Environmental Justice

Smartphones are Heating Up the Planet

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When we think about climate change, the main sources of carbon emissions that come to mind for most of us are heavy industries like petroleum, mining and transportation.

Rarely do we point the finger at computer technologies.

In fact, many experts view the cyber-world of information and computer technologies (ICT) as our potential savior, replacing many of our physical activities with a lower-carbon virtual alternative.

That is not what our study, recently published in the Journal of Cleaner Production, suggests.

Having conducted a meticulous and fairly exhaustive inventory of the contribution of ICT — including devices like PCs, laptops, monitors, smartphones and tablets, and infrastructure like data centers and communication networks — we found that the relative contribution of ICT to the total global footprint is expected to grow from about one per cent in 2007 to 3.5 per cent by 2020 and reaching 14 per cent by 2040.

Women are marrying trees to help save them

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AFP/Getty Images

Women in Mexico are going out on a limb to help save the forest.

By Fox News

A group of female activists in Oaxaca, Mexico, held a mass marriage ceremony where they each wed their own splintery groom to draw attention to illegal logging – a serious and devastating problem in the country.

Around a third of Mexico’s land is covered by forest. Oaxaca is one of five states hit hardest by deforestation, mostly caused by criminal groups, Metro reports.

The women are trying to take a stand against the practice and are hoping the mass marriage will get people more involved with saving the woodlands.

Smuggled, Beaten and Drugged: The Illicit Global Ape Trade

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The New York Times tracked international ape smugglers from Congolese rain forests to the back streets of Bangkok. Here is what unfolded.

By Jeffrey Gettleman

MBANDAKA, Democratic Republic of Congo — The sting began, as so many things do these days, on social media.

Daniel Stiles, a self-styled ape trafficking detective in Kenya, had been scouring Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp for weeks, looking for pictures of gorillas, chimps or orangutans. He was hoping to chip away at an illicit global trade that has captured or killed tens of thousands of apes and pushed some endangered species to the brink of extinction.

“The way they do business,” he said of ape traffickers, “makes the Mafia look like amateurs.”

After hundreds of searches, Mr. Stiles found an Instagram account offering dozens of rare animals for sale, including baby chimpanzees and orangutans dressed in children’s clothes. He sent an email to an address on the account — “looking for young otans” (the industry standard slang for orangutans) — and several days later received a reply.

U.S. Disturbingly Ranks as Second Worst Country for Animal Welfare

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Screenshot-2018-1-9 US 2nd Worst Country For Farm Animal Cruelty Global Animal

In a new animal cruelty index tracking 50 countries that are among the world’s largest producers of farm animal products, the U.S. disturbingly ranks as the second worst country for animal welfare.

Belarus and Venezuela joined the U.S. among the lowest ranked countries, whereas Kenya, India, and the United Republic of Tanzania were among the highest.

by Lauren Lewis for World Animal News

Considering the combined impacts of production, consumption, and regulation, the Voiceless Animal Cruelty Index (VACI) shows how countries with more plant-based diets and those that have not implemented factory farming are more likely to rank highly for animal welfare.

According to the Voiceless Animal Cruelty Index (VACI), a new global interactive education resource that tracks the animal welfare performance of 50 countries that are selected among the largest producers of farm animal products in the world, the United States now ranks as the second worst country.

How to Keep the Lights On After a Hurricane

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By RICHARD BRANSON and AMORY B. LOVINS

More than a month after Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico, nearly 80 percent of the island remains without power, and food and water can be tough to find. As we rally to help the survivors and look to rebuild, we owe it to the victims there and in hurricane-ravaged Texas, Florida and elsewhere in the Caribbean to build more resilient infrastructure and prevent and reduce such destruction.

Rebuilding the electric grid in Puerto Rico will take months. But blackouts requiring weeks or months to fix are not caused by hurricanes alone. Many of the affected areas are powered by obsolete grids using fossil fuels. These fragile systems are easily knocked out by storms. We can’t eliminate hurricanes. But if we modernize the electric grid, we can stop blackouts caused by monster storms while also saving fossil fuel and reducing emissions of the greenhouse gases that warm the planet and make these storms more likely and destructive.

When one of us (Richard Branson) emerged from his cellar after riding out Hurricane Irma’s assault on Necker Island, the house and everything surrounding it was destroyed — except for the solar power array, which laid flat on ground and remained materially intact. Solar power systems survived Irma and kept working in Florida and Haiti. While Hurricane Harvey cut some Texas power lines, no wind farms were destroyed.

In Victory for Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, Court Finds That Approval of Dakota Access Pipeline Violated the Law

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Victory: Ruling: Trump administration shortcut environmental review; Court seeks additional briefing on whether to shut down pipeline

Washington, D.C. —The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe won a significant victory today in its fight to protect the Tribe’s drinking water and ancestral lands from the Dakota Access pipeline.

A federal judge ruled that the federal permits authorizing the pipeline to cross the Missouri River just upstream of the Standing Rock reservation, which were hastily issued by the Trump administration just days after the inauguration, violated the law in certain critical respects.

In a 91-page decision, Judge James Boasberg wrote, “the Court agrees that [the Corps] did not adequately consider the impacts of an oil spill on fishing rights, hunting rights, or environmental justice, or the degree to which the pipeline’s effects are likely to be highly controversial.” The Court did not determine whether pipeline operations should be shut off and has requested additional briefing on the subject and a status conference next week.

Indian state will pay farmers to go 100% organic and GMO-free

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by: Vicki Batts Is India on its way to becoming an entirely organic nation? Just over two years ago, in September 2014, the Indian Government launched their revolutionary  Rastriya Krishi Vikas Yojana (National Agriculture Development Program) as a way to encourage organic farming, and decrease dependence on chemical agents. In January 2015,  the state of Sikkim […]

Scientists Design Electricity Generator that Mimics Trees

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biomimetic tree's leaves

Money doesn’t grow on trees, but electricity might someday. Iowa State University scientists have built a device that mimics the branches and leaves of a cottonwood tree and generates electricity when its artificial leaves sway in the wind. Michael McCloskey, an associate professor of genetics, development and cell biology who led the design of the […]

The Physicians for Responsible Medicine’s Compendium Demonstrating Risks and Harms of Fracking

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The Physicians for Responsible Medicine (www.PSR.org) have complied scientific studies related to the impacts of fracking. The conclusion is that the technology as done today nation wide, has inherent deleterious health and environmental impacts.

There is no such thing as safe fracking!!! From health impacts, to contamination of drinking water, methane gas pollution, geological agitation, increased earthquakes, the compendium PSR has created should be used by every State and County fighting to place a complete moratorium on all fractured rock gas extraction.

Compendium of Scientific, Medical and Media Findings Demonstrating Risks and Harms of Fracking
(Using Unconventional Gas and Oil Extraction), Fourth Edition, November 17, 2016

Existence is a Continuum, Dr. Zohara Writes

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Dr. Zohara Hieronimus’ article Existence is a Continuum appears in the Winter 2016 issue of Species Link Journal. She writes:

“Animals, like indigenous tribal people, view existence and non-existence as a continuum. Animals, like many in the human population, are more concerned about the entire Earth and its ecosystems than themselves specifically. For instance, Bear, Wolf, Lion, Elephant, Whale, and Bison are all apex animals in their ecosystems. If any of them become extinct, everything under these capstone species dis­assembles. Their message to us, as I write about in my upcoming book on the White Spirit Animals, is ‘to save as many of us as you can.'” Read the full article.

Regenerative Agriculture: our best shot at cooling the planet?

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by Jason Hickel

It’s getting hot out there. For a stretch of 16 months running through August 2016, new global temperature records were set every month.[1] Ice cover in the Arctic sea hit a new low this past summer, at 525,000 square miles less than normal.[2] And apparently we’re not doing much to stop it: according to Professor Kevin Anderson, one of Britain’s leading climate scientists, we’ve already blown our chances of keeping global warming below the “safe” threshold of 1.5 degrees.[3]

If we want to stay below the upper ceiling of 2 degrees, though, we still have a shot. But it’s going to take a monumental effort. Anderson and his colleagues estimate that in order to keep within this threshold, we need to start reducing emissions by a sobering 8-10% per year, from now until we reach “net zero” in 2050.[4] If that doesn’t sound difficult enough, here’s the clincher: efficiency improvements and clean energy technologies will only win us reductions of about 4% per year at most.

Positive Thinking in a Dark Age

By in Environmental Justice, Featured Homepage Items, Spiritual Practice

Santhosh Sivaramalingam Connection with Nature

by Jim Tull

I recall a Buddhist parable involving a stick that appears from a distance to be a snake, causing fear to rise in the perceiver. As the perception shifts upon closer examination, the fear subsides and the relieved hiker continues down the path. Understanding and awareness have a lot to do with how we feel and how we act. As hosts to the dominant cultural mindset (our collective understanding of who we are in the universe), our minds play a critical part in both perpetuating our dominant way of life and also in shifting away from it. And so it’s just possible that I have performed no greater service in my three decades of activism than to simply challenge myself and others to consider the possibility that the social systems that support us and we sustain are inherently incapable of meeting basic human needs and that we must make a fresh start, in a sense, if we are to survive this century and prosper thereafter.

These systems are the largely invisible, cyclical patterns of interaction among and within society’s individuals, institutions and principalities. They include small town school systems all the way out to our globalized economic system and to the mother of them all, our globalized monoculture. You need to perceive the stick as a stick before you can confidently move on, and this consideration is a critical step in transforming the way we live.

The Great Deceleration

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Wrong Way traffic sign

by Alex Jensen

In 2015, a major study of 24 indicators of human activity and environmental decline titled ‘The Great Acceleration’ concluded that, “The last 60 years have without doubt seen the most profound transformation of the human relationship with the natural world in the history of humankind”.[1] We have all seen aspects of these trends, but to look at the study’s 24 graphs together is to apprehend, at a glance, the totality of the monstrous scale and speed of modern economic activity. According to lead author W. Steffen, “It is difficult to overestimate the scale and speed of change. In a single lifetime humanity has become a planetary-scale geological force.”[2]

Every indicator of intensity and scale of economic activity — from global trade and investment to water and fertilizer use, from pollution of every sort to destruction of environments and biodiversity — has shot up, precipitously, beginning around 1950. The graphs for every such trend point skyward still.

Bayer and Monsanto: A Marriage Made in Hell

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by Martha Rosenberg and Ronnie Cummins

The two multinationals that teamed up during the Vietnam War to poison millions of people with their Agent Orange herbicide—St. Louis, Mo.-based Monsanto and Germany’s Bayer AG—are looking to become one.

Bayer has announced a bid to buy Monsanto in a deal that would expand Bayer’s GMO and pesticide holdings and add drugs to Monsanto’s global portfolio. Monsanto has rejected the latest bid, but the two are still in talks.

If Monsanto, perhaps the most hated GMO company in the world, joins hands with Bayer, one of the most hated Big Pharma corporations on Earth (whose evil deeds date back to World War I and the Nazi era), the newly formed seed-pesticide-drug behemoth would have combined annual sales of $67 billion.

That’s a staggering figure. But here’s another, even more alarming: Combined, the new mega-chemical/seed company would control 29 percent of the world’s seed market and 24 percent of the pesticide market.

Bison Bison Bison

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By Elif Batuman for the New Yorker
On Monday, President Obama signed legislation honoring the American bison, also known as the buffalo, as this country’s first national mammal. In temperament, physique, and symbolism, it is difficult to imagine a creature more starkly different from the bald eagle, which has been our national animal since 1782. (The new law does not affect the eagle’s status.) A raptor known for its razorlike talons and visual acuity, the eagle has served as the imperial standard of the Roman legions, the Byzantine Empire, the Spanish Army, and many other forces. Not so the bison, North America’s largest land mammal, which weighs in at as much as a ton.

Bison closer to ‘national mammal’ status after House vote

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Bison CNN

U.S. may soon have a national mammal

(CNN) The U.S. House voted Tuesday evening to adopt the North American bison as the national mammal of the United States, bringing the iconic animal one step closer to receiving the recognition many groups have pushed for.

The National Bison Legacy Act, which must get Senate approval before heading to the President’s desk for his signature, aims to honor the historical and contemporary significance of the majestic animal.
“No other indigenous species tells America’s story better than this noble creature,” Rep. William Lacy Clay, D-Missouri, said in a statement.

Clay and several other members of the House and the Senate across both parties wrote and co-sponsored the bill.

“The American bison is an enduring symbol of strength, native American culture and the boundless Western wildness,” Clay said.

“It is an integral part of the still largely untold story of Native Americans and their historic contributions to our national identity.”

Be part of making Earth History Now!

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catalog earth

Support Catalog.Earth, a project by David Al-Ibrahim and Saba Singh.

“It’s called Catalog.Earth. Our mission is to preserve some of the world’s most endangered landscapes in 360 video before they are destroyed by deforestation, climate change, and even warfare. We are trying to build a virtual and lasting archive of these perishable places, where anyone (students, artists, scientists, non-profits, etc.) can access and use the footage for free.” This would be part of a commons audio, visual library of our Planet now, for the future.

View the Kick Starter. www.catalog.earth

Check it out and please forward to anyone you think might be interested in supporting this beautiful effort. We are and hope you be will too.

Drs. Bob and Zoh Hieronimus

Changing Everything

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by Local Futures

Among climate change activists, solutions usually center on a transition to renewable energy. There may be differences over whether this would be best accomplished by a carbon tax, bigger subsidies for wind and solar power, divestment from fossil fuel companies, massive demonstrations, legislative fiat or some other strategy, but the goal is generally the same: replace dirty fossil fuels with clean renewable energy. Such a transition is often given a significance that goes well beyond its immediate impact on greenhouse gas emissions: it would somehow make our exploitative relationship to Nature more environmentally sound, our relationship to each other more socially equitable. In part this is because the fossil fuel corporations – symbolized by the remorseless Koch brothers – will be a relic of the past, replaced by ‘green’ corporations and entrepreneurs that display none of their predecessors’ ruthlessness and greed.

Maybe, but I have my doubts.

Pro-GMO Train Running Off Its Track

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By Dr. Mercola

During the 2013 ballot campaign to label genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in Washington State, the Grocery Manufacturers Association (GMA) resorted to an illegal money-laundering scheme to protect the identity of members who donated funds to the opposing campaign.

Several major food companies had experienced major backlash from consumers who felt betrayed when their contributions to the 2012 anti-labeling campaign in California came to light.

Those donating to the Washington campaign certainly wanted to avoid the same fate. Fortunately, their scheme did not go unnoticed.

On October 16, 2013, Attorney General Bob Ferguson filed suit against the GMA on behalf of the State of Washington, alleging the association had violated the state’s campaign disclosure laws — both by failing to register a political committee, and by concealing the true source of its campaign funds.

According to Ferguson, the GMA began plotting and planning how to best defeat Initiative 522 back in December of 2012, placing particular emphasis on the establishment of a separate GMA fund to “combat current threats and better shield individual companies from attack.”

TAKE ACTION TODAY! Dial 888-897-0174 to call your Senators, and ask them to reject Sen. Roberts’ version of the DARK Act, and to oppose any compromise that would block or delay Vermont’s GMO labelling law. You can also sign the OCA’s petition to the Senate.

White Spirit Animals – Dr. Zohara’s New Book to be Released in 2017

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Dr. Zohara Meyerhoff Hieronimus, D.H.L, has been writing her book about the White Spirit Animals for two years (working title: White Spirit Animals: Prophets of the Wild, to be released in 2017 by Bear & Co.), discovering as Shamans do, that dreams are a bridge between all species and make it possible for everyone to talk with animals. “What I have learned is that animals know their own pre-Ice Age history and share it willingly with humans who listen. All of the White spirit animals are apex guardians of entire ecosystems. We must do everything we can to protect the Lion, Bear, Wolf, Bison, Elephant and Whale as each presides over Earth’s major ecosystems, which, without them, will collapse more rapidly.”

All of the White Spirit animals and their species have come to tell humanity “Save as many of us as you can.” Zohara’s book covers indigenous people’s prophecies about these times and why the White Spirit animals are coming to us now with vital messages. “The Primary message they bring us is that the earth needs CPR: Conservation, Preservation, and Restoration”, a message Wolf brought to Dr. Z in one of her recent dreams. In her new book Dr. Zohara teaches how to use dreams to retrieve information about any subject and how to listen and talk with the animals.

Zohara’s Author page at Inner Traditions

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