Environmental Justice

IN SUPPORT OF: Pollinator Protection Act of 2016 HB 211 — Neonicotinoid Pesticides — Labeling, Signage, and Restrictions on Sales and Use

February 8, 2016 By admin in Environmental Justice, Featured Homepage Items, Uncategorized Tags: bees, environmental issues, food safety, HB211, neonicotinoid, sustainable farming

Honorable Delegates of the Environment and Transportation Committee,

The Ruscombe Mansion Community Health Center is one of the oldest holistic healing centers in the country, serving thousands of patients each year. Healthcare practitioners and their patients at the Ruscombe Mansion Community Health Center are concerned with the growing and widespread use of toxic neonicotinoid pesticides (also referred to as neonics). This class of pesticide has been found to be harmful to managed honey bee hives, wild native bees, birds, and humans health— We respectfully urge you to support HB 211 Neonicotinoid Pesticide – Labeling Requirement (Pollinator Protection Act of 2016) to label nursery plants treated with toxic, bee-killing pesticides and restrict the non-essential, cosmetic use of products containing neonics by consumers.

Want to help save Maryland’s bees?

E-mail your support for the Pollinator Protection Act of 2016

Call: (410) 841-3990, (301) 858-3990; 1-800-492-7122, ext. 3990 (toll free)

Norway Builds World’s First Bee Superhighway

July 26, 2015 By admin in Environmental Justice, Featured Homepage Items, Sustainable Farming Tags: bees, environmental issues, food safety, organic farming, sustainable farming

In an attempt to help out dwindling bee populations, the city of Oslo has installed a new “bee highway” through the city so bees can travel safely.

According to The Local, Oslo has put clusters of bee-friendly plants every 250 meters along a path through the city, which will work as rest stops for the bees as they fly around. Bees have been dying off in large numbers in recent years, and the dwindling bee numbers are very bad news for agriculture, which depends on the insects for pollination. Bees have a difficult time in cities, where there are not a lot of nectar-rich plants around for them to eat. Oslo’s plan is to help counter that with the bee-feeding stations.

Stop Monsanto’s secret plan to Kill GMO Labeling!

July 24, 2015 By admin in Environmental Justice, Featured Homepage Items, Take Action Tags: anti-GMO, environmental issues, food safety, genetically modified foods, GMO, organic farming, sustainable farming

Breaking: The Monsanto Protection Act is Back and WORSE than ever! Once again Monsanto and giant food companies are scheming behind the scenes to pass a bill in Congress that would kill mandatory GMO labeling efforts and replace it with a gutted version that will preempt states’ rights and give the illusion of oversight. This week, Congressman Mike Pompeo (R-KS) has reintroduced an updated version of his deceptive bill, H.R. 1599, AKA the Ultimate Monsanto Protection Act, to try to convince members of Congress to violate state’s rights in an effort to kill GMO labeling.

This is a blatant power grab to deny Americans their basic right to mandatory GMO labeling and protect flawed GMO products – and we can’t allow them to get away with it. We need your help today. Every voice counts!

Learn about Propaganda for Toxic Farming

July 2, 2015 By admin in Environmental Justice, Featured Homepage Items Tags: anti-GMO, bees, Big Ag, environmental issues, food safety, sustainable farming

To make sound decisions about food and farming — from consumer decisions about food to public policies that will determine the future of our food system — it is essential to be able to separate industry spin from science and PR campaigns from public education. But today, with the industrial food sector spending hundreds of millions of dollars every year on front groups, third-party messengers, social media campaigns and other covert marketing tactics to spin the story of food, it is increasingly difficult to sort truth from fiction.

The evidence also shows that the public’s demand for organic and non-GMO food, and support for sustainable farmers and sound food policies, continues to grow. However, if industry-sponsored misinformation and covert communications is left unchecked, it may become increasingly difficult to maintain market momentum toward healthier food and build public support for policies that incentivize sustainable food and farming systems.

NASA Study Shows Antarctica’s Larsen B Ice Shelf Nearing Its Final Act

May 21, 2015 By admin in Environmental Justice, Featured Homepage Items Tags: environmental issues, global warming

A new NASA study finds the last remaining section of Antarctica’s Larsen B Ice Shelf, which partially collapsed in 2002, is quickly weakening and likely to disintegrate completely before the end of the decade.

A team led by Ala Khazendar of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, found the remnant of the Larsen B Ice Shelf is flowing faster, becoming increasingly fragmented and developing large cracks. Two of its tributary glaciers also are flowing faster and thinning rapidly.

“These are warning signs that the remnant is disintegrating,” Khazendar said. “Although it’s fascinating scientifically to have a front-row seat to watch the ice shelf becoming unstable and breaking up, it’s bad news for our planet. This ice shelf has existed for at least 10,000 years, and soon it will be gone.”

Monsanto’s Glyphosate Blankets GMO Crops Near Schools

May 11, 2015 By admin in Environmental Justice, Featured Homepage Items Tags: anti-GMO, CommonDreams, environmental issues, food safety, glyphosate, GMO, Monsanto, sustainable farming

Genetically engineered crops, or GMOs, have led to an explosion in growers’ use of herbicides, with the result that children at hundreds of elementary schools across the country go to class close by fields that are regularly doused with escalating amounts of toxic weed killers.

GMO corn and soybeans have been genetically engineered to withstand being blasted with glyphosate – an herbicide that the World Health Organization recently classified as “probably carcinogenic to humans.” The proximity of many schools to fields blanketed in the chemical puts kids at risk of exposure.

But it gets worse.

USGS links rise in earthquakes to oil & gas wastewater disposal

April 30, 2015 By admin in Environmental Justice, Featured Homepage Items Tags: earthquakes, fracking, oil & gas drilling, wastewater injection

U.S. government scientists have identified 17 areas in eight states that have seen an increase in earthquakes triggered by human practices.

Earthquake activity in the central and eastern United States has increased significantly since 2009 and this has been linked to the disposal of oil and gas wastewater by injecting it into deep wells.

The new report by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) offers a comprehensive assessment of the hazard levels associated with induced earthquakes in parts of Alabama, Arkansas, Colorado, Kansas, New Mexico, Ohio, Oklahoma and Texas.

Celebrate the Earth

April 21, 2015 By admin in Environmental Justice, Featured Homepage Items Tags: Eyes As Big as Plates, Old Finnish people wioth things on their heads

by Abby Zimet, staff writer for CommonDreams.org Amidst Earth Day rallies and concerts, celebrate our singular planet with the extraordinary photos of two Scandinavian artists documenting “the link between humanity and the natural world” in their ongoing Eyes As Big as Plates series. Occasionally popping up online as “Old Finnish People With Things on Their […]

Get live updates of Greenpeace’s journey following a Shell Arctic drilling platform

April 3, 2015 By admin in Environmental Justice, Featured Homepage Items Tags: Arctic drilling, greenpeace, save polar bears

Shell’s Arctic drilling fleet is on the move — even before the US government has approved the final permits. As you read this, Shell is transporting an oil rig, the Polar Pioneer, across the Pacific, bound for the Arctic. And six bold people are following on the Greenpeace ship Esperanza. Click here for live updates […]

Sign the 350.org Unity Letter to President to Reject Keystone XL

February 28, 2015 By admin in Environmental Justice, Featured Homepage Items, Take Action Tags: Keystone XL pipeline

Sign the letter online The long and worthy fight over the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline is at an end, and the time for a decision draws near. We appreciate your veto of the congressional bill, and we fully support an outright rejection of the permit. We have followed the question of Keystone XL’s impact […]

Pass the 2015 Pollinator Protection Act! Please Support Labeling & Restricting Bee-Killing Pesticides in Maryland

February 26, 2015 By admin in Environmental Justice, Featured Homepage Items, Take Action Tags: bees, environmental issues, food safety, pesticides, sustainable farming

The growing and widespread use of toxic neonicotinoid pesticides (“neonics”) is a major contributor to the alarming decline of honey bees. This poses a serious threat to our food supply, to wildlife and to human health. We need to pass the 2015 Pollinator Protection Act (SB163/HB605) to label nursery plants treated with toxic, bee-killing pesticides and restrict their consumer use.

Beekeepers have reported average hive losses of 30 percent or higher each year since 2006; in 2012, Maryland beekeepers lost nearly 50 percent of their hives. These numbers are simply not sustainable.

Which U.S. states have the most endangered species?

February 10, 2015 By admin in Environmental Justice, Featured Homepage Items

Here’s a graphical glimpse at America’s most endangered wildlife, where they live and how many are left. When U.S. lawmakers passed the Endangered Species Act in 1973, many of North America’s most iconic plants and animals were teetering on the brink of extinction. Some of those have since rebounded thanks to three decades of federal […]

10 cities aiming for 100 percent clean energy

February 9, 2015 By admin in Environmental Justice, Featured Homepage Items

As nation states delay, these cities have ambitious renewable energy goals.
Scientists have been fairly unequivocal in their warnings that we must ditch fossil fuels entirely if we are to have any hope of reversing climate change. Yet despite significant progress in the last year, historic announcements like the China-U.S. climate pact are still pushing a less ambitious, more incremental approach to cutting our emissions.That may be why many activists are focusing on the local, community level to push a more radical approach. As I recently reported over at TreeHugger, a new grassroots movement has launched petitions in hundreds of cities across the world calling for a transition to 100 percent renewable energy/zero emissions by 2050 at the latest. While this may have sounded like wishful thinking a few short years ago, these activists are actually building on a growing number of communities that have already taken such pledges — and some who appear to have achieved them.

So who are these leaders in the clean energy world?

EPA knew pesticides were killing honeybees in the 1970s but punished those who spoke out

October 17, 2014 By admin in Environmental Justice, Featured Homepage Items, Sustainable Farming Tags: bees, environmental issues, EPA, food safety, glyphosate

Reprinted from AHPA News September 26, 2014. By J. D. Heyes For decades, top officials at the Environmental Protection Agency (PEA) were aware that a compound approved for agricultural use in the United States was wiping out the honeybee population, but they chose to ignore the compound’s effects in deference to pressure from agri-giant corporations. […]

Help Save the Bees!

September 26, 2014 By admin in Environmental Justice, Featured Homepage Items, Sustainable Farming, Take Action Tags: bees, environmental issues, food safety, sustainable farming

Scientists know what’s killing our bees and putting our food supply at risk: An insecticide called “neonics.” But one Big Ag giant has actually asked the EPA to let it use up to 4,000% MORE of this deadly toxin! This could cripple our food supply! The EPA is taking public comments on this issue until […]

We are the Soil

July 16, 2014 By admin in Environmental Justice, Featured Homepage Items Tags: anti-GMO, environmental issues, food safety, Social Justice, sustainable farming

The claim that the Green Revolution or genetic engineering feeds the world is false. Intrinsic to these technologies are monocultures based on chemical inputs, a recipe for killing the life of the soil.

We are made up of the same five elements — earth, water, fire, air and space — that constitute the Universe. We are the soil. We are the earth. What we do to the soil, we do to ourselves. And it is no accident that the words “humus” and “humans” have the same roots.

This ecological truth is forgotten in the dominant paradigm because it is based on eco-apartheid, the false idea that we are separate and independent of the earth and also because it defines soil as dead matter. If soil is dead to begin with, human action cannot destroy its life. It can only “improve” the soil with chemical fertilisers. And if we are the masters and conquerors of the soil, we determine the fate of the soil. Soil cannot determine our fate.

History, however, is witness to the fact that the fate of societies and civilisations is intimately connected to how we treat the soil — do we relate to the soil through the Law of Return or through the Law of Exploitation and Extraction.
The Law of Return — of giving back — has ensured that societies create and maintain fertile soil and can be supported by living soil over thousands of years. The Law of Exploitation — of taking without giving back — has led to the collapse of civilisations.
Contemporary societies across the world stand on the verge of collapse as soils are eroded, degraded, poisoned, buried under concrete and deprived of life. Industrial agriculture, based on a mechanistic paradigm and use of fossil fuels has created ignorance and blindness to the living processes that create a living soil. Instead of focusing on the Soil Food Web, it has been obsessed with external inputs of chemical fertilisers — what Sir Albert Howard called the NPK mentality. Biology and life have been replaced with chemistry.

External inputs and mechanisation are imperative for monocultures. By exposing the soil to wind, sun and rain, monocultures expose the soil to erosion by wind and water.

Monsanto, Factory Farms, Climate Change and You

July 16, 2014 By admin in Environmental Justice, Featured Homepage Items, Uncategorized Tags: anti-GMO, GMO, Monsanto, Social Justice, sustainable farming

Monsanto loves to claim that its GMO crops are needed to feed the world.
But what the Gene Giants don’t want you to remember is that the chemicals they sully our food, soil, air and water with were originally developed to make bombs.
When the Big War ended, in order to keep the profits rolling in, Monsanto convinced farmers that the only way to grow food is Monsanto’s way—with GMO crops, and millions of tons of toxic chemicals.
Fast-forward to today, and the impact of Monsanto’s GMO crops can be measured in terms of degraded soil, nutrient-deficient foods, billions of sick animals on factory farms, an increasingly obese and chronically ill human population and, last but surely not least, global warming.
And we can all agree that if global warming, with its droughts and storms, continues unabated, farms and food are in trouble.
Up against multi-billion dollar corporations, what can one consumer do? Start by avoiding not only GMO-tainted foods, but all meat, eggs and dairy from factory farms. Because most GMO grains go to feed animals in factory farms, or what the industry calls CAFOs (Confined Animal Feeding Operations).
We can’t turn global warming around solely by transitioning away from fossil fuels. But we can turn it around by using nature’s natural ability to return all that carbon to the soil. And we can only do that if we abandon the factory farm model and return to sustainable, organic farming and ranching practices.

The Impossibility of Growth Demands a New Economic System

June 21, 2014 By admin in Environmental Justice, Featured Homepage Items Tags: environmental issues, oil and gas

Let us imagine that in 3030BC the total possessions of the people of Egypt filled one cubic metre. Let us propose that these possessions grew by 4.5% a year. How big would that stash have been by the Battle of Actium in 30BC? This is the calculation performed by the investment banker Jeremy Grantham(1).The trajectory of compound growth shows that the scouring of the planet has only just begun. We simply can’t go on this way.

Go on, take a guess. Ten times the size of the pyramids? All the sand in the Sahara? The Atlantic ocean? The volume of the planet? A little more? It’s 2.5 billion billion solar systems(2). It does not take you long, pondering this outcome, to reach the paradoxical position that salvation lies in collapse.

To succeed is to destroy ourselves. To fail is to destroy ourselves. That is the bind we have created. Ignore if you must climate change, biodiversity collapse, the depletion of water, soil, minerals, oil; even if all these issues were miraculously to vanish, the mathematics of compound growth make continuity impossible.

‘The Cause Is Us’: World on Verge of Sixth Extinction

June 18, 2014 By admin in Environmental Justice, Featured Homepage Items Tags: Common Dreams, environmental issues, Justice for Animals

A new study showing that the human activity has driven current rates of species extinction to 1,000 times faster than the natural rate is “alarming” and “should be a clarion call” to work towards greater conservation efforts, an environmental group charges.The study, published Thursday by the journal Science and led by conservation expert Stuart Pimm, also warns that without drastic action, the sixth mass extinction could be imminent.

From habitat loss to invasive species to climate change to overfishing, humans are contributing to the plummet in biodiversity.

This important study confirms that species are going extinct at a pace not seen in tens of millions of years, and unlike past extinction events, the cause is us,” stated Noah Greenwald, endangered species director with the Center for Biological Diversity, who was not involved in the study.

News Flash: Fukushima Is Still a Disaster

June 17, 2014 By admin in Environmental Justice, Featured Homepage Items Tags: environmental issues, Fukushima, radiation

By Harvey Wasserman

The corporate media silence on Fukushima has been deafening even though the melted-down nuclear power plant’s seaborne radiation is now washing up on American beaches.

Ever more radioactive water continues to pour into the Pacific.

At least three extremely volatile fuel assemblies are stuck high in the air at Unit 4. Three years after the March 11, 2011, disaster, nobody knows exactly where the melted cores from Units 1, 2 and 3 might be.

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