The Green Land Grab
is a story of mine that ran in Newsweek International, available without pictures here. Environmentalists have learned to just buy the land they want, instead of subsidizing eco-friendly logging or asking McDonald's to stop getting beef from people who burn down the rainforest. Now they just buy the land the loggers want chainsaw or that the farmers want to burn. and they put up a "Stay TF Out" sign.

This wasn't played very large in the story, but what interested me especially was how these mostly-American environmental organization often funnel their cash through local environmental groups. No one likes to hear about Yankees coming in and buying up sovereign territory, these folks have to be a bit sneaky. All of a sudden, one morning you local moderate-sized Argentinean environmental group has the cash to buy up 100,000 acres of land. It's cynical and unhippy. It seems to be working.