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Living within a living, loving planet
Glyphosate Re-assessment in Europe
2 weeks
by sky
in Environmental Protection
Glyphosate Re-assessment in Europe
ISIS Report 09/07/14
Scandal of Glyphosate Re-assessment in Europe
“EU rapporteur state Germany recommends re-approval with daily intake increased
by 67 %; its re-assessment was carried out by Monsanto and a consortium of
chemical companies in Europe based almost entirely on studies from industry; it
should be rejected outright. Dr Nancy Swanson and Dr Mae Wan Ho”
This article can be found on the I-SIS website at
http://www.i-sis.org.uk/Scandal_of_Glyphosate_Reassessment_in_Europe.php
This is crazymaking
This is crazymaking
“The river’s apparent abundance has encouraged exceptionally wasteful usage. For example, thirsty forage crops such as alfalfa and pasture land account for as much as half the irrigated acreage in California, according to a report last year by the Pacific Institute. And as my colleague David Pierson reported recently, much of the harvest is shipped to China.”
http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-hiltzik-20140620-column.html#page=1
Read the article. Strange fracking is not mentioned.
“On Thursday, May 29, 2014 the California Senate failed to pass SB 1132 (Mitchell/Leno) which would have put a temporary moratorium on hydraulic fracturing, acidizing and other forms of oil and gas well stimulation methods. The measure lost by a narrow margin, despite recent polling that 68% of Californians support a time out on fracking. Additionally, the federal government has recently downgraded the estimated amount of recoverable oil in the Monterey Shale by 96%, dispelling the myth that fracking will lead to an oil boom in California.” http://www.cleanwateraction.org/fracking-california
“Now lots of people in west Texas and New Mexico make money not by ranching and farming, as they once did. There’s not enough water for that anymore. Instead, they get by selling what water they have to fracking companies.
The Guardian ran a story this month about the small Texas town of Barnhart, which temporarily ran out of drinking water in July (not unlike the town of Magdalena, New Mexico, which I wrote about earlier this week). The town’s water problems stem a number of sources, including heavy agricultural use in the past and a drought that has stretched on for three years now. But the fracking hasn’t slowed:” http://nextcity.org/daily/entry/for-some-in-the-southwest-its-come-to-selling-water-to-fracking-companies
This is sheer madness.
A huge area of California is under severe drought conditions and yet the precious water is used for export crops!!! Hundreds of thousands suffer whilst a few drive comfortably to the bank with profits from the water. This needs to be stopped and quickly.
This is not science
2 months
by sky
in Biased information
This is not science
No young person should be subjected to such brainwashing.
http://www.snopes.com/photos/signs/sciencetest.asp
The scouring of the planet has only just begun
2 months
by sky
in Overpopulation
It’s simple. If we can’t change our economic system, our number’s up
It’s the great taboo of our age – and the inability to discuss the pursuit of perpetual growth will prove humanity’s undoing
George Monbiot
“The UK oil firm Soco is now hoping to penetrate Africa’s oldest national park, Virunga, in the Democratic Republic of Congo; one of the last strongholds of the mountain gorilla and the okapi, of chimpanzees and forest elephants. In Britain, where a possible 4.4 billion barrels of shale oil has just been identified in the south-east, the government fantasises about turning the leafy suburbs into a new Niger delta. To this end it’s changing the trespass laws to enable drilling without consent and offering lavish bribes to local people. These new reserves solve nothing. They do not end our hunger for resources; they exacerbate it.
The trajectory of compound growth shows that the scouring of the planet has only just begun. As the volume of the global economy expands, everywhere that contains something concentrated, unusual, precious, will be sought out and exploited, its resources extracted and dispersed, the world’s diverse and differentiated marvels reduced to the same grey stubble.”
George has dug up a point that has bothered me for ages. Seldom do you read about the social impact of global warming. A good summation is: wetter places will get wetter, dryer places will get dryer and “hundred year” weather events will become commonplace. With a globalised food system, it seems inevitable to me that with the present anthropocentric attitude, most uncultivated open space will be co-opted to feed humans who cannot feed themselves on the land where they now live. National Parks, regional nature preserves on down to local green space will be put to the plough as hundreds of thousands of humans migrate to liveable environments. Pessimistic? No, just realistic.
Welcome News but 10 percent is not enough
2 months
by sky
in forest preservation
Welcome News but 10 percent is not enough
Meg Symington is managing director for WWF’s Amazon program. She contributed this article to Live Science’s Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.
On May 21, the Brazilian government, World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and partners announced the creation of a $215 million fund to ensure long-term protection of the world’s largest network of protected areas — 150 million acres of the Brazilian Amazon rainforest.
It’s not often as conservationists that we get to celebrate such a big win.
http://www.livescience.com/45865-amazon-swath-preserved-in-huge-partnership.html
Can there be enough emphasis on how rainforest contributes to rainfall in the American Southwest and southern California?
Not so good news elsewhere
“Healthy forests can improve climate resilience by regulating watersheds and, among other things, acting as a shelter, while also mitigating climate change through capturing and containing carbon, the report continues.
But in Cambodia, where average annual temperatures have already increased by almost a full degree since 1960 and scientists have observed a two-month delay in the start of the rainy season, forest loss is the second worst in ASEAN, with nearly 92,000 hectares of forest disappearing every year.
“We all understand the consequences of deforestation and forest degradation, but individuals continue with short-term profit because there is no good preservation alternative that can compete,” Tin Ponlock, the Ministry of the Environment’s deputy climate change director, said.”
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/%E2%80%98deforestation-plagues-asean%E2%80%99
Let us promote positive news
16 May 2014
Three friends return $40,000 found stuffed in couch
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-27429911
“Reese Werkhoven, Cally Guasti and Lara Russo bought the furniture from a charity shop for $20 and found the cash in several envelopes.”
For Love of the Earth
3 months
by sky
in Earthenspirituality
“The insistence that it’s not too late, that there must still be time to keep industrial civilization from crashing into ruin if only we all come together to make one great effort, and that there’s any reason to think that we can and will all come together, is another example. The narrative behind that claim has a profound appeal to people nowadays, which is why stories that feature it—again, Tolkien’s trilogy comes to mind—are as popular as they are. It’s deeply consoling to be told that there’s still one last chance to escape the harsh future that’s already taking shape around us. It seems almost cruel to point out that whether a belief appeals to our emotions has no bearing on whether or not it’s true.” John Michael Greer, The Archdruid Report, 30 April, 2014
So much of what is happening here circles endlessly around the “head in the sand” denial of the facts and behaviours observed around us. Rather than taking a small loss of pleasure now in order to avoid a huge loss that will be borne by our grandchildren, we delay hoping that somehow “they”, they being a mythical government or benign group of industrialists, will “fix” the problem. How foolish would it be to cut back, suffer, only to find that it was unnecessary? Personally, I grieve that I can’t allow myself the air-miles it would take to maintain an emotional presence in the lives of my grandchildren. I face the question: What is more important, the health of the planet or the satisfaction of my desire to be a presence in their lives? My thinking function sees this as a “no-brainer.” Of course, loving care for the planet is necessary for the well- being of my grandchildren. However, I agonize over my knowing that a once a year visit will leave me forever as that “drop-in” bearing presents. They will never love me as I love my grandparents.
Population Increase
3 months
by sky
in Overpopulation
Population
How long has it been since we’ve read a comment about population? Why is it so unpopular for someone, me for instance, to suggest that fewer people mean fewer energy requirements? I read recently that there are virtually no places on Earth that do not carry the footprint of humans and not many more places where you will not hear human made noise. Mid and southern California skies on a clear day are a spiders web of vapour trails destroying any hope of beauty in clouds. We study and publish statistics about sustainability and species extinction or diminishing from eating out their habitat. Are humans not doing that? Must all sparsely settled places, quiet woods and meadows be destroyed to feed and shelter more and more people? Lastly, where do you expect those millions who will soon be starving from drought and flooding from rising sea levels will demand to live? Let’s face it, they will occupy our last remaining open spaces driving out most wildlife except rats, seagulls and cockroaches.
Sky McCain
18 January, 2014
Beautiful weeds
3 months
Beautiful weeds
It was in the summer and autumn of 1989 that we visited Assisi. We stopped off at Santa Maria degli Angeli and visited the basilica there which is built around where Saint Francis died. From there we walked up to the walled city of Assisi looming above us.
It seemed to be a place totally given over to tourists where the main street was filled with shops and hardly a person we saw looked local. My story starts with our visit to the small church of Saint John. I was captivated by the peacefulness and looked lovingly at the beautiful plain wooden beams and ceiling joists. We walked out and entered a walled garden where I noticed a couple off to my right. We turned left and then right along a wall toward the hillside. Of a sudden, I noticed a large vase of plants. They were not flowers nor were there any blossoms or any especially beautiful distinguishing features. Yet, I was overcome with love for these plants. I focused on them as we approached and I touched them lovingly. My feelings were so strong and I was amazed and somewhat shocked by the strength of my emotion for such an ordinary, neglected pot of what I would have called weeds. How could weeds draw me and evoke such loving feelings?
As I looked up and over to the right, It came to me that I would build a church and my church would be a garden. This garden has not yet been manifest but I have plans for it.
Over the last 25 years, I have often remembered the sights and feelings around that afternoon at Assisi.