| Wednesday, September 7, 2005 |  |
| Dennis Kucinich: Hurricane Katrina: Bush's Indifference | 2 comments |
| 7 Sep 2005 @ 19:33 Hurricane Katrina: Bush's Indifference is a "Weapon of Mass Destruction" PRESS RELEASE SEPTEMBER 2, 2005 12:20 PM CONTACT: Congressman Dennis Kucinich Doug Gordon (202) 225-5871 Floor Statement of Congressman Dennis J. Kucinich: The Supplemental for Hurricane Katrina WASHINGTON - September 2 - Congressman Dennis J. Kucinich (D-OH) gave the following speech today on the House floor during a special session to provide relief money for the victims of Hurricane Katrina: ³This amount of money is only a fraction of what is needed and everyone here knows it. Let it go forward quickly with heart-felt thanks to those who are helping to save lives with necessary food, water, shelter, medical care and security. Congress must also demand accountability with the appropriations. Because until there are basic changes in the direction of this government, this tragedy will multiply to apocalyptic proportions. ³The Administration yesterday said that no one anticipated the breach of the levees. Did the Administration not see or care about the 2001 FEMA warning about the risk of a devastating hurricane hitting the people of New Orleans? Did it not know or care that civil and army engineers were warning for years about the consequences of failure to strengthen the flood control system? Was it aware or did it care that the very same Administration which decries the plight of the people today, cut from the budget tens of millions needed for Gulf-area flood control projects? ³Countless lives have been lost throughout the South with a cost of hundreds of billions in ruined homes, businesses, and the destruction of an entire physical and social infrastructure. ³The President said an hour ago that the Gulf Coast looks like it has been obliterated by a weapon. It has. Indifference is a weapon of mass destruction. ³Our indifferent government is in a crisis of legitimacy. If it continues to ignore its basic responsibility for the health and welfare of the American people, will there ever be enough money to clean up after their indifference? ³As our government continues to squander human and monetary resources of this country on the war, people are beginning to ask, ³Isn¹t it time we began to take care of our own people here at home? Isn¹t it time we rescued our own citizens? Isn¹t it time we fed our own people? Isn¹t it time we sheltered our own people? Isn¹t it time we provided physical and economic security for our own people?² And isn¹t it time we stopped the oil companies from profiting from this tragedy? ³We have plenty of work to do here at home. It is time for America to come home and take care of its own people who are drowning in the streets, suffocating in attics, dying from exposure to the elements, oppressed by poverty and illness, wracked with despair and hunger and thirst. ³The time is NOW to bring back to the United States the 78,000 National Guard troops currently deployed overseas into the Gulf Coast region. ³The time is NOW to bring back to the US the equipment which will be needed for search and rescue, for clean up and reclamation. ³The time is NOW for federal resources, including closed Army bases, to be used for temporary shelter for those who have been displaced by the hurricane. ³The time is NOW to plan massive public works, with jobs going to the people of the Gulf Coast states, to build new levees, new roads, bridges, libraries, schools, colleges and universities and to rebuild all public institutions, including hospitals. Medicare ought to be extended to everyone, so every person can get the physical and mental health care they might need as a result of the disaster. ³The time is NOW for the federal government to take seriously the research of scientists who have warned for years about the dangers of changes in the global climate, and to prepare other regions of the country for other possible weather disasters until we change our disastrous energy policies. ³The time is NOW for changes in our energy policy, to end the domination of oil and fossil fuel and to invest heavily in alternative energy, including wind and solar, geothermal and biofuels. ³As bad as this catastrophe will prove to be, it is in fact only a warning. Our government must change its direction, it must become involved in making America a better place to live, a place where all may survive and thrive. It must get off the path of war and seek the path of peace, peace with the natural environment, peace with other nations, peace with a just economic system.² More > |
| Hollywood Calls for Action on Perchlorate | 1 comment |
| 7 Sep 2005 @ 19:32 Hollywood Calls for Action on Perchlorate August 30, 2005 For further information contact: Sujatha Jahagirdar (323) 309-6120 (cello) Lucy Williams, (213)251-3688 x312 Hollywood Calls for Schwarzenegger to Take Action on Rocket Fuel in Colorado River Letter signed by Erin Brockovich, Don Cheadle, Alec Baldwin, others calls for perchlorate drinking water standard that will ensure full cleanup of vital waterway Close to twenty members of the entertainment community, including Maria Bello, Edward Norton and Bradley Whitford submitted a letter to Governor Schwarzenegger today, calling for immediate action to clean up rocket fuel contamination of the Colorado River. The letter asked the Governor to immediately establish a drinking water standard for perchlorate, the primary component of rocket fuel at a level that would force the primary company responsible for the contamination, Kerr McGee, to fully clean up the millions of pounds of rocket fuel it has leaked into the river over decades. "The Schwarzenegger administration should protect our children and not the special interests and get rocket fuel out of drinking water," stated actors Shiva Rose and Dylan McDermott, who also signed the letter. The administration is moving toward proposing its final standard for perchlorate in drinking water this fall. A final standard issued at the level of the state's health recommendation may leave millions of Californians exposed to Kerr McGee's rocket fuel pollution. A December Environmental Protection Agency reports lists the maximum level of perchlorate in the Colorado River at Parker Dam at 5.7 ppb, just under the new health recommendation. "Rocket fuel has no place in Southern California¹s most important water supply." stated Sujatha Jahagirdar, Clean Water Advocate for Environment California. "The River provides water to more than 135 California cities, irrigates much of the nation¹s winter produce, and supports a $400 billion Southern California economy." Perchlorate can interfere with the working of the thyroid gland, which is essential to normal brain development in children. An abnormal level of hormones produced by the thyroid gland has been linked to conditions like attention deficit disorder and learning disabilities. Massachusetts regulators have suggested one part per billion as a safer threshold to protect babies. When adjusted to protect infants and account for exposure through food, recent EPA and National Academy of Sciences studies point to the same. Contaminated water from the Colorado River is currently used to irrigate most of the nation's winter produce crops. Tests conducted by the United States Department of Agriculture have detected perchlorate pollution in lettuce throughout the country. A January study released by Texas Tech University also found perchlorate build up in the milk of nursing mothers. In addition, polluted water from the Colorado River used the recharge groundwater is the suspected source of perchlorate contamination in Orange County. "The bottom line is that any rocket fuel pollution in the Colorado River is unacceptable." stated Jahagirdar, co-author of the recent Environment California Research & Policy Center study, Perchlorate and Children¹s Health. "As the people's governor, Mr. Schwarzenegger needs to focus attention on cleaning up the most important water supply that Southern Californians have." The full list of signers is: Alec Baldwin, Ed Begley Jr., Maria Bello, Erin Brockovich, Don Cheadle, Rebecca DeMornay, Mike Farrell, Janet Grillo, Harry Hamlin, Dylan McDermott, Wendie Malick, Edward Norton, Lisa Rinna, Shiva Rose, David O Russell, Amy Smart, Heather Thomas, Bradley Whitford, and Daphne Zuniga More > |
| Worldwide Volunteers on Organic Farms: Training the Next Generation of Farmers | 33 comments |
| 7 Sep 2005 @ 19:31 Worldwide Volunteers on Organic Farms: Training the Next Generation of Farmers From: www.NewFarm.org (Rodale Institute) WWOOFing and beyond From one-week volunteer farm stays to three-year diploma courses, the world of international organic ag training opportunities is growing fast. By Laura Sayre September 1, 2005 Young people from all over the world are finding ways to combine international travel with practical farming experience. Amy Sisti had been working with cheese for six years in some of New York City's finest restaurants and retail shops when she decided she "wanted to get back to the roots of it all." "I always loved learning about the stories behind different types of foods," Sisti recalls. "One of the things I liked about cheese is that it has great stories stories." Through a group called Women Chefs & Restaurateurs, Sisti learned about an internship program at the Tenuta di Spannocchia, an educational center, organic farm and guest house in Tuscany, Italy. Spannocchia offers three-month internships to young people interested in getting hands-on experience in organic farming and in what might be called sustainable agritourism management. Sisti applied, was accepted and set off on what turned out to be one of the best experiences of her life. Working and traveling in Italy not only gave her the connection to the land she was looking for, she says, it also deepened her understanding of cheesemaking and strengthened her contacts within the world of farmstead cheese production. "The Spannocchia program is really well designed," she says enthusiastically. "We worked hard, but we also had a lot of free time," she adds, explaining that Spannocchia interns attend Italian classes twice a week and take regular field trips to other organic farms in the region. Ten interns are accepted each session: two to work in guest services, two in the vegetable gardens, one as a shepherd, two with the other animals, one in the wood lot, one in the vineyard and one as an all-rounder. The Spannocchia internship is becoming increasingly competitive, says Carrie Curtis Sacco, the organization's education director people have romantic images of life under the Tuscan sun. Sisti and her fellow interns are representative of a growing group of young people from all over the world who are keen to enrich their knowledge of sustainable food and farming systems by combining international travel with practical farm work. Fortunately, the range of opportunities for international sustainable ag training short-, long- and medium-term The WWOOF model In the early years of the organic movement, one of the few ways to gain international organic farming experience was through WWOOFing work in exchange for room-and-board arrangements made through a membership network originally known as Working Weekends on Organic Farms. Founded in 1971 by Sue Coppard, a London secretary looking for inexpensive, rewarding short breaks in the countryside, the WWOOF name was later broadened to Willing Workers on Organic Farms (to reflect farmstays longer than a weekend) and more recently to Worldwide Opportunities on Organic Farms (to soothe the concerns of some countries' immigration authorities). The WWOOFing movement has spread to some 60 countries, with hundreds if not thousands of farms and volunteers participating each year. These days "the sun probably never sets on WWOOF." From those modest beginnings, the movement has spread to some 60 countries, with hundreds if not thousands of farms and volunteers participating each year. At least 17 countries now have their own national WWOOF organizations, while another 40 or so are grouped as "WWOOF Independents." While some of the latter have just a single participating farm (Cameroon, Estonia, Singapore), others, like France and Spain, have well over a hundred farms on their lists. As the WWOOF UK website puts it, these days "the sun probably never sets on WWOOF." The popularity of WWOOFing seems to have been expanding faster in the past decade or so, keeping pace with the extraordinary growth of the organic sector generally. WWOOF Italia, for example, has grown from 23 host farms in 1999 to 230 in 2005, according to its coordinator, Bridget Matthews. (The Tenuta di Spannocchia is one of them.) Fran Whittle of WWOOF UK, which also administers the WWOOF Independents, reports that the first international WWOOF conference, held in 2000, attracted participants from 15 countries. New WWOOF groups have recently been formed in Turkey, Mexico, Slovenia and the Czech Republic. (Past issues of The New Farm have featured columns by WWOOFers traveling in Costa Rica, India, and beyond. "Jason and Derek reflect on their travels" , for example, includes an informative summary of the ups and downs of WWOOFing.) Aspiring organic farmer Hope Temple, a native of Virginia who went WWOOFing for the first time in New Zealand in February and March of 2005, says her primary goal was to learn more about medium- to large-scale, grass-based sheep and cattle production heard "phenomenal things about the land itself rural, and beautiful." She wasn't disappointed. She worked on four farms, ranging in size from 150 acres to 70,000 acres, for a total of six weeks included mustering 3,000 sheep from a 900-acre 'block' in the early morning, shearing sheep using clippers, and driving sheep through the working pens to sort lambs from mothers, sick from healthy, young from old," she recalls. Temple's advice to prospective WWOOFers is to "research carefully and reach out, early, to a large number of farms. I have a significant farming background, so this helped me get selected for stays in some more competitive places." As with any type of travel, she adds, you need to ask yourself what you want to get out of it: "education, vacation, a diversity of experiences, or a more grounded, in-depth experience. Working on a large number of farms will give you less knowledge, but you will see more examples of farming and probably, literally, more of a country." One complaint occasionally heard about WWOOFing is that at least in some countries, the farms that accept WWOOFers and at times unreliable volunteer labor "lifestyle" farms run by ex-pats, as opposed to production-oriented family farms more typical of the host country. But programs and participants vary widely. In New Zealand, for instance, according to Temple, WWOOF listings included everything from small yoga retreat centers to vast sheep ranches, not all of them organic. WWOOFing demands flexibility and open-mindedness on the part of both host farmers and farm volunteers, WWOOFers say, and can lead to many wonderful as well as occasional not-so-wonderful experiences. Perhaps most importantly, WWOOF UK¹s Whittle points out, as a movement the organization has contributed thousands of hours of labor and innumerable exchanges of insight and good will to the collective force of organic stewardship. RESOURCES Spannocchia Foundation www.spannocchia.org Multinational Exchange for Sustainable Agriculture (MESA) www.mesaprogram.org European Network for Organic Agriculture Students (ENOAS) www.enoas.org Willing Workers on Organic Farms (WWOOF) www.wwoof.org Emerson College Biodynamic Training www.emerson.org.uk/ fulltimecourses/bio.htm AGROASIS www.agroasis.org Laura Sayre is senior writer for NewFarm.org. CLICK TO READ More > |
| Jeremy Rifkin: The Controversy After the Storm | 5 comments |
| 7 Sep 2005 @ 19:29 Jeremy Rifkin: The Controversy After the Storm From: Published on Tuesday, September 6, 2005 by The Chosun (Korea) Global Warming Hits New Orleans: The Controversy After the Storm by Jeremy Rifkin First the deafening roar of Katrina bearing down at 145 miles per hour on the gulf coast of the United States. Now the eerie silence, as victims wash ashore and out to sea. And in the aftermath, it seems that all of official Washington is holding its breath, less the dirty little secret gets out: that Katrina is the entropy bill for increasing CO2 emissions and global warming. The scientists have been warning us for years. They said to keep our eyes on the Caribbean where the dramatic effects of climate change are first likely to show up in the form of more severe and even catastrophic hurricanes. Indeed. Over the course of the past several years, hurricane activity and intensity has picked up in the Caribbean basin. Now the killer storm Katrina has hit with a vengeance, exacting incomprehensible devastation on a wide swath of the southeastern portion of the United States. The reality is, Katrina will be looked back on as a “tipping point” of the fossil fuel era the moment when the American public began to discard the comfortable myth that the end of the oil era and the cataclysmic effects of global warming lie far in the distant future. The future arrived on the shores of Lake Ponchartrain with a giant wave of water rushing through the streets of New Orleans, wreaking destruction and havoc on the low-lying lands of the Mississippi gulf region on Monday, August 29th and the result is that America and the world have changed forever. Katrina is not just bad luck, nature’s occasional surprise thrust on an unsuspecting humanity. Make no mistake about it. We created this monster storm. We’ve known about the potentially devastating impact of global warming for nearly a generation. Yet, we turned up the throttle, as if to say, we just don’t give a damn. What did we expect? 52% of all the vehicles owned in America are SUVs, each a death engine, spewing record amounts of CO2 into the earth’s atmosphere. How do we explain to our children that we Americans represent less than 5% of the population of the world, but devour more than 1/4 of the fossil fuel energy produced each year. How do we say to the grieving relatives of the victims whose lives were lost in the hurricane that we were too selfish to even allow a modest 5 cent additional tax on a gallon of gasoline to encourage energy conservation? And when our neighbors in Europe and around the world ask why the American public was so unwilling to make global warming a priority by signing on to the Kyoto Treaty on climate change, what do we tell them? In the coming days and weeks, millions of Americans will rush to the assistance of the victims of hurricane Katrina with offerings of food, shelter and financial assistance. Natural calamities bring out the best of the American character. We pride ourselves on being there for our fellow human beings when they cry out for help. Why can’t we muster up the same passionate response when the earth itself is crying out for help? Shame on the United State of America and the peoples of other countries we’re not alone who have put their personal short-term whims and gratifications ahead of the welfare of the planet. Of course, now even we are paying the price. We’re caught up now between two storm fronts. On the one hand, global oil demand is, for the first time in history, eclipsing global oil supply. The price of a barrel of oil is hovering at $70.00 on world markets. Gasoline and heating oil are rising as fast as the flood waters in the gulf-states, in part because the storm knocked out oil rigs across the Gulf of Mexico and crippled a large portion of our gasoline refining facilities. We are entering the last few decades of the oil era, with ominous consequences for the future of a global economy run virtually entirely on fossil fuels. While our petro-geologists are not sure when global oil production will peak the point when half the world’s recoverable oil is used up it’s clear to all but the few delusional souls in the oil industry that the beginning of the end is in sight. On the other hand, our Biosphere is convulsing from the buildup of CO2 gases, and there is nowhere to hide or escape. Our planet is heating up, trapping all of us in an unpredictable new period in history. There will be thousands of memorial services in coming weeks to pay respects to the dead, the missing and the injured. There will be hand-wringing and recrimination. The public will demand to know why the dikes protecting New Orleans and the gulfport region failed. Why necessary precautions weren’t taken to lessen the impact of Katrina. Why the relief effort was too little, too late. Still, what we are not likely to hear from President Bush and The White House or from business leaders, or for that matter from all of us still driving our SUVs is a collective “we’re sorry!” President Bush has called on the American people in this hour of our grief to rally to the task, to help restore the dykes and causeways, patch up the streets, and rebuild the homes and communities lost in the devastation. To what end, if we leave the demon of global warming unchecked. The next time it will be a Category 5 storm or something even far worse and unimaginable. If I could get the ear of President Bush, for just a moment, here’s what I would say. Mr. President, if you had looked deeply into the eye of the storm, what you would have seen was the future demise of the planet we live on. It’s time to tell the American people and the world that the real lesson of Katrina is that we need to mobilize the talent, energy, and resolve of the American people and people everywhere to weaning ourselves off the oil spigot that’s threatening the future of every creature on earth. President Bush, spare us your homilies about American grit and determination to “weather the storm and persevere.” Instead, tell us the truth about why Katrina really happened. Ask all of us to consider a change of heart about our profligate energy-consuming lifestyles. Call on us to conserve our existing fossil fuel reserves and make sacrifices in our future use of energy. Provide us with a game plan to move America beyond fossil fuels to a new sustainable energy future based on renewable sources of energy and hydrogen power. We’re waiting. Jeremy Rifkin is the author of The Hydrogen Economy: The Creation of the World Wide Energy Web and the Redistribution of Power on Earth (Tarcher/Putnam: September 2002). Copyright 2005 Chosun Ilbo More > |
| Agribusiness Examiner: Special Issue on Aftermath of Hurricane Katrina | 0 comments |
| 7 Sep 2005 @ 19:28 Agribusiness Examiner: Special Issue on Aftermath of Hurricane Katrina |
| Smart Car | 0 comments |
 7 Sep 2005 @ 16:10The Smart Car [link] This is being distributed by Mercedes-Benz in Canada yet not in the U.S. yet. It appears to be a really efficient design. Anyone have any info. as to the ifs and whens of availability in the U.S. |