How the Media Prevents Meaningful Discussion About the Environment

Alex Pietrowski

For a normal human being who understands the value of having clean air and water to consume, clean soil to grow food in, and of living in a habitat that can support life, it is frustrating to watch one environmental calamity occur, after another without ever seeing a mainstream, non-politicized conversation about the condition of our natural world. It seems that merely expressing concern over the direction the environment is going is enough to solicit a number of stigmatized labels, such as hippie, liberal, terrorist, downer, debbie-downer, slacker, tree-hugger, climate changer, Al Gore, global warmer, Agenda 21′er, and so on. There is an extreme cultural bias against environmentalism, from many angles. Environmentalism is not a public priority.

What is at the root of this indifference toward the quality of our natural world? We certainly are a society that is highly preoccupied with security, but, for some reason, when it comes to securing a healthy environment, most of us look the other way, or put these concerns well below others.

USGS: Glyphosate pollutes air, rain and rivers in US

Rady Ananda, Contributing Writer

Two new studies by the U.S. Geological Survey reveal the pervasive spread of the biocide, glyphosate, mostly used as a weedkiller for crops genetically engineered to resist it.

Used in formulations by Monsanto, Bayer, Dow and others, glyphosate has been linked to spontaneous abortions in livestock, birth defects in humans, insect resistance, and weed resistance.

Worse, regulators have known for years of these links, Earth Open Source reported.

Living Economies: Learning from the Biosphere

How we humans can redesign our failing systems by turning back to nature—and learning to live by the rules of life.

David Korten
Yes Magazine

My favorite definition of life comes from evolutionary biologist Lynn Margulies: “Life is matter with the capacity to choose.”

The intricate self-organizing structure of Earth’s biosphere is the product of life’s extraordinary 3.5 billion year evolutionary quest to explore and expand the possibilities of its capacity to choose. The result is a complex and highly sophisticated fractal structure of nested, self-reliant, progressively smaller-scale ecosystems, each exquisitely adapted to its particular place on Earth to optimize the capture of energy to sustain matter in a living choice-making state.

To this end, trillions upon trillions of cells, organisms, and communities of organisms engage in an exquisite continuing dance of cooperative exchange. Each participant in this dance maintains its own identity and vitality while contributing to the needs of its neighbors and to the balance, stability, and resilience of the whole.

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The Reality of Environmental Destruction; Nature Doesn't Care What You Believe

"THE LAST TREE"  Text & Graphics © by: Richard W. Posner

Richard William Posner
Activist Post

A Simple, Fun Project You Can Try At Home!

For those of you who believe that global environmental issues are something you needn't think about, I have a small experiment you can try that might serve to enlighten you. 

Hop in your 10-mpg SUV and motor on down to that most magnificent monster of monuments to consumerism, your local WalMart, and buy yourself a fishbowl. Not an aquarium, just a regular little goldfish bowl. 

Then, so you’ll have a reason for owning a fishbowl, purchase a few goldfish. Don't get anything fancy or expensive. This is not a long-term investment. Get a little fish food while you’re at it. You won’t need much. 

Take your purchases home, fill the bowl with water, toss in the fish and cover the top of the bowl. Feed your new guests as often as you like. That’s all. Don’t do anything else. Don’t clean or replace the water. Don’t use any pumps or filters. Don't uncover the top. Just leave the fish, whatever waste they produce and the water. 

Watch what happens to your new finny friends. Before too long they’ll all be floating belly up in the stinking, oxygen depleted, poisonous mess their fishbowl environment has become.

This planet we live on (Earth in case you’re unsure) is our fishbowl. Our atmosphere holds most of the poison we pump into it for a very long time. The effect is exponentially cumulative. Our environment is just as finite and just as easily poisoned as the one in that goldfish bowl and, if we don't clean up our act, we'll be just as dead as the late goldfish gang.

Interstates and States of Grief (Video)

Editor's Note:  A powerful and masterful use of words and an even more powerful message!

On US Interstates, we meet the US empire coming towards us. In this evocative video, we meet confederate ghosts and demons of consumer emptiness. We travel down the highway, propelled by engines of extinction, towards empire's end, where we find ourselves bearing much grief yet are stranded amid ferocious beauty. 
Interstates and States of Grief from Phil & Angela Rockstroh on Vimeo.

Vimeo

Interstates and States of Grief from Phil & Angela Rockstroh on Vimeo.

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Industrial Agriculture Destroying Topsoil and Polluting Water (Video)

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Fracking nightmare destroys small farmers

Fracking Pollution

Barbara Peterson
FarmWars

As if we didn’t have enough problems with the fake food safety bill, a genetically modified food takeover by the USDA’s terrorist arm Monsanto, chemtrails dumping aluminum, barium, and strontium on farmland, and Japan’s radioactivity spreading across the country, now we have a huge fracking (hydrolic fracture mining) nightmare that is threatening to destroy our farmland with poisoned water. And just what is the government going to do about this? Why, support it of course! Introducing  H.R. 1380:

H.R. 1380:    New Alternative Transportation to Give Americans Solutions Act of 2011. To amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to encourage alternative energy investments and job creation. http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h112-1380

But what does such a “green” sounding bill have to do with fracking and destroying farmland?

House Resolution 1380, given the feel-good moniker of the “New Alter­native Transportation to Give Americans Solutions Act ” or “NAT GAS Act,” was announced on Wed­nesday, April 6, in the U. S. House of Representatives. The bill is 24-pages long and rewards the fracking industry with tax credits and products to help “drive” consumption. The bigger the vehic­le, the more tax credits given.This initiative to expand the controversial fracking process — which has already resulted in contaminated wells and rivers and even ignitable tap water for some — is being spearheaded in Con­gress by Reps. John Sullivan (R-Oklahoma), Dan Boren (D-Oklahoma), John Larson (D-Connecticut), and Kevin Brady (R-Texas). The bill has 77 co-sponsors, with 40 Democrats in sup­port, and 37 Republicans, from 33 different states. http://truthout.org/fracking-insiders-score-big-new-gas-bill-americans-not-told-true-costs-massive-drilling-plan/1302246

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The Foolishness of Congress Forcing CFL Light Bulbs (Video)

Youtube

Former Bush EPA Official Says Fracking Exemption Went Too Far; Congress Should Revisit

Abrahm Lustgarten
ProPublica

When Benjamin Grumbles was assistant administrator for water at the Environmental Protection Agency in the George W. Bush administration, he oversaw the release of a 2004 EPA report that determined that hydraulic fracturing was safe for drinking water. Then he watched as Congress used those findings to bolster the case for passing a law that prohibited the EPA from regulating fracking under the Safe Drinking Water Act.

In two interviews with ProPublica -- the first on June 29, 2009, soon after he left the EPA, and the second on March 5, 2011 -- Grumbles ponders the criticism leveled at the 2004 study and suggests that it's now time for Congress and the EPA to take another look at hydraulic fracturing. Our questions, and his answers, have been combined and edited for length to the version you see here. Grumbles is currently on the board of the Clean Water America Alliance, a group focusing on water sustainability issues. He has also served as head of Arizona's Department of Environmental Quality.

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Leading environmental campaigners flip-flop to support nuclear power and GM foods

Editor's Note: This propaganda alert claims the environmental movement has been wrong for decades in opposing GMO foods and nuclear power.  It's a clear indication that the real environmental movement has been hijacked by the crowd that promotes CO2 as more dangerous than depleted uranium, or genetically-mutated pesticide-ready crops.  It's convenient for the establishment to force the world's population to choose between the lesser of their two evils, both of which thoroughly enrich them and continue to poison the planet.

Leading environmental campaigners have performed a u-turn on two key technologies they have opposed for decades by openly calling for greater use of nuclear power and genetically modified crops to help the world tackle climate change.

PA image

Richard Gray
Telegraph

For years they campaigned against nuclear power and genetically-modified food. But now some leading environmental campaigners have performed a U-turn and said that they got it wrong.

The activists now say that by opposing nuclear power they encouraged the use of polluting coal-fired power stations, while by protesting against GM crops they prevented developing countries from benefiting from a technology that could have helped feed the hungry.

Mark Lynas, a campaigner who has been a member of action groups on GM foods and climate change, said the environmental lobby was losing the battle for public opinion on climate change because it had made too many apocalyptic prophecies and exaggerated claims.

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