Water, Water, Not Everywhere

Climate Change Could Cause Half the World to Lose Access to Clean Water

Almost half of humanity could lose clean water access due to climate change, according to a British report to be released tomorrow ahead of an international climate change conference in Mexico.


"The main message is that the closer we get to a four-degree rise, the harder it will be to deal with the consequences," Dr. Mark New, a climate expert at Oxford University, told The Observer.


Scientists told reporters recently that we can expect more rain, more drought and fiercer storms in the future if the world continues on its fossil-fuel gobbling track.

Water wars and Food wars. That will keep some companies very happy and rolling in money making those arms.

Little things add up

Go Ahead: Sweat the Small (Green) Stuff

The next time some cranky person mocks your reusable grocery bags or belittles your low-flow showerhead—as we even have been known to do—here’s an intriguing little retort, courtesy of Conservation magazine. Turns out small, “personal” environmental actions actually could make a difference.


A group of researchers at Michigan State University crunched the numbers. If Americans took 17 simple steps—environmental changes that involve no major shift in “household well-being”—they could cut the country’s greenhouse gas emissions by 7 percent.


“If that doesn’t seem like much, consider that this is equivalent to the total emissions of France,” Conservation’s Robert McClure reports. “It’s also equivalent to the combined emissions of the petroleum-refining, iron-and-steel, and aluminum industries.”


And, even more realistically, in reaching that 7 percent figure, the researchers didn’t assume that everyone could be persuaded to adopt all 17 environmental measures. So, for example, they calculated for an 80 percent low-flow-showerhead adoption, but dropped that number to 15 percent for carpooling.


Additionally, “there’s no evidence that people who take these steps excuse themselves from larger burdens,” McClurewrites. “There hasn’t been much empirical data on that question, but existing evidence suggests just the opposite—that as a person begins to feel good about one set of small actions to help the planet, he or she is likely to start considering larger and bolder steps.”


UPDATE:


Here’s a link to the report that the Conservation story is about. The researchers broke down actions into categories:


- weatherizing with attic insulation, by sealing drafts, and installing high-efficiency windows, and replacing inefficient HVAC equipment
- adopting more efficient appliances, equipment, and motor vehicles
- changing air filters in HVAC systems, vehicle maintenance
- reducing laundry temps, resetting temps on water heaters
- eliminating standby electricity, thermostat setbacks, line drying, more efficient driving, carpooling, and trip chaining

Size doesn't really matter! Do something. Do one thing. You'll motivate others and maybe even prod yourself in doing more.  One thing to add - grow veggies!

Brown apples

USDA Asked To Approve Non-Browning GMO Apple

A Canadian biotechnology company has asked the U.S. to approve a genetically modified apple that won't brown soon after its sliced, saying the improvement could boost sales of apples for snacks, salads and other uses.

U.S. apple growers say it's too soon to know whether they'd be interested in the apple: They need to resolve questions about the apple's quality, the cost of planting and, most importantly, whether people would buy it.


"Genetically modified – that's a bad word in our industry," said Todd Fryhover, president of the apple commission in Washington state, which produces more than half the U.S. crop.


But Neal Carter, president of the company that developed the apples, said the technology would lower the cost of producing fresh slices, which have become a popular addition to children's lunch boxes, and make apples more popular in salads and other quick meals.


Carter's company, Okanagan Specialty Fruits of Summerland, British Columbia, licensed the non-browning technology from Australian researchers who pioneered it in potatoes. Essentially, the genes responsible for producing the enzyme that induces browning have been silenced in the apple variety being marketed as "Arctic."

Let's see - apples that may not be the "prettiest" or frankenfood? So do you really want to risk your and the planet's health for a perfect shaped apple?

Related articles

• New Genetically Modified 'Botox Apples' Won't Turn Brown [Science] (gawker.com)

Ooops!

Stimulus Allows Big Polluters to Bypass Environmental Regulations

In its haste to jump-start "shovel-ready" stimulus projects, the Obama administration allowed many of the biggest polluters in the nation to sidestep key environmental regulations. The federal government made a stunning 179,000 "categorical exclusions" that allowed corporations -- many with disastrous environmental records -- to use stimulus funding to sponsor projects without submitting them to review under the nation's "most basic form of environmental oversight", a new report from the Center for Public Integrity found.


Making matters worse, many of these projects were approved under the auspices of being 'green' or clean energy projects (many more are transportation-related) -- thus helping to comprise the billions of dollars in funding for green projects that sent progressives' hearts aflutter two years ago. This all serves to raise questions about the efficacy of these 'green' stimulus projects, and whether many are in the end actually increasing environmental welfare.

Kidding? Wish it was a big joke. Trying to solve one issue they destroy another.

Know the opposition

The Tea Party's Next Target: Sustainable Development

Now that the Tea Party has landed on our planet and in our country, like some kind of alien advanced strike force in preparation for a takeover, they are beginning to look around to see how they might rearrange things to better suit their peculiar perspective.


We'd be wise to carefully observe these folks, in an effort to understand how they think, or even, where they are coming from, since we've been told that they represent the future of America.


One member of a Virginia-based subgroup called the Virginia Campaign for Liberty, Donna Holt took aim at the UN's Agenda 21, an initiative which started in 1992. She told an assembled group of supporters this past summer that the Agenda, "...outlines, in detail, the UN's vision for a completely managed society, dictating the process to be used for industry, agriculture, housing development, and especially education. It's an all-encompassing plan to rule from an all-powerful central government." She went on to explain to an absolutely horrified audience that the name for this policy is "Sustainable Development" and that it seeks to abolish private property and prepare children for global citizenship, ultimately aiming to reduce the population.


What Agenda 21, which is also known as the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development is really is a set of international sustainability guidelines. It's difficult to know which of the Declaration's twenty-seven principles these newcomers find so threatening. Perhaps it is #1 which states that, "Human beings are at the centre of concerns for sustainable development. They are entitled to a healthy and productive life in harmony with nature." Or the one that says, "The right to development must be fulfilled so as to equitably meet developmental and environmental needs of present and future generations." Hard to find anything wrong with that, either. Perhaps it's the one that says, "States shall cooperate in a spirit of global partnership to conserve, protect and restore the health and integrity of the Earth's ecosystem." I admit that it is difficult to see the inherent evil here...

Battle lines drawn. The stakes are very high - Earth. We must keep the pressure on our elected representatives to fight the deniers...

Related articles

• The Tea Party Targets... Sustainable Development? (motherjones.com)
• UN to fully implement Agenda 21, Obama to endorse plan at 9/20-22 Summit (gunnyg.wordpress.com)

Love the store but...

hate some of the prices and the CEO's politics/tactics.

365 Everyday Value: Whole Foods cuts back on employee health-care benefits

Whole Foods founder and CEO John Mackey has made no secret of his disdain for universal health care, and once presented his own company's employee plan as a proof of the genius of private insurance. But now, Mother Jones' John Harkinson has gotten hold of internal company documents showing that the company's employee scheme is faltering under the burden of rising costs, and Mackey is speciously blaming Obamacare. Moreover, he's resorting to that time-tested corporate method of skimping on health costs: he's hoping to shift to more part-time labor to avoid paying benefits. Classy!


All in all, the employee health-care debacle marks the most ignominious behavior from Mackey since he got busted inventing fake identities with which to shill Whole Foods stock in online forums.

Think about this when you make that turkey sandwich

World ‘Dangerously Close’ to Food Crisis, U.N. Says

Global grain production will tumble by 63 million metric tons this year, or 2 percent over all, mainly because of weather-related calamities like the Russian heat wave and the floods in Pakistan, the United Nations estimates in its most recent report on the world food supply. The United Nations had previously projected that grain yields would grow 1.2 percent this year.




The fall in production puts the world “dangerously close” to a new food crisis, Abdolreza Abbassian, an economist with the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, said at a news conference last week.

Timely report just days before so many are getting ready to stuff their faces with turkey, potatoes, stuffing, pie... Time to evaluate our lifestyles as citizens of Mother Earth. Thanksgiving, Black Friday, everyday.
Sure I am all for "being thankful for what we have,."  But let us all start to live a little more simply.

Am I a hoarder?

When Does Reuse Become Hoarding?

Whether it's brilliant ways to reuse your books, or an easy way to reuse wine corks, TreeHugger has seen plenty of craftsy, DIY examples of reuse as a creative way to greener living. But I've been thinking lately that good intentions can lead to bad decisions—more specifically, I've been wondering at what point reuse becomes hoarding.


I should be clear that I am a huge fan of reuse. I think it makes total sense to save your waste jars, bottles, corks and whatever else and try to find creative, fun things to do with them rather than throw them in the trash. But the key is to actually find things to do with them—if they end up sitting in your closet taking up space, then they are not a help but a hindrance.


We've all been there. I have friends who are into canning who can't stand to see a jar get recycled. I have homebrewing friends who have more bottles saved up than they could possibly use in a lifetime. (In my experience, homebrewers tend to create empty bottles almost as fast as they create full ones.) And I have gardening friends whose potting sheds are almost unusable because of the backlog of plant pots, containers, and random nicknacks that might just come in useful one day. I've also had friends who got so into the admittedly awesome Freecycle that they ended up snapping up any and every offer, whether or not they would ever find a use for the item in question.


The problem is not just that these items are in limbo, sitting in storage when they could be put to good use by someone else. I would actually argue that unless an item is actually going to get used, you'd be better off throwing it away - even if that means landfill (as a last resort!) - than let it sit in your cupboards taking up space. Too much stuff weighs us down, it clouds our thinking, and it takes up space that could be used to live a more orderly, efficient, simpler life.


Yes we need to learn to love our stuff, but sometimes love means letting go.

But those little jelly jars are great for the dried herbs from the garden. Those beer bottles - I like the look. Those bottle caps...
Okasy, I'll try to be more selective.

John Salley - not just a basketball star

Celebrities That Are Going Veg for Turkey Day

Turkey Day is this Thursday but the fact of the matter is that it doesn't have to be about the turkey at all. This year more and more people are giving up turkeys for the big day. Ellen DeGeneres is the spokesperson for Farm Sanctuary's Adopt-A-Turkey Project, an annual program that asks us to think twice before planning this year's meal.


John Salley, 4-time NBA Champion and wellness guru had this to say:


Turkeys are among the most abused animals on earth. The horrors these smart, sensitive birds routinely endure behind closed doors on our nation's factory farms, all so that their tortured bodies can be the centerpiece of a holiday celebration about gratitude, are appalling and incongruent with most Americans' values of compassion.

Now if I can get the rest of my family to agree...tofurkey would be a great replacement!

We are all really in trouble

How One Farmer Turned Against Chemicals

A run-in with Roundup herbicide was a transformative episode in farmer Eric Herm’s shift toward sustainable agriculture. A fourth-generation farmer, Herm tells the tale in the book Son of a Farmer, Child of the Earth: A Path to Agriculture’s Higher Consciousness (Dream River Press):

In May of 2009, my neighbor had his Roundup Ready cotton sprayed by Helena Chemical Company less than 40 yards from my home garden. The Roundup herbicide drifted and wiped out over 800 garlic bulbs, and all of my tomato, pepper, potato, bean, and corn plants. Within 48 hours every single plant in my garden curled up into a fetal position. Leaves curled upward, cupped around the edges, and plants showed visible signs of suffering. For three or four days I couldn’t figure out what had happened until I discovered my neighbor had sprayed Roundup a few days previous. I flew into a rage yet maintained my cool talking to Helena company officials. They were very courteous yet proceeded to blame a plane spraying half a mile away to the southwest.

Herm had tissue from his dead crops tested, and the results came back positive for glyphosate, the main active ingredient in Roundup. Still, the local Helena Chemical Company store manager insisted that his product wasn’t to blame.

That’s how these chemical companies work. Did I receive the $4,000 in damages? Take a wild guess. They put their lawyer against yours, and these chemical companies have a lot more money to spend on attorney fees than an individual farmer. Thanks to my neighbor and Helena Chemical Company, I lost an entire season of garlic, tomatoes, peppers, potatoes, beans, and corn as months of hard work spiraled down the drain.

Tomato, people, onion, garlic, and potato plants are extremely sensitive to Roundup. One whiff and their leaves curl upward and they are unable to produce healthy, normal-sized fruit. Very frustrating when you begin an entire garden from seed. Money cannot replace healthy food. … As long as we continue to think Roundup Ready crops are the only answer, agriculture is doomed.

Herm’s writing has a folksy, ticked-off tone, kind of a Jim Hightower with a stronger streak of rural individualism, a distrust of big government, and a dash of new age spirituality. But his overall message is positive and forward thinking: Our industrial, chemical-intensive farming practices are destroying the land and harming our health and security, and we must change them:


“It is up to you and me—us. We the people,” he writes. “If not us, if not now … well, then we are all really in trouble.”

How many of your neighbors spray Roundup, herrbicides, pesticides indiscriminately on their lawns - into the wind and onto your vegetable plants? All for that "perfect" blade of grass, tomato, rose... But I think a healthy life is the "perfection' we should strive for. Time to garden with nature in mind.

Related articles

• Monsanto teams up with Sumitomo Chemical (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• Monsanto's herbicide Roundup linked to birth defects (foodfreedom.wordpress.com)

Scatter my ashes

Rest With Peace of Mind in an Eco-Friendly Coffin

Maybe you did your best to live an eco-friendly life -- you recycled, rode your bike to work, supported the green cause. So, what better way to shed your mortal coils than with an Earth-conscious sendoff in a sustainable coffin? Sure, embarking on that next adventure into the great unknown may be an inevitability for us all -- but the environmental impact that usually comes along with burial certainly doesn't have to be.


At last month's convention of the National Funeral Directors Association (a lively event, I'm sure), several companies showcased some new innovative new green coffins which are made from sustainable materials that biodegrade -- like recycled newspaper and wicker. The marketplace for such Earth-friendly final resting places, say manufactures, is a growing one -- and with a quarter of Americans considering a green funeral, it's no wonder why.

Wonder if cremation is ecologically sound? If so, forget the urns - just cast the ashes into the wind.
If not sound, then just wrap my mortal coil in some paper and bury me under some tree!

Related articles

• Ashes to Ashes, a Minimalist Pulp Coffin to Dust... [Coffins] (gizmodo.com)
• Eco-friendly caskets and urns the latest in green funerals (theprovince.com)

Still hate the Eagles!

Eagles To Add Wind Turbines, Solar Power To Philadelphia Stadium, Lincoln Financial Field

The Philadelphia Eagles are taking their gridiron off the grid.


The team said Thursday that it will add wind turbines, solar panels and a cogeneration plant at Lincoln Financial Field over the next year, a combination that will make the stadium self-sufficient and let the Eagles sell some power back to the electric grid.


Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie said the plan was part of the Eagles commitment to be a socially responsible organization.

Sure - great move. But still the Eagles! Go Giants!!!

Calling Facebook-ers

"Revenge of the Electric Car" Trailer to Premiere When Facebook Fan Page Hits 10,000 Fans

I'm pretty sure that most TreeHugger readers have seen Chris Paine's documentary Who Killed the Electric Car?, or are at least familiar with the general idea of it. When the film was released in 2006, things had been pretty gloomy for electric cars for a while. But since then, a lot has happened and that's what the sequel titled Revenge of the Electric Car will document.


The trailer isn't out yet, and there's no set date for it. Rather, they'll be releasing it on their Facebook fan page when they reach 10,000 fans (they're basically holding the trailer hostage - a clever way to get some social media buzz).


I, for one, am really curious to see this trailer. If you are too, just become a fan of the movie's page and help us bring forward the release date of the trailer!


The film itself is slated for an "early 2011" release.

I want to see the trailer too so please go to their Facebook page. Hit that "Like" button so we can watch the trailer.

Following the money...

Ban on Genetically Modified Salmon Proposed in Senate Despite Powerful Biotech Lobby

Big biotech companies that develop genetically modified (GM) organisms have spent more than half a billion dollars on campaign contributions and lobbying in the past decade, raising concerns about an upcoming Federal Drug Administration (FDA) decision that could approve GM salmon for human consumption, according to consumer group Food and Water Watch (FWW).


But the biotech industry has not wooed everyone in Washington. On Thursday, Sen. Mark Begich (D-Alaska) introduced legislation that would ban the GM salmon - sometimes called "frankenfish" - if the FDA approves it.

And all along we thought the biotech industry was looking out for our health. Instead it was their wallets and profits all along.

Stocking stuffer

this is a handcrafted wooden pipe made to resemble a cigar. it smokes much like a pipe (packing it has a touch of a learning curve) but has the feel that a cigar smoker can appreciate...
3 1/4" long and roughly 1" in diameter. 3/4" chamber at 1/2" deep makes for a relatively quick smoke that can always be refilled if more relaxing is in order...

Hope Santa sees this and has his elves look at this Permanent Cigar.

The War Continues

The Second Great Global Uprising

The Paris riot of May 1968 was the largest wildcat strike that ever stopped the economy of an advanced industrial country, and the weeks of worldwide rioting that followed was the first global general strike in history. But this brief, hot, Situationist-inspired happening stopped short of becoming a full-fledged global mindshift. The riots died down. The protests petered out. Governments restored control, and the status quo crept back in. The Situationists failed to get the ball over the line, so to speak, because they were, in several respects, ahead of their time. The spectacular, mediated world of spectacle they so compellingly described and its menacing implications were too new and strange for people in the 60s to fully grasp. And the Situationists themselves were, I think, caught wrong-footed. They and the students, workers, artists and intellectuals they inspired didn’t have their memes figured out. At the height of the uprisings, when they had the ear of the world, they did not know what to say beyond a few cryptic pronouncements: “The Beginning of an Epoch,” said the Situationists. “The death rattle of the historical irrelevants,” said Zbigniew Brzezinski, national security advisor to the US president.
But we’ve had 40 years to think about what the Situationists were talking about, and it’s finally starting to make sense. In that time, modern media culture has metastasized. Consumer capitalism has triumphed. We’re in the spectacle. The spectacle is in us. We are living in what Guy Debord, in the last years of his life, described as the “integrated spectacle,” characterized by “incessant technological renewal, integration of state and economy, generalized secrecy, unanswerable lies, an eternal present.”
Today, as ecosystems crash, climate tipping points loom and a last mad scramble is underway for what’s left of the world’s resources, a confused and deeply troubled population is ready to act out. “Direct our cynicism, direct our rage,” they seem to be saying. Forty years ago the Situationists had a half-baked idea about détourning consumer capitalism, putting power in the hands of the people and constructing a spontaneous new way of life. Now it’s up to a new crop of culture jammers and creatives with a fresh set of memes and strategies to finish the job.

Remember next Friday.... Remember....
Remember to live simply so we all can live.

Climate Hawks: To Arms

What advocates can learn from the American Revolution.

What's the path forward for those who support a robust response to the danger of rising greenhouse emissions? It's always fun to toss ideas around, and I look forward to reading my fellow participants' contributions. To be more than an intellectual exercise, though, policy development must issue from a clear understanding of power dynamics. Climate hawks' fatal weakness has always been their attitude toward power, which has wavered between naiveté, diffidence, and disdain.
Conservatives have successfully demonized cap-and-trade, rendering it politically toxic for at least the next several years. In response, the new vogue in energy circles is to campaign for massive public investment in cleantech R&D. And who could oppose that? It sounds reasonable and bipartisan. Then again, so did cap-and-trade in the 1990s, when centrist environmentalists and Republicans developed it as a market-based alternative to command-and-control regulations. Will public investment meet the same sorry fate?
A resilient movement will conduct guerrilla warfare. Diverse groups and coalitions must defend the EPA, develop innovative clean energy financing mechanisms or smarter market rules, go directly after the nation's biggest polluters in boardrooms and courtrooms, work to raise gas taxes or roll back fossil fuel subsidies, defend and expand state climate programs like California's or smart-growth plans like Portland's, start or fund cleantech businesses, and advocate for feed-in tariffs, a national smart grid, electric vehicles, and new building efficiency standards.
The effects of a distributed, networked insurgency are impossible to predict and difficult to discern even as they unfold. It's impossible to know in advance where resistance might give way or ground might be gained, so profligacy and opportunism—not parsimony and efficiency—are the watchwords.
There may come a time to muster back together behind a single, dramatic, sweeping plan for change, but not until the coalition has built considerably more bottom-up power. What climate hawks need most now is a nimble, networked pragmatism, focused ruthlessly on wrenching power from the hands of fossil fuel incumbents and deploying it on behalf of a healthier, more democratic energy regime.

It is a war - a just war for Mother Earth!

Mosaic:Earth

Get to know the Koch Bros

Get the Facts on Uber-Polluting Koch Industries

Before last year, many had never heard of Koch Industries. Even though it's the second largest company in the US, and it rakes in nearly $100 billion every year, it's still something of an unknown entity to most Americans. And that's how company head David Koch prefers it -- he's fond of saying his company is "the biggest company you've never heard of." The majority of its business is in oil refining, coal, and manufacturing. And over the last year, a series of reports surfaced that revealed the company's huge monetary influence, and the murky activist involvement of its bosses, on efforts to kill clean energy bills, overturn environmental regulations, and so on. Finally, someone is giving us the straight facts on Koch Industries:
The new website Koch Industries Facts, run by the clean energy group Repower America, has been launched to act as a simple information depot on Koch Industries. Aptly enough, it's a series of frankly presented facts, with links to the source material, that reveal the extent to which Koch Industries has been a leading force pushing back against both clean energy, climate science, and green policy across the US.
Here's a sampling of the facts collected at the site:

• Koch is responsible for over 300 oil spills in the U.S. and has leaked 3 million gallons of crude oil into fisheries and drinking waters. (EPA)
• Koch Industries spent more than $48.5 million from 1997 to 2008 funding climate science opposition groups.
• Koch Industries operates oil refineries in Texas, Alaska and Minnesota, and controls roughly 4,000 miles of oil pipelines.
• Koch Industries has spent $16,922,000 so far in the 111th Congress on lobbying.
• Koch Industries spent $1 million trying to roll back California's clean energy law - and failed.

These are the boys who b(r)ought us the new Congress. Their Solution:

Koch, Coke, coke - no matter how you spell it they're all bad for you.

Fate of the World versus Block-Ops

"Fate of the World" Shifts Gamers' Focus Toward Battling Climate Change

The mix of annihilation of the human race with solving problems against a whirring clock are key ingredients for a compelling video game. Rather than playing at war or bashing automobiles into brick walls, Fate of the World puts these elements of an interesting game into the context of a world that has ignored the signs of climate change until it is too late. The new computer game pushes players to come up with solutions to scenarios that could be all too real soon, from water crises to oil shortages to the collision of countries seeking shrinking resources. And the date of this future world is startlingly soon -- the year 2020.
We gave Fate of the World a head-nod in Planet 100's coverage of top green-themed games, but the newly launched game is definitely worthy of more attention.
Players become a global leader at the head of the Global Environmental Oganization (GEO), working to balance what resources remain with a growing population of people that demands ever more of those resources. To today's real-world leaders, it likely sounds all too familiar. Players choose their scenario -- working on oil shortages, the rise of Africa, three degrees of warming or others -- and then works to figure out how to keep the planet ticking under such strains for 200 years.
Much like modeling software, the choose-your-own-adventure-style game imposes consequences for any policies, bans, or technologies put in place by the player. Ultimately it could be practice for the very challenges we're facing now. While one action could save a species from distinction, another could throw a country into social unrest.
The information used by the game is drawn from NASA, the UN, Oxford University and other major organizations researching the impacts of climate change. The data is realistic, which means the opportunities for learning about climate change available for players are huge, and can have a positive impact especially on younger players.

But will gamers want to try to save the world or just continuing waterboarding prisoners and destroying their "enemies?"

God will save us?

Illinois Rep. Shimkus says let God deal with climate change

If you are truly worried about the effects a warming planet will have on future generations, relax; the Big Guy Upstairs has it all under control.
A video of Rep. John Shimkus (R-Ill.) is making its way around the Internet. In the two-and-a-half minute clip (posted below), Shimkus uses scripture to explain his belief that the Earth will end only when, “God declares it is time to be over.” Shimkus then continues to quote the Book of Mark, saying: “Man will not destroy this Earth, and this Earth will not be destroyed by a flood.”
Shimkus’ quotes refer directly to the Bible story of the great flood. If I remember correctly, God was unhappy with humanity because they were being jerks, so he decided to flood them out. But God thought Noah was a good guy, so he advised Noah to help humanity and all the creatures of the world survive (excluding unicorns) by building an ark.
After his Capitol Hill Bible study, Shimkus went on to talk about how carbon levels in the atmosphere were much higher during the time of the dinosaurs. Shimkus did not have any quotes from the Bible about what caused their demise.

Just another crazy? Not just an ordinary crazy - this guy is trying to become chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
Maybe we should start praying that he doesn't get that post.

Buy Nothing...

It's easy!!

Black Friday activism

BUY NOTHING DAY + CARNIVALESQUE REBELLION

A few people start breaking their old patterns, embracing what they love (and in the process discovering what they hate), daydreaming, questioning, rebelling. What happens naturally then, according to the revolutionary past, is a groundswell of support for this new way of being, with more and more people empowered to perform new gestures unencumbered by history.
Think of it as an adventure, as therapy – a week of pieing and pranks, of talking back at your profs and speaking truth to power. Some of us will put up posters in our schools and neighborhoods and just break our daily routines for a week. Others will chant, spark mayhem in big box stores and provoke mass cognitive dissonance. Others still will engage in the most visceral kind of civil disobedience. And on November 26 from sunrise to sunset we will abstain en masse – not only from holiday shopping, but from all the temptations of our five-planet lifestyles.

What, you ask, is a five-planet lifestyle? That refers to the five planets we would need if everyone lived as we do in the U.S. So the mantra of living simply and reducing your footprint is perfect for the day after Thanksgiving.

For some ideas check out One Planet Lifestyle.

Fossil fuel 101

Ultimate Roller Coaster Ride

This short animated film made by the Post Carbon Institute gives a quick and entertaining history of our use of fossil fuels to power most of our lives, and what the post-carbon world might look like. I don't quite agree with all the macro-economic statements they make (but this is something about which reasonable people can disagree), but the film is good food for thoughts and should definitely be seen. The most striking thing to me was the mention that from the beginning of the industrial revolution to now is only an amount of time equivalent to about 3 human lifetimes. So much has changed in such a short period, and it's a reminder that we can change again. Not as fast as many of us would like, but we can do it. The important thing is to steer towards a better world.

Planning? In our lifetime? I think that bleak future (near-future) is the reality we will be facing.

Look into the future...

What Energy Collapse Might Look Like

Collapsus, which was directed by Tommy Pallotta—the producer of Scanner Darkly and Waking Life—is described by its makers as "a new experience in transmedia storytelling". Combining traditional documentary footage with animation, mini-games and movie fragments, the audience is invited to participate by making decisions to try to avoid future blackouts and create a more livable future.
Based around the lives of ten young people around the Globe, the story is set in a world of falling energy supplies, economic disruption and civil unrest. I must admit, the medium is an interesting one—but a brief exploration suggests the message being presented is pretty bleak. I don't want to repeat my arguments about the futility of disasterbation, or the dangers of Mayan prophecy, but I can't help but wish for a slightly more empowering vision.
Of course with IEA insiders talking about inflated oil stats, and secret Government talks warning of imminent peak oil, there is undoubtedly plenty of evidence out there to suggest that a disasterous peak oil scenario is not out of the question. What worries me, however, is that as regular documentaries give way to these transmedia projects aimed at "the connected generation" (not sure what that term says about the rest of us), there is a danger that the choice of medium will inevitably warp the message—there's a reason why so many video games involve violent destruction.

Collapsus Walkthrough from SubmarineChannel on Vimeo.

Be afraid. Be prepared!

Still hope

Cover via AmazonMore Like an Oil Spill Than a Landslide

The 2010 election was the year of The Empire Strikes Back. Big Oil, the coal industry, and corporate polluters are desperate to stop the momentum toward clean energy that's been building for years. You can't stop the construction of 139 coal-fired power plants, implement the first-ever fuel-economy standards for medium and heavy trucks, or put the "protect" back into the Environmental Protection Agency without provoking a reaction.
In this case, the Dirty Energy Empire broke all campaign spending records and used their financial Death Star to target any politician who took a stand on clean energy and global warming. It may not have been a subtle strategy, but it was effective. What it doesn't change, though, is that most Americans still disagree with Big Oil and Big Coal about environmental and energy issues.
Given a clear choice between moving toward a clean-energy future that brings new jobs versus staying stuck in the old, dirty-energy past, Americans will vote for the future.
You don't have to take my word for it -- because that's exactly what happened in California. Voters decisively defeated Proposition 23, which was aimed at rolling back the state's landmark clean energy and climate law. When clean energy and already-existing green jobs went head-to-head on the ballot against economic scare tactics from Big Oil, voters didn't fall for it -- even though the state has the third-highest unemployment numbers in the nation.
Big Oil was defeated because the Sierra Club, along with a broad coalition of other environmental groups, clean tech companies, small businesses, public health advocates, and organized labor, worked hard to make sure that voters both knew the true intention and real consequences of that initiative. But another reason for Prop. 23's defeat is that advocates for the new-energy economy -- from Silicon Valley venture capitalists to Bill Gates himself -- stepped up to counter the more than $10 million in deceptive advertising that was spent by out-of-state oil companies.
In the short term, it's not good that there will be more climate deniers and dirty-energy apologists in Congress and in Statehouses. It's deeply disappointing that so many of the Sierra Club's allies and supporters suffered defeats. But it's not a short-term future we're fighting for. We're fighting for America's future -- and that means continuing to build a clean-energy economy at the local, state, and, yes, federal level.
When we win, it will mean millions of new jobs, freedom from dependence on foreign oil, and a cleaner, healthier environment for all Americans. And on that day, the headline will read "The Empire Struck Out."

The fight continues.  But against the fat cats with fat wallets,,,!  

Priorities of the USDA

When Big Ag Attacks: Government-Sponsored Pesticide Propaganda

The White House garden may be green and unsullied by agricultural chemicals, but Obama's United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) just forked over $180,000 to fund an agribusiness-backed smear campaign against the Environmental Working Group's (EWG) "Shopper's Guide to Pesticides," which includes the "Dirty Dozen," a list of the foods most commonly found to have pesticide residue.


In July, a website called SafeFruitsandVeggies.com was launched with the sole purpose of debunking the EWG's guide. The website, with the headline, "The Real Dangers of the Dirty Dozen List," was started by the Alliance for Food and Farming, a California-based group that bills itself as a non-profit organization made up of farmers and farm groups who want to "communicate their commitment to food safety and care for the land."


The agriculture department is paying an industry group to raise questions about its own data. It's more than a little baffling. In fact, the alliance is little more than a PR front whose directors include executives from corporate agricultural interests such as Sunkist, Western Growers, California Strawberry Commission, California Tomato Farmers, and the California Association of Pest Control Advisors. The alliance requested the federal dollars through the California Department of Food and Agriculture to "correct the misconception that some fresh produce items contain excessive amounts of pesticide residues," according to the alliance's grant application (PDF). "Claims by activist groups about unsafe levels of pesticides have been widely reported in the media for many years, but have largely gone uncontested." Presumably, the money will enable the alliance to maintain the site.

Let's hope the $180K is taken away from those users of pesticides and is given to EWG instead. It's time to get healthy not for ag-bus heads to just get wealthy.

Like a fox guarding the henhouse

Meet the Next Chair of the House Natural Resources Committee

With Republicans claiming the majority in the House, it's fair to say that the committees with oversight of key energy and environmental issues will be quite different in the 112th Congress. The new chair of the powerful Energy and Commerce Committee is still up in the air, but it looks all but certain that Doc Hastings (R-Wa.) will assume the chairmanship of the Natural Resources Committee.


Hastings, a former paper company executive, is the currently the senior GOP member of a subcommittee that oversees federal land and water issues; it also has a big say when it comes to issues including oil and gas drilling, mining safety, endangered species, forests, and fisheries. Within hours of the GOP victory, he sent out his list of priorities as chair of the panel. The top goal: "cutting spending and bringing fiscal sanity back to Washington, D.C."


As for goals on the subjects that he would have jurisdiction over, Hastings pledged to push for the oft-repeated Republican catch phrase, "an all-of-the-above energy plan." Translation: more oil drilling, mining, etc. Here's what he outlines:


Creating new jobs and giving a much needed boost to the economy will also be at the forefront of our agenda. Through the responsible stewardship of our natural resources we can put Americans to work, strengthen our economy and protect the environment. This includes increasing domestic energy production through an all-of-the-above energy plan and ensuring that public lands are actually open to the public. The livelihoods of rural communities, especially in the West, are dependent on the smart use of our public lands, water, timber, minerals and energy resources.

His buddies?

Hastings has received plenty of financial support from energy and natural resource interests like the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association and the timber giant Weyerhaeuser Co. over the years, as the Center for Public Integrity details here.


"He's not a friend of our public lands, and when it comes to oil and gas he wants to take us exactly in the wrong direction," said Athan Manuel, director of the public lands program at Sierra Club. "From what we can tell he hasn’t learned a thing from the Deepwater Horizon spill. He seems to want to charge ahead and lease as many areas as possible, even though we've seen that the oil companies can't be trusted with our coastal ecosystems."


Manuel noted that Hastings even blocked an effort to protect wilderness areas in Washington State offered by his Republican colleague, Dave Reichert. "If that's how he treats his fellow Washington State Republican, I'm not optimistic," said Manuel.

Shouldn't a Natural Resource Committee try to protect and manage our dwindling resources? Or is it "go all out and not worry about tomorrow?"

Moving to Vermont

Vermont's Great Green Election Day Victory -- Kick out the Nuclear Plant

Vermont has elected a governor pledged to make the state truly green by shutting its decrepit, leaking nuclear plant. And the town closest to that reactor has voted to take it by eminent domain if necessary, a step unprecedented in world history.
In reaction, the nuke's owner (Entergy) has turned tail and put the plant up for sale. (So far, no bidders).
In direct opposition, this post-election week has been marked by radioactive crowing from a dark age industry demanding massive government loan guarantees from "free market" Congressional Republicans. Armed with oceans of unaccountable corporate/billionaire cash, Karl Rove's new nuclear GOP wants to dump Adam Smith and pump public billions into a failed industry that cannot compete. They industry continually points to France's industry as a model. But it's mute to the fact that France's leaky, error-prone nukes are owned, operated and regulated (sort of) by the French government. A national socialist prototype, the EDF/Areva edifice---like its counterpart in Japan---would melt and die in an open market.
No American state has successfully forced shut a nuclear plant. Yankee's owners---whoever they might be---are certain to go to court when the current license expires in March, 2012.
The nuclear industry did pour huge chunks of cash into the Vermont election to defeat Shumlin and strip the legislature of its pro-green majority. But it failed. Shumlin will now be governor, and Vermont's lawmakers are firmly committed to shut-down.
Furthermore, the voters of Brattleboro, the largest town in Yankee's near vicinity, voted 2,387 to 1,826 in favor of forcing the state to investigate taking Vermont Yankee by eminent domain to guarantee its shut-down.

As I have said before - if Vermont had a longer growing season I would be there in a flash.

Thank you voters!

50% of the New Congressmen Deny Climate Change

Ah, the fallout from the 2010 midterm elections -- it just keeps on getting more depressing, at least from a climate and clean energy perspective. Yes, the folks over at Think Progress did some background research on the incoming Congressmen, and they reveal a disheartening stat: 50% of them outright deny that climate change is real. Nice.
Here's the breakdown from Think Progress:
A new ThinkProgress investigation has found that the incoming GOP freshman class is rife with legislators who not only oppose climate change legislation, but deny that manmade global warming even exists ...
Here is a snapshot of the GOP Class of 2010:
ENVIRONMENT
- 50% deny the existence of manmade climate change
- 86% are opposed to any climate change legislation that increases government revenue

Hooray! We can now look forward to many more years of the status quo -- which, of course means continued dominance from the heavily subsidized oil industry, reliance on foreign oil, and increased industry-wide greenhouse gas emissions right at a time when we're on track to have experienced the hottest year ever recorded.

The real winners of this election: oilmen and Koch brothers.

Pizza dough with beets

Beet Pizza Dough. Seriously.

Basically, this dough doesn't taste weird. It's extremely pretty. And it's a new way to use beets, as if you were looking for one. Though, maybe you should be! Beets are "rich in natural sugar, sodium, sulphur, chlorine, iodine, copper and vitamin B1, B2, C and bioflavonoids" (Source).
BEET PIZZA DOUGH
What you'll need . . .
1 cup warm water
1 envelope active dry yeast
2 tablespoon agave nectar
1/2 cup beet puree (get a can of beets -- instructions below)
2 tablespoons olive oil (I used an herbed variety)
3-1/2 cups unbleached bread flour (I used King Arthur)

I'm ditching the canned beets and pulling out some from the garden. Now if I only had built that outdoor pizza oven.

Doh!!!!

Kansas Environment Secretary Fired for Not Fast-Tracking Coal Plant Permit

Apparently in Kansas, regulating coal-fired power plants is not what the state's top environment official is supposed to do. Health and Environment Secretary Rod Bremby was replaced earlier this week, after first refusing the governor's 'offer' to step down and take the position of Cabinet transition director—and all signs point to Bremby's firm stance against coal-fired power plants as the reason for the decision.
Earthjustice says that when Mark Parkinson replaced Kathleen Sebelius as governor, he made a deal with the Sunflower coal plant seeking to obtain a permit before new regulations go into effect in January.
Bremby, who has been recognized for his leadership on renewable energy and for being the first state regulator to deny coal plant permits based on carbon dioxide emissions, refused to comply with the fast-tracking process and was intent on following proper legal procedure in reviewing the coal plant's application.
So what does the governor do? Fires Bremby.

That's a new one - getting fired for doing your job protecting our environment.

Want some meds with that burger?

IMeat industry unhappy over limiting the use of antibiotics

For decades, factory farms have used antibiotics even in healthy animals to promote faster growth and prevent diseases that could sicken livestock held in confined quarters.
The benefit: cheaper, more plentiful meat for consumers.
But a firestorm has erupted over a federal proposal recommending antibiotics only when animals are actually sick.
Medical and public health experts in recent years say overuse and misuse of antibiotics pose a serious public health threat by creating new strains of bacteria that are difficult to treat - both in animals and humans.
"Over time, we have created some monster bugs," said Russ Kremer, a Bonnots Mill, Mo., farmer who speaks nationally about the threat to the food supply. "It is truly harmful to everyone to feed antibiotics to animals just for growth promotion and economic gain."
But the meat industry argues that the draft guidelines from the Food and Drug Administration are premature. It says there is not enough evidence to show a clear link between the use of antibiotics in livestock and health problems in humans.

Cheaper plentiful meat is a benefit? What about the drugs in the meat? The only solution: eat your veggies! Even better yet: eat your own-raised veggies!
Know where you food comes from, how it was grown/raised, what's in it.

Blue-green on both coasts

Climate & Clean Energy Can Win Elections

Throughout the 2010 midterm election cycle -- and well before -- most politicians dared not even utter the word climate change. Sometime after the House passed its comprehensive energy bill and the Senate stalled, clean energy and climate got written into the media's horse-racing narrative as being dirty words in a political context; losing messages. The GOP lumping both in with cap and trade, which they falsely blasted as a tax, probably had something to do with that. Soon, clean energy and climate action-supporting politicians -- most notably, Obama -- gave up on trying to spread the word about those causes. They figured it was a losing battle. But they were wrong: To see why, and how climate and clean energy can win elections, look no further than California.
California, as you're likely aware by now, was one of the few states where Democratic candidates were able to beat back the insurgent Tea Party -- both Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina lost their races (for governor and senator, respectively) to Jerry Brown and Barbara Boxer. And more importantly, California turned out against the Tea Party-favored Proposition 23, which would have halted the state's climate and clean energy law.
What's interesting in all three of these major victories, is one common thread: The candidates, and the coalition of 'No on 23' campaigners, never turned their back on climate and clean energy issues -- even with the rising tide of climate denialism and the anti-regulatory sentiment in full swing across the nation. On the contrary, they made climate and clean energy a campaign issue.

Here in Connecticut (proud to say we stayed Blue) green was also a topic but not as looming as in Calif. Wish other states/areas were as concerned.

Tea Party and Mother Earth

The outlook for the next two years as far as environmental progress goes is best summed up by America's newest King/Queen maker:

And it didn’t make any sense because it was based on these global warming studies that now we’re seeing (is) a bunch of snake oil science.

Guess who? Of course it was Sarah Palin.
Is Mother Earth losing tonight? You betcha!

Wonder if she killed that bear with her own hands?

An Atwood Scenario?

Margaret Atwood has written about transgenic animals such as pigoons and rakunks in Oryx and Crake and The Year of the Flood.  The latest medical science  news has that same taste:
First whole human liver built in lab

Miniature human livers, about the size of small plums, have been made in the lab for the first time. The breakthrough, reported this week at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases in Boston, is a step towards making livers big enough for transplants in humans.
"We are the first to engineer a whole liver organ with human cells," says Shay Soker, a co-developer of the livers at Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center in North Carolina. Soker and his colleague Pedro Baptista built the livers by taking ferret livers and stripping them of all their native cells, leaving just the collagen "scaffold" of the organ, which they then filled with human liver cells.
The ultimate goal is to create personalised livers for transplant from larger pig scaffolds by selecting healthy liver cells from a patient and multiplying them to build a new organ.

Reality copying her novels or her novels foretelling our not-too distant future?

The Carnivalesque Rebellion After Tomorrow

Crack Capitalism from Adbusters

We are all in a room with four walls, a floor, a ceiling and no windows or door. The room is furnished and some of us are sitting comfortably, others most definitely are not. The walls are advancing inwards gradually, sometimes slower, sometimes faster, making us all more uncomfortable, advancing all the time, threatening to crush us all to death.
There are discussions within the room, but they are mostly about how to arrange the furniture. People do not seem to see the walls advancing. From time to time there are elections about how to place the furniture. These elections are not unimportant: They make some people more comfortable, others less so; they may even affect the speed at which the walls are moving, but they do nothing to stop their relentless advance.
As the walls grow closer, people react in different ways. Some refuse absolutely to see the advance of the walls, shutting themselves tightly into a world of Disney and defending with determination the chairs they are sitting on. Some see and denounce the movement of the walls, build a party with a radical program and look forward to a day in the future when there will be no walls. Others – and I among them – run to the walls and try desperately to find cracks, or faults beneath the surface, or to create cracks by banging on the walls. This looking for and creation of cracks is a practical-theoretical activity, a throwing ourselves against the walls and also a standing back to try and see cracks or faults in the surface. The two activities are complementary: Theory makes little sense unless it is understood as part of the desperate effort to find a way out, to create cracks that defy the apparently unstoppable advance of capital, of the walls that are pushing us to our destruction.

The real threat to Mother Earth is the rampant consumerism driiving today's U.S. citizens and many others throughout this world. That need for the latest and greatest is this issue. Tuesday's election will have a direct impact on the laws of our lands and may gut environmental laws. But neither party is ready to tackle the big isssue - how do we as a nation and people "live simply so others may simply live."  That's the crack we need.

Scary post-election

Halloween Was Not Scary Enough. Let's See If Tomorrow's Treats Do The Trick

With Halloween 2010 only a day behind us and the mid-term elections tomorrow morning, likely-voter polls indicate Americans are up for a good 'hate it when that happens' kick in the pants. Let's think about some of the key outcomes of the coming Congressional turnover. Just from the standpoint of how we enviro-freak socialist pinko liberals will experience them (a tongue-in-cheek self deprecation, in case that was not obvious). Look below for my list of predetermined outcomes. Thoughtful comments welcome.

• EPA's budget will be dramatically slashed to preclude any chance that the Agency might regulate greenhouse gases or require emission reporting.
• Coal mining and gas fracking industries won't have to spend a penny more than the bare minimum. Hello MTR.
• Clean coal...say what?
• Subsidies of renewable energy development will be reduced, possibly ended by "defunding" grant budgets and research programs at DOE.
• DOT forced to cut back mass transit and bicycle programs under threat of "de-funding" anything but highway upgrades.
• Congressional hearings held on threat to security posed by the green movement, NASA support for climate research, etc. (see Brian's post just above this one for tactical details)

The question then becomes "what will we do?" Besides complaining and supporting Presidential vetoes. What is the next big thing? What practical pursuits do we focus on?
The back-to-the-land movement was tried back in the early 70's so that's out. Maybe they'll just call it the "off grid" movement hoping that no one will draw the comparison.

If the land is still there, I say we just call it what it is: back to the land survivorship.