A few pies to the face greeted Thomas Friedman - New York Times columnist - as he was preparing to give the keynote address on Earth Day before a packed auditorium at Brown University.
His talk - titled “Green is the new Red White and Blue” - was about how corporate environmentalism (which would give corporations ownership of our common resources and legal rights to pollute our air and water under the facade of conservation) can restore the United States to its “natural place in the global order.”
“Luckily, this outrageous neoliberal capitalist propaganda was interrupted with a surprise visit from the Greenwash Guerrillas.”
That’s a very successful pieing. You can see Friedman flustering as he visibly debated himself about whether to continue with the speech.
And his lecture made the reasons for the pieing — his racism and imperialism — all the more apparent.
For example, two of his talking points:
“He used two hands to graph the price of oil against the freedom of the people in the country selling it, which he argued is an ‘inverse correlation.’”
“We’re going to get really super-efficient at raping the natural world,” he said during the lecture, adding that clean, cheap energy can become “a license to buy a Hummer and drive it through the Amazon.”
Right, corporations are kicking families from their homes and communities, destroying the farmland and natural environment to produce pseudo-fuels known as biofuels — e.g., corn ethanol — for fucking hummers that CEOs can then drive over the ruin they caused — a purely callous final insult.
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The Guerrillas also threw leaflets to the audience, stating: (more…)
A lifecycle analysis of the environmental impacts of the food you eat shows that transportation contributes relatively little to food’s total greenhouse gas emissions.
While food does travel an average of around 1,000 miles from the farm to the store, this transportation accounts for only 4 percent of greenhouse gases on average. Most are released during the production phase.
While travel doesn’t have a big impact on greenhouse gas emissions, the type of food eaten does. Beef and milk release the most greenhouse gases (think methane). So not only is red meat bad for your heart, it also is bad for the environment. It releases around 150 percent more greenhouse gases than chicken or fish.
Travel makes up around 1 percent of the total greenhouse gases of red meat, and 11 percent of fruits and vegetables. So if you’re already vegan, buying locally is the next step.
If you’re an omnivore, buying locally isn’t the most effective way to save the environment. Eating less meat - red meat, in particular - is the best way to reduce your carbon footprint.
Apparently, the punishment for corporate fraud is further bribery in Bush’s Department of Justice, according to a recent NYT article.
When facing charges for bribery and fraud, corporations can sideswipe criminal indictment by merely paying small token fees - “peanuts” compared to damages paid after criminal conviction.
For example, a medical supply company [Zimmer Holdings Inc.] avoided criminal prosecution by the Department of Justice by paying up to $52 million to the consulting firm of John Ashcroft, the former attorney general, to act as an “outside monitor.” Sounds like a little conflict of interest, no? or a “a backroom, sweetheart deal” in the words of the chairperson of a House Judiciary subcommittee. (more…)
Bill Clinton, who passed NAFTA during his reign, supports a free trade agreement with Colombia. The agreement would undercut environmental regulations, unions and workers’ rights to fill the pockets of multinational corporations.
Hillary Clinton says she would vote against such a deal and has recently employed a little “historical revision” to her initial stance on NAFTA, now claiming she has always had reservations about it. Will she fire her husband like she fired her top strategist Mark Penn for supporting the Colombian deal?
We’ll see if she sticks to her word. On Monday Bush sent the agreement to congress, which has 90 days to act on it.
And what about the violent oppression of trade unions in Colombia, Bush/Clinton? And NAFTA’s legacy of jobloss and economic hardship for U.S. workers and Mexican farmers?
Fortunately, Mike Michaud (D-Maine), co-founder of the House of Representatives Trade Working Group, says, “The Colombia FTA is dead on arrival.”
“I will make a commitment that Al Gore will be at the table and play a central part in us figuring out how we solve this [climate change] problem,” Barack Obama said today. [CNN Political Ticker]
I wonder if he’d ask Gore to head the EPA. Wouldn’t that be a major change for environmental health?
This latest information from CNN adopts a slightly different tone from MSNBC anchor Keith Olbermann’s ramble a few nights ago. The credulous Olbermann spent considerable time supposing a Gore victory in the democratic primary — as if it were in any way acceptable for delegates to throw away popular opinion and vote for someone who is not even running for office.
“If it goes into the convention,” said Representative Tim Mahoney (D-FL) last week, “don’t be surprised if someone different is at the top of the ticket.” [The Daily Mail]
“What? Does Olbermann smoke crack?” In the words of my friend, “Not a single democrat would be happy about that.”
The U.S. subsidies for corn producers may be having global impacts on the food supply. Many U.S. agricultural business switched from growing food crops to corn for ethanol, as a result of the federal money. Big businesses are also clear cutting the Amazon rainforest to grow what Bush touts as “alternative energy” that reduces the U.S. dependence on foreign oil.
With intensifying food shortages and mounting prices, the sad irony is that corn ethanol is a net negative for energy. Because it uses more energy to produce than it yields, it contributes to the growing energy crisis and thus further to the escalating price of food.
A new study from Texas A&M University found that the more people know about global warming the less they care about it. The researchers interviewed over a thousand people and concluded, “More informed respondents both feel less personally responsible for global warming, and also show less concern for global warming.”
That’s definitely true for me. Because I studied environmental science in college, I couldn’t seem to escape all the brouhaha about global warming. Although I agree it’s important, I just don’t personally care. There are other more immediate threats to people’s wellbeing that warrant greater attention. I can’t worry about green house gases when people are dying from treatable diseases because of the global disparities, which are reinforced by corporations and their government sponsors as they produce their next new “green” technology. (more…)
The future–meaning the past–of border control is being dug in Yuma, Arizona. Part of a greater Medieval revival in the US (torture, church & state, oligarchy), the city is borrowing from 14th century Europe in attempt to deter immigration through increased risk of death by drowning.
“The moats that I’ve seen circled the castle and allowed you to protect yourself, and that’s kind of what we’re looking at here,” Yuma county sheriff Ralph Ogden told the Associated Press.
The city is building a “security channel” along the border by replenishing a two-mile stretch of the Colorado river. The excavated soil would form two 15-foot high walls on both sides of the 400-foot wide area.
The investigators contacted 62 municipalities, but only 28 had tested their water system for pharmaceuticals and many only tested for one or two types of drugs.
Some water utilities declined to answer citing post 9/11 security issues; the heart disease drug nitroglycerin is widely used to make explosives. (more…)
From the suppliers of Wal-Mart’s Sams Club soda, comes the first bottled water specifically for dogs. Cott Corp. has introduced FortiFido, which comes in four different flavors–peanut butter, parsley, spearmint, and lemongrass. One and two liter bottles go for $1.39 and $2.29.
Cott Corp. must be really hurting after Wal-Mart cut back on its purchases. Their stock is at a nine-year low., but this new product wont help. Dog water is really a specialized product with a narrow market. And it’s stupid. (more…)
A ship leased by a Dutch Company, Trafigura, dumped 500 tons of toxic waste at municipal waste sites in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire–leading to the deaths of 15 people and illnesses in over 100,000. Trafigura was also named in the food for oil scandal.
Another multinational shits its neocolonial waste; and the human impact is great.
A pattern with Obama. He consistently compromises human health for corporate interests. He originally called for universal single payer health care but has dramatically changed his position to a voluntary corporate insurance plan in response to health industry lobbyists.
This story from MSNBC highlights how he compromised his position on requiring nuclear power plants to report the release of human health hazards. He went from “nuclear plants shall immediately notify” the public to “the nuclear regulatory commission shall consider requiring plants to provide timely notice” of the release of radioactive substances. He responded to the demands of Exelon corporation, one of his top campaign donors.
They hope to develop a shirt that can harness the energy of the wearer’s movement and convert it to electricity to power small electronic devices. When your body’s movement applies mechanical stress to these new shirts, their Kevlar fibers that are surrounded zinc oxide nano-wires produce electricity.
One square meter of fabric can theoretically generate as much as 80 milliwatts of power, according to the researchers. That’s actually not very much. In contrast, an average iPod, mp3 player, or cell phone uses at least few hundred milliwatts. But it could power pedometers and other such devices. (more…)
Obama is “protective imitation” of Clinton’s “corporate democrat”
He did used to be for a single payer, universal health care plan, but he has since back away to a more conservative (in the international sense of the word) health care plan in response to health industry lobbyists.
Mike: “Nader looks like that character on sesame street who lives in the trashcan.” oscar:
Question: Which issue is most important to you? (n=991 from 4th-5th February, 2008)
Issues (in order of responses, most to least): the economy, the war in iraq, immigration, health care, terrorism, social security, the environment and global warming, education, and gay rights.
There were some interesting age differences in the importance of issues.
Four most important issues to voters by age group.
Many people purchase hybrid cars hoping to reduce their energy usage, environmental impact, and overall driving expense. This demand for hybrid technology may be misguided good intention.
A new study warns that the focus on hybrid cars is stalling the production of automobiles that may be more sustainable; the authors argue that hybrid car production is detracting from the development of cost-effective fuel cell cars.
Many manufacturers already offer or will soon offer hybrid vehicles, and there is increasing demand for them in the US, Japan, Europe, and potentially China. The authors assert that good marketing strategy–not good science–has caused this interest in Hybrids: (more…)
The Amazon is the largest and most diverse tropical rainforest in the world. It represents over half of the world’s remaining rainforests, but deforestation threatens its viability. Already as much as 20% of the rainforest has been destroyed.
The destruction of the rainforests matters because it has real impacts on people’s lives and wellbeing. Deforestation harms the Amazon’s indigenous communities and the growing numbers of relocated landless farmers. Multinational corporations violently attack and murder indigenous people to seize and then destroy their lands. Meanwhile, large landowners violently force many small farmers from their productive lands into the rainforest, where they face new terror from the multinationals.
Earlier this year, Brazilian officials were lauding decreases in destruction of the rainforest. In August 2007, President Lula announced a great victory: the rate of deforestation was at its lowest in 15 years:
Your built environment and social interactions undoubtedly influence how you process the world and how you physically respond to events. Your brain is a muscle that can be conditioned as your body adapts to stimuli. It is important to think of your body in relation to your environment and social situation. However, I am concerned that people would use such studies to essentialize people and their cultures.
“The EPA’s plan appeared in the Federal Register Dec. 28, 2007 and seeks to exempt livestock farms from reporting non-emergency emissions of [A] ammonia, [B] hydrogen sulfide and other pollutants.” (Jan. 8 2008)
A. “Ammonia, a toxic form of nitrogen released in gas form during waste disposal, can be carried more than 300 miles through the air before being dumped back onto the ground or into the water, where it causes algal blooms and fish kills.”
B. “Large hog farms emit hydrogen sulfide, a gas that most often causes flu-like symptoms in humans, but at high concentrations can lead to brain damage. In 1998, the National Institute of Health reported that 19 people died as a result of hydrogen sulfide emissions from manure pits.”
Apparently, the punishment for corporate fraud is further bribery in Bush’s Department of Justice, according to a 
The future–meaning the past–of border control is being dug in 
From the suppliers of Wal-Mart’s Sams Club soda, comes the first bottled water specifically for dogs. 
Many people purchase hybrid cars hoping to reduce their energy usage, environmental impact, and overall driving expense. This demand for hybrid technology may be misguided good intention.
The Amazon is the largest and most diverse tropical rainforest in the world. It represents over half of the world’s remaining rainforests, but deforestation threatens its viability. Already as much as 20% of the rainforest has been destroyed.
