. doing important work down there, already:

http://www.voila.fr/

...they're a tech company (cell phone?) that is donating money and internet/phone access so that the people of Haiti can communicate with each other. Critically important / one of the best things anyone can do, really.

Found out about them via Maddow, who reported about them, here:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/#34852221

I realize this thread is dead, but posting this for BB posterity, and since it's SO on topic and SO important and because I'm SO proud. OUR VERY OWN POKEY ANDERSON has written a great, stat-filled article outlining EXACTLY why the Red Cross is a White, Hot, Ghetto Mess.

http://www.opednews.com/...Anderson-100116-935.html
("The Red Cross --- A Humanitarian Agency, or Is It A Major Disaster?")

Exactly. As I sit here again, helpless, watching people needlessly die as the Red Cross fucks up AGAIN and after hearing all effin from EVERYONE tell me to text for ten through them, I'm outraged. How come everytime there's an unprecedented disaster, SOMEONE forgets to bring the helicopters?! This bottlenecking shit happens every disaster. Do they think they can just "surf" the supplies in? Transport them with their MIND? WE got hellicopters to Ground Zero with no money, how come THEY can't with millions of our dollars?

Not only that, but they usually claim it's the GOVERNMENT's fault they can't get in. Katrina - it was because the National Guard wouldn't give them the Ok.

I was going to spend hours today writing this exact article - only not nearly as well. Thank you, Pokey!

Brad, if you're reading this, I hope you will repost POKEY's article, or link to it, or give it a shout-out.

Open letter to Secretary Clinton regarding how to fund the restoration of Haiti and balance a long standing overdue Karmic Debt that the developed western world truly owes Haiti.

you can email me at David@renewforest.com

Thoughts are welcomed if you like the idea please forward it to friends etc.

January 17, 2010

Secretary of State Madam Clinton
Delivered by email, Fedex, regular mail
Copied to people of interest, CNN, Face the Nation, Sunday Morning and others

RE: Haiti - “Pay It Forward” and launch Carbon Credits to the Globe!

Dear Madam Secretary:

While our Nation is facing crushing debt, the earth herself spoke this week and crushed a small Nation. The Nation of Haiti: a poverty ridden Nation whose natural resources were stripped away decades ago to satisfy a debt.

Yet we must come to the aid of these victims or simple forsake our humanity. So we will lead the way and barrow from the world for we are the only Nation who has the assets and experience to lead in this moment of disaster.

Watching CBS Sunday Morning’s review of Haiti’s past inspired this thought:

Pay if forward, for all of us. Haiti 500 years ago was a tropical paradise blessed with 9,000 foot tall mountains cloaked in forest of such giants as Ceiba trees, mahogany trees, along with the common tropical beauties such as palms, fruits, and nuts that we all love.

Pay It Forward, for all of us, is this: You now have 100’s of thousands of desperate people on land that is barren and was made barren by the love of money. Human greed. Well, let’s put greed to work for the planet, and the people of Haiti. Pay the unemployed of Haiti to plant trees on the bare mountains that were once a tropical forest. And allow purchase of those credits for the carbon sinking to be payments made by the industrialized Nations for what our past took from that Nation’s future.

Realize that Haiti was originally covered by forest, as much as 93%. A country smaller than the state of Maryland, it occupies 27,750 sq km, which is equal to 6.8 million acres, of mostly deforested land.

The Plan

What is an acre of mitigation worth?

Our Government is spending $52,550 to restore 2 acres of land in downtown Gary IN. Let’s call that the high end. Our company was paid $9,000.00 per acre to restore 157 acres of tall grass prairie and mesic savanna for our Federal Government. Restoration of land and mitigation of new construction are becoming an important contribution to our economic stability and infrastructure for the restoration work ads value to often degraded landscapes and serenity to the human soul that visits the sites.

However, restoration is not only quantitative it is also qualitative. Since Haiti is tropical land with a carbon sink capacity on the high end of actual storage, and clearly at one time it was so diverse that restoring it to high end diversity will be expensive and will take a lot of work, hard labor work, over many years to come, placing a PAR value of $10,000.00 per acre is not off the map at all. Set the goal to restore 6 million acres at $10 grand per acre and Haiti becomes a global overnight success worth 60 Trillion dollars to the Global Carbon Mitigation Banking Market. This could become reality and perhaps is the silver lining to this horror.

While we are talking a figure that is 10 times our own National debt we are a Nation, and part of a global community that is raising the earths median temperature by some five to perhaps ten degrees Fahrenheit and today while Haiti has been reduced to rubble, China’s deserts are under 5 feet of snow. Florida just took how many billions in crop losses due to historic freezes, while it is110 degrees on a daily bases in Sidney Australia. Finding a baseline for global carbon sinking value is perhaps the most important and difficult economic goal of the 21st century.

So why not start with Haiti? Clearly it was one of the earlier ecosystems modern man destroyed, so the long-term value in climate adverse effects could be worth 10 times as much as this declared value of $10,000.00 per acre. In short paying the Nation of Haiti $10,000.00 per restored acre in economic terms may still be cheap when you consider the cost of its former eco-system to the world’s climate for as a carbon sink it has been neutralized for decades, when a one point is was a health chunk of planetary lung. Breathing in Carbon Dioxide and exhaling clean cool Oxygen.

It’s a perfect solution to the situation. With mountains reaching nearly 9,000 feet coupled with terrain drops back to sea level in less than a 100 linear miles, solar drafts must create opportunities to generate plenty of electricity by wind turbines. So let’s support the creation of Haiti’s Global Mitigation Bank, set the par value at $10,000 per acre and create a carbon credit deposit worth 60 trillion dollars. For every dollar DONATED, the Carbon Credit Bank of Haiti, the Government run bank will issues a certificate of purchased carbon credit, to the company, person, or Government giving the donation.

Since the destruction of Haiti’s environmental resources was started by Europeans, mainly the French, let’s ask that the European common market who are all members of Kyoto that they make the 1st declaration to certify the par value of Haiti’s carbon credits, and at the same time push for the same declaration with the Chicago Carbon Exchange. Get the declarations passed at the same time and industry will beat a path to rebuild Haiti’s natural resources and take its payment in Globally agreed Carbon Credit values.

China with its massive technical and industrial output of goods such as copper wire, electric motors, tools of all kind, etc. can supply boat loads of needed material and get paid in carbon credits. They know they are now the largest contributor to Global Warming in a purely organic chemistry definition and we know they are scared to death of a tariff policy that will tax away their new found wealth, so give them the chance to mitigate their carbon debt at a profit. At best they will only be making a dent in what they owe the rest of us in that vain but we will not be taxing commerce, rather funding human and environmental restoration; creating a brand new market for goods and services. In short we will be feeding commerce via restoration work to mitigate greenhouse gases. Doing so in such a way that also restores a small Nation to a future of promise and dignity.

We are all in the same boat but we have never valued our Nation’s leading roll in economic/restoration. We have had up to 60 million acres in the Conservation Reserve Program storing billions of tons of carbon for the last 25 years, we have how many acres of National Forest mitigating our consumption of fossil fuels that has never had a dollar and cents value placed on it. These are two huge reserves of potential carbon credit value that have never been tapped. In time a nations currency can and perhaps should be backed by carbon storage value, not in reserves of gold. This will take time to develop and just like the lives crushed by this one actually small geographic event, time is the commodity none of us have enough of.

Thus I say to you, let’s “pay it forward” by setting up Haiti’s restoration as a model and foundation for a Global Cap and Trade plan.

Making sense of what we view as huge devastation is painful; but in actuality the effected people live on a speck of dust when you consider Haiti’s land mass divided by the rest of the earth. I will argue that the scale is exactly the size we need to set up a Global Cap and Trade Plan. It is small enough to map and follow, we are going to do it anyway, that is save the people, rebuild the Nation, so let’s agree to give it real value, and pay our way forward using this disaster as a proving and testing ground to develop the next economic purpose.

Saving our own planet’s future, and defining the real value of a restored eco-system, this should be our goal. This will enrich this small Nation, and avoid turning it into a prolonged needy Nation living off of the “Good will” of others. No, Madam Secretary the time is upon us to give credit where credit is due. We should pay Haiti to become the 1st large scale Carbon Mitigation Bank. It is the same as our Government paying a farmer to grow trees. CRP was the model, it worked, so can Cap and Trade and this is a perfect place to start.

We can do this, most of all we should do this, the global economy needs this, call it a “Lesson in Global Restoration”. And let’s all start to figure out the real value of a restored planet we all call home.

Thoughts from a Georgia Tree Planter,

Sincerely,
Renewable Resources

David M. Ellis
President
www.renewforest.com www.ucicglobal.com