Here’s some of the biggest global warming and environmental politics news and commentary from the last week or so, along with some fun cartoons. Rocket Fuel in Our Water? The inspiration for the cartoon above, among other things: information that there is rocket fuel (or a component of it) in water supplies across the U.S. […]
Global Warming and Environmental Politics News of the Week Read More 👉
(From our sister site, Red Green and Blue) The US Department of Agriculture continues its unprecedented give-away to big agriculture monster Monsanto and its Genetically Modified (GMO) seeds. On Friday, while the media was preoccupied with the Superbowl and Egypt’s rioting, the USDA quietly announced it was deregulating Monsanto’s GMO sugar beets – despite a court
USDA hits organics again, approves Monsanto's GMO sugar beets Read More 👉
Note the final comment at the end. No joking matter here — climate change means more than most Americans understand or admit. h/t Climate Denial Crock of the Week Related Story: Rising & Record Food Prices, Food Riots Due to Extreme Weather Events
Weather Causes Grain and Food Price Spikes [VIDEO] Read More 👉
US Ag Secretary, Tom Vilsack tells us to eat more natural foods a few days after fully deregulating GMO alfalfa…I’m confused. Confused as well? Read the links below and try to figure out this mess. From The New York Times: Government’s Dietary Advice: Eat Less From Elephant Journal: The USDA caves to Monsanto. What now?
Mixed Message from USDA Chief Vilsack [Cartoon] Read More 👉
Rome, Italy: The conflict between increasing demand for fish and failing fisheries has enormous implications for world food security and the state of our oceans, lakes and rivers, WWF said today. The global environment organisation was welcoming the latest State of the World’s Fisheries and Aquaculture (SOFIA) report, issued today in Rome by the UN
Increasing Demand for Fish + Failing Fisheries = Huge Problems Read More 👉
Unlike the former Monsanto cartoon on this subject, this version shows a bit more clearly who surrendered the future of organic agriculture to Monsanto. There’s been a lot of talk from both sides (organic and biotech) about compromise. That is misleading and almost laughable (read: cryable). Dear Monsanto, You poisoning us (consumers of organic food)
BREAKING: Deleted Monsanto cartoon panel, leaked! Read More 👉
Actually prior to Obama’s State of the Union, the Worldwatch Institute recently released its annual State of the World report: State of the World 2011: Innovations that Nourish the Planet. Here’s an intro via a blog post from the Worldwatch Institute’s Danielle Nierenberg over on our sister site, Eat Drink Better: It’s nearly a half-century
State of the World 2011: Innovations that Nourish the Planet Read More 👉
You may have heard about the mistake in a recent report published by an NGO on climate change and food production in the next 10 years. I imagine global warming deniers jumped all over it and maybe even the mass media did (haven’t checked to find out). Here’s a great account of what happen via
A transgenic chicken has been developed that blocks transmission of the avian flu to other chickens. The new technique — some aspects of which are not clear even to the geneticists developing it — holds out great promise for preventing human illness as well as unnecessary animal deaths. But nothing is quite that simple when
Breakthrough: Transgenic Chicken Blocks H5NI Flu Spread Read More 👉
Want to know what company not to by tuna from? Or which companies to buy from (if you can’t kick the tuna habit altogether)? Greenpeace can help you out. It’s found that Princes tinned tuna is the worst, and Sainsbury and Marks & Spencer lead the industry. Here’s more: Food giant Princes has been ranked
Princes Tinned Tuna Linked to Mass Deaths of Marine Life Read More 👉
I included the video above in last week’s global weirding news roundup, in addition to Joe Romm’s recent article on how extreme weather events are contributing to rising, record food prices. But both are worth another quick look on their own. In 2009, Lester Brown and Scientific American asked “Could Food Shortages Bring Down Civilization?” This summer’s
Rising & Record Food Prices, Food Riots Due to Extreme Weather Events Read More 👉
More info and opportunities to take action on GM Alfalfa.From Rodale: Genetically Engineered Alfalfa Could Be Growing in U.S. Fields by Spring From EatDrinkBetter: URGENT: Stop Monsanto’s GM Alfalfa From Food and Water Watch: Take Action: Ask President Obama to Protect Organic and Stop Monsanto’s GE Alfalfa! From the Organic Consumers Association: Millions Against Monsanto
Stop Monsanto Again–GM Alfalfa Threatens to Contaminate Organic Crops Read More 👉
Imagine a big slice of your favorite pie. Imagine eating all of it. Your mouth automatically begins salivating, your taste buds begin firing up. Now, imagine eating more pie until you are full…A short while later, you find yourself confronted with the real pie. You might think that this is going to be a problem,
Want to Eat Less? Just Imagine Eating More Read More 👉
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BAzrSl0ztsQ Foie gras is a “luxury food” or delicacy. However, if you watched the video above, I imagine you’d rather not pay anything for it. Completely horrifying. It is nice to see Kate Winslet joining the Pope, world-renowned chef Wolfgang Puck, PETA, and others trying to bring an end to the consumption and commercial sale
Kate Winslet, PETA Oppose Foie Gras Read More 👉
Agriculture, the indispensable basis of civilization, was originally encountered as time, language, number and art won out. As the materialization of alienation, agriculture is the triumph of estrangement and the definite divide between culture and nature and humans from each other. Agriculture is the birth of production, complete with its essential features and deformation of
Is Agriculture the "Demon Engine of Civilization"? Read More 👉
(To the tune of “The 12 Days of Christmas”) On the worst day of Christmas Monsanto Claus gave to me, six bucks per acre and toxic herbicides from some other company… Last year’s Monsanto Claus cartoon–“Monsanto Claus: Ho Ho Oh No!” …and the rest of my Monsanto-related cartoons. Follow on Twitter @GreenCartoons
Monsanto Claus: A RoundUp-Resistant Christmas Read More 👉
TerraCycle’s recycling campaigns are so easy to participate in that nearly any company with any sense (and the opportunity) can get on board and get some good green PR for doing so. While I wouldn’t give most of the cheese companies below much green credit, it is at least good that they joined TerraCycle’s new
TerraCycle Gets Cheese Companies on Board Read More 👉
If you haven’t noticed, I haven’t covered Christmas that much yet. Just a post on a few green gift ideas (well, really, it was one idea but options from a few organizations) and a post on Climate Counts’ Striding Shoppers campaign. I have to say, I’ve been avoiding Christmas a little bit this year… largely
Last-Minute Gifts (Environmentally Friendly or Environmentally Helpful Gifts) Read More 👉
(From our sister blog, Red Green & Blue) Industry must really want the Food Safety Modernization Act (S 510). It was dead, dead, dead – the clock had run out, and considering the gridlock in Washington, the fact that Jim DeMint (R-SC) had promised he would block most everything the Democrats brought up, and Tom Colburn
Zombie Food Safety Act Resurrected by Senate Read More 👉
(From our sister-blog, Red Green & Blue) This time it looks like it’s dead for good. Despite passing both houses by wide margins of bi-partisan support, the controversy-laden Food Safety Modernization Act (S 510) has died, a victim of end-of-session Senate gridlock and a resurgent GOP that is perfectly happy to see nothing much get done before they
Stick a Fork in It – The Food Safety Modernization Bill is Done Read More 👉
EPA knowingly OK’s Bayer’s bee-killing pesticide. Related Links: The full Grist article whose text is in the cartoon. Wik-Bee Leaks: EPA Document Shows It Knowingly Allowed Pesticide That Kills Honey Bees The Bayer Kills Bees! website. (They also kill democracy!) Yep, that’s Bee from the environmental cartoon series Hank D and the Bee. Don’t worry,
WTF?! EPA Says RIP to Bees. Read More 👉
A recent article in NZ Herald News discusses the looming food crisis and how it might become the world’s biggest problem in the decades to come. “If the world doesn’t act now, it faces a catastrophic global food shortage by mid-century,” Greg Ansley writes. Ansely cites numerous recent studies concerning the degradation of our oceans
World’s Biggest Looming Problem a Food Crisis? Read More 👉
Lester R. Brown After several decades of rapid rise in world grain yields, it is now becoming more difficult to raise land productivity fast enough to keep up with the demands of a growing, increasingly affluent, population. From 1950 to 1990, world grainland productivity increased by 2.2 percent per year, but from 1990 until 2009
Improving Food Security by Strategically Reducing Grain Demand Read More 👉
I ran across this guys and chatted with him for awhile on my recent, short trip to Portland. I’ve been planning to write about them since then, but you know… so much news everyday. Anyway, Rory Woods of sustainablog just shared this video recently and I thought I’d do a quick re-share here. “Portland’s B-Line,
Food by Bike for the Hungry in Portland Read More 👉
It seems we always take the most basic things for granted. With regards to adequate water, air, and soil (things we assume will always be there) we are gradually becoming more mindful of them, and their limits. But how many of us are worried about phosphorus (P) running out? Well, lately, more and more agricultural
Running Out of P ? – World Nearing Peak Phosphorus Read More 👉
More on BPA… BPA Ban Blocked from Food Safety Bill Bisphenol A linked to diabetes, heart disease in humans BPA wikipedia site …and E. coli Long-Term Effects of E-Coli Food Poisoning Ground Beef: The Cartoon View all of Joe’s political/environmental cartoonery at JoeMohrToons.com Updates on Twitter at @GreenCartoons
Canned Spinach Killing Popeye! (cartoon) Read More 👉
This is a special guest post by EatDrinkBetter editor Becky Striepe. Food Democracy Now sent out an urgent alert yesterday regarding protecting family farms from catastrophic federal legislation: The Senate just voted 74 Yes to 25 No in favor of the cloture vote. This means that S.510, aka The Food Modernization Act, will move forward
URGENT ACTION NEEDED: Tell Your Senators to Support Family Farms Read More 👉
Take action to keep GE salmon (“Frankenfish”) off your plate, because as Food and Water Watch state: Genetically engineered salmon are on a fast track to being the first GE Animal approved for human consumption. The FDA is trying to approve GE salmon as a new animal drug, but the truth is U.S. Food agencies
Frankenfish Worried About the Future of GMOceans (cartoon) Read More 👉
This is a special guest post from the Earth Policy Institute (subheadings and photo added). Enjoy. Lester R. Brown The literature on soil erosion contains countless references to the “loss of protective vegetation.” Over the last half-century, clearcutting, overgrazing, and overplowing have removed so much of that protective cover that the world is quickly losing
Conserving and Rebuilding Soils Read More 👉
UK animal advocacy organization Animal Aid published “its full investigation into UK slaughterhouses” last week, describing “the ‘utter horror’ of slaughter in so-called ‘humane’ British abattoirs.” “The cruelty on show is the worst I have seen,” wrote Chief Executive of the Food Standards Agency Tim Smith. For the study: Animal Aid visited seven randomly chosen
"The cruelty on show is the worst I have seen." Read More 👉
Water availability is going to one of the biggest issues of the coming centuries, in my humble opinion. Due to global weirding, unsustainable agriculture practices, and a growing population. Reportedly, Yemen’s capital city, Sana’a, will be one of the first cities to run out of water. Here are a few quotes from a recent article
Sana'a 1st City to be Out of Water? Read More 👉
Most of the meat Americans consume is from Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations, which are horrific for animals and terrible for our health and our communities. CAFO: The Tragedy of Industrial Animal Factories, edited by Daniel Imhoff and published by Watershed Media and the Foundation for Deep Ecology, is a must-read and must-see book about the
3 Big Lies from Big Food Read More 👉
I was recently tipped off to an awesome website that documents real-world projects focused on both protecting the environment and saving money. Each story comes with a video, and website founder Susan Neisloss also provides resources on how to save/make money through such sustainable efforts in the videos and throughout the website. As far as I
Inspirational Stories and Videos on How to Go Green and Save Money Read More 👉
Sadly, many Native American Communities inside the United States are living in poverty and this Thanksgiving they truly need our love. However poor, Native Americans have always maintained a wealth of wisdom on how to heal and revive themselves, now let’s honor and nourish them and their rich culture as this historic holiday approaches. National
It… should not be surprising that the U.S. Pentagon states that global warming is a larger threat than even terrorism. “Picture Japan, suffering from flooding along its coastal cities and contamination of its fresh water supply, eyeing Russia’s Sakhalin Island oil and gas reserves as an energy source”, suggests a Pentagon memo on global warming.
Are You Taking Global Warming Personally? Read More 👉
As we’ve written a few times on Planetsave, one big effect of global weirding is likely to be massive crop failures. Rudy Ruitenberg of Bloomberg recently reported: Crop failures such as this year in Russia are likely to become more common as climate change causes more extreme weather with heat and drought stress, according to
Crop Failures to Increase Due to Global Weirding Read More 👉
If you haven’t heard, there have been massive die-offs of bats across the U.S. recently. Scientists have been warning us about the main cause, White-Nose Syndrome (WNS), for years… but who listens to scientists? With WNS, a fungus leaves a white substance all over bats disrupting hibernation patterns, forcing bats to use up all of
Bat Die-Off Could Seriously Threaten U.S. Agriculture Read More 👉
This post is part of our participation in Blog Action Day 2010, which is on the topic of Water. As R. Buckminster Fuller reminded us, we are all traveling aboard “spaceship Earth”…all 6+ billion of us. What makes our spaceship so unique (as far as we know), and vital, is the presence of a great deal
Our Water Planet – How Much Do You Know? Read More 👉
As Thanksgiving nears, my heart goes out to all those on this planet in need of nourishment. Here is a collection of some heart based organizations that hope to help Africa with food gifts and more from Mother Earth this Thanksgiving: Vitamin Angels tells us that one in three children worldwide is undernourished. Vitamin Angels (shown
A collaborative genetic analysis between civilian entomologists and military scientists has at last revealed the true cause of Colony Collapse Disease which has been decimating honeybee hives in the US, Europe and Asia since 2006.
Mystery of Honey Bee Colony Collapse Solved Read More 👉
With all the panic around international terrorism that has dominated the media in recent years, we easily get distracted from and miss critical, internal threats (like the health threats of the food we eat), especially when such threats are hidden by mega-corporations and the former CIA officials they hire. The Nation recently did an in-depth piece on
Monsanto Hired Blackwater to Spy on Animal Rights Activists? Read More 👉
Scientists have determined that there might be a simple yet overlooked method to saving energy; stop wasting food. The new research is reported in the ACS’ semi-monthly journal Environmental Science and Technology and states that the United States could immediately save the energy equivalent of about 350 million barrels of oil a year simply by
Stop Wasting Food and Start Saving Energy Read More 👉
The decision by a Russian court to turn over 70 hectares of genetically unique species of plants to home developers caused an uproar world-wide, with scientists decrying the pending loss as “irreplaceable” and a major blow to agricultural biodiversity. Recently, however, the Russian government has stepped in and ordered a review of the decision — postponing the auctioning of land until at least October.
Threatened Russian 'Plant Bank' Gets Reprieve Read More 👉
Some good additional reads: Bill McKibben’s New Book: The Old Economy is Killing the Earth; It’s Time for a New Living Economy Don’t Let Experimental Genetically Engineered Salmon Reach Your Plate
Frankenfish Should be OK Because of BPA (cartoon) Read More 👉
Two ecologist discover that by adapting Google’s Page Rank algorithm they were able to “reverse engineer” the collapse of food webs, and thus determining which species in a given web are most critical to the web’s existence.
Googling for Extinction – Popular Algorithm Finds Food Webs' Critical Species Read More 👉
University of Guelph scientists have created a transgenic pig — the Enviropig — which better digests phosphorus compounds. This development came in response to concerns of negative environmental impacts from animal manure run-off causing algal blooms in waterways, and consequently killing fish and other aquatic creatures.
Meet 'Enviropig' – A Cleaner, Greener Transgenic Pig Read More 👉
From Grist: More research linking pesticide exposure to ADHD in kids Follow all of Mean Joe Green’s environmental cartoons on JoeMohrToons.com and on Twitter at @GreenCartoons.
Pesticides and ADHD (cartoon) Read More 👉
The global warming news I have to share this week transitions from the floods and fires we discussed last week to the issue of food and water (including how they are affected by floods and fires) and other effects of global climate change you may not be thrilled to hear about. Additionally, I have a
Global Warming News of the Week — Focus on Food & Water Read More 👉
