• According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the planet has just come through the warmest decade, the warmest 12 months, the warmest six months, and the warmest April, May, and June on record.
• A “staggering” new study from Canadian researchers has shown that warmer seawater has reduced phytoplankton, the base of the marine food chain, by 40% since 1950.
• Nine nations have so far set their all-time temperature records in 2010, including Russia (111 degrees), Niger (118), Sudan (121), Saudi Arabia and Iraq (126 apiece), and Pakistan, which also set the new all-time Asia record in May: a hair under 130 degrees. I can turn my oven to 130 degrees.
• And then, in late July, the U.S. Senate decided to do exactly nothing about climate change. They didn’t do less than they could have — they did nothing, preserving a perfect two-decade bipartisan record of no action. Senate majority leader Harry Reid decided not even to schedule a vote on legislation that would have capped carbon emissions.

I wrote the first book for a general audience on global warming back in 1989, and I’ve spent the subsequent 21 years working on the issue. I’m a mild-mannered guy, a Methodist Sunday School teacher. Not quick to anger. So what I want to say is: this is f***d up. The time has come to get mad, and then to get busy.

For many years, the lobbying fight for climate legislation on Capitol Hill has been led by a collection of the most corporate and moderate environmental groups, outfits like the Environmental Defense Fund. We owe them a great debt, and not just for their hard work. We owe them a debt because they did everything the way you’re supposed to: they wore nice clothes, lobbied tirelessly, and compromised at every turn.

By the time they were done, they had a bill that only capped carbon emissions from electric utilities (not factories or cars) and was so laden with gifts for industry that if you listened closely you could actually hear the oinking. They bent over backwards like Soviet gymnasts. Senator John Kerry, the legislator they worked most closely with, issued this rallying cry as the final negotiations began: “We believe we have compromised significantly, and we’re prepared to compromise further.”

And even that was not enough. They were left out to dry by everyone — not just Reid, not just the Republicans. Even President Obama wouldn’t lend a hand, investing not a penny of his political capital in the fight.

The result: total defeat, no moral victories.

Now What?

So now we know what we didn’t before: making nice doesn’t work. It was worth a try, and I’m completely serious when I say I’m grateful they made the effort, but it didn’t even come close to working. So we better try something else.

Step one involves actually talking about global warming. For years now, the accepted wisdom in the best green circles was: talk about anything else — energy independence, oil security, beating the Chinese to renewable technology. I was at a session convened by the White House early in the Obama administration where some polling guru solemnly explained that “green jobs” polled better than “cutting carbon.”

No, really? In the end, though, all these focus-group favorites are secondary. The task at hand is keeping the planet from melting. We need everyone — beginning with the president — to start explaining that basic fact at every turn.

It is the heat, and also the humidity. Since warm air holds more water than cold, the atmosphere is about 5% moister than it was 40 years ago, which explains the freak downpours that seem to happen someplace on this continent every few days.

It is the carbon — that’s why the seas are turning acid, a point Obama could have made with ease while standing on the shores of the Gulf of Mexico. “It’s bad that it’s black out there,” he might have said, “but even if that oil had made it safely ashore and been burned in our cars, it would still be wrecking the oceans.” Energy independence is nice, but you need a planet to be energy independent on.

Energy independence is nice, but you need a planet to be energy independent on.

Mysteriously enough, this seems to be a particularly hard point for smart people to grasp. Even in the wake of the disastrous Senate non-vote, the Nature Conservancy’s climate expert told New York Times columnist Tom Friedman, “We have to take climate change out of the atmosphere, bring it down to earth, and show how it matters in people’s everyday lives.” Translation: ordinary average people can’t possibly recognize the real stakes here, so let’s put it in language they can understand, which is about their most immediate interests. It’s both untrue, as I’ll show below, and incredibly patronizing. It is, however, exactly what we’ve been doing for a decade and clearly, It Does Not Work.

Step two, we have to ask for what we actually need, not what we calculate we might possibly be able to get. If we’re going to slow global warming in the very short time available to us, then we don’t actually need an incredibly complicated legislative scheme that gives door prizes to every interested industry and turns the whole operation over to Goldman Sachs to run. We need a stiff price on carbon, set by the scientific understanding that we can’t still be burning black rocks a couple of decades hence. That undoubtedly means upending the future business plans of Exxon and BP, Peabody Coal and Duke Energy, not to speak of everyone else who’s made a fortune by treating the atmosphere as an open sewer for the byproducts of their main business.

Instead they should pay through the nose for that sewer, and here’s the crucial thing: most of the money raised in the process should be returned directly to American pockets. The monthly check sent to Americans would help fortify us against the rise in energy costs, and we’d still be getting the price signal at the pump to stop driving that SUV and start insulating the house. We also need to make real federal investments in energy research and development, to help drive down the price of alternatives — the Breakthrough Institute points out, quite rightly, that we’re crazy to spend more of our tax dollars on research into new drone aircraft and Mars orbiters than we do on photovoltaics.

Yes, these things are politically hard, but they’re not impossible. A politician who really cared could certainly use, say, the platform offered by the White House to sell a plan that taxed BP and actually gave the money to ordinary Americans. (So far they haven’t even used the platform offered by the White House to reinstall the rooftop solar panels that Jimmy Carter put there in the 1970s and Ronald Reagan took down in his term.)

Asking for what you need doesn’t mean you’ll get all of it. Compromise still happens. But as David Brower, the greatest environmentalist of the late twentieth century, explained amid the fight to save the Grand Canyon: “We are to hold fast to what we believe is right, fight for it, and find allies and adduce all possible arguments for our cause. If we cannot find enough vigor in us or them to win, then let someone else propose the compromise. We thereupon work hard to coax it our way. We become a nucleus around which the strongest force can build and function.”

Which leads to the third step in this process. If we’re going to get any of this done, we’re going to need a movement, the one thing we haven’t had. For 20 years environmentalists have operated on the notion that we’d get action if we simply had scientists explain to politicians and CEOs that our current ways were ending the Holocene, the current geological epoch. That turns out, quite conclusively, not to work. We need to be able to explain that their current ways will end something they actually care about, i.e. their careers. And since we’ll never have the cash to compete with Exxon, we better work in the currencies we can muster: bodies, spirit, passion.

Movement Time

As Tom Friedman put it in a strong column the day after the Senate punt, the problem was that the public “never got mobilized.” Is it possible to get people out in the streets demanding action about climate change? Last year, with almost no money, our scruffy little outfit, 350.org, managed to organize what Foreign Policy called the “largest ever coordinated global rally of any kind” on any issue — 5,200 demonstrations in 181 countries, 2,000 of them in the U.S.A.

People were rallying not just about climate change, but around a remarkably wonky scientific data point, 350 parts per million carbon dioxide, which NASA’s James Hansen and his colleagues have demonstrated is the most we can have in the atmosphere if we want a planet “similar to the one on which civilization developed and to which life on earth is adapted.” Which, come to think of it, we do. And the “we,” in this case, was not rich white folks. If you look at the 25,000 pictures in our Flickr account, you’ll see that most of them were poor, black, brown, Asian, and young — because that’s what most of the world is. No need for vice-presidents of big conservation groups to patronize them: shrimpers in Louisiana and women in burqas and priests in Orthodox churches and slumdwellers in Mombasa turned out to be completely capable of understanding the threat to the future.

Those demonstrations were just a start (one we should have made long ago). We’re following up in October — on 10-10-10 — with a Global Work Party. All around the country and the world people will be putting up solar panels and digging community gardens and laying out bike paths. Not because we can stop climate change one bike path at a time, but because we need to make a sharp political point to our leaders: we’re getting to work, what about you?

… we need to make a sharp political point to our leaders:
we’re getting to work, what about you?

We need to shame them, starting now. And we need everyone working together. This movement is starting to emerge on many fronts. In September, for instance, opponents of mountaintop removal are converging on DC to demand an end to the coal trade. That same month, Tim DeChristopher goes on trial in Salt Lake City for monkey-wrenching oil and gas auctions by submitting phony bids. (Naomi Klein and Terry Tempest Williams have called for folks to gather at the courthouse.)

The big environmental groups are starting to wake up, too. The Sierra Club has a dynamic new leader, Mike Brune, who’s working hard with stalwarts like Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth. (Note to enviro groups: working together is fun and useful). Churches are getting involved, as well as mosques and synagogues. Kids are leading the fight, all over the world — they have to live on this planet for another 70 years or so, and they have every right to be pissed off.

But no one will come out to fight for watered down and weak legislation. That’s not how it works. You don’t get a movement unless you take the other two steps I’ve described.

And in any event it won’t work overnight. We’re not going to get the Senate to act next week, or maybe even next year. It took a decade after the Montgomery bus boycott to get the Voting Rights Act. But if there hadn’t been a movement, then the Voting Rights Act would have passed in… never. We may need to get arrested. We definitely need art, and music, and disciplined, nonviolent, but very real anger.

Mostly, we need to tell the truth, resolutely and constantly. Fossil fuel is wrecking the one earth we’ve got. It’s not going to go away because we ask politely. If we want a world that works, we’re going to have to raise our voices.

Copyright 2010 Bill McKibben

Bill McKibben is founder of 350.org and the author, most recently, of Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet. Earlier this year the Boston Globe called him “probably the country’s leading environmentalist” and Time described him as “the planet’s best green journalist.” He’s a scholar in residence at Middlebury College.

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It’s being called the largest wind power project in the country, with plans for thousands of acres of towering turbines in the Mojave Desert foothills generating electricity for 600,000 homes in Southern California.

And now it’s finally kicking into gear.

The multibillion-dollar Alta Wind Energy Center has had a tortured history, stretching across nearly a decade of ownership changes, opposition from local residents and transmission infrastructure delays.

But on Tuesday, the project is officially breaking ground in the Tehachapi Pass, a burgeoning hot spot for wind energy about 75 miles north of Los Angeles. When completed, Alta could produce three times as much energy as the country’s largest existing wind farm, analysts said. It’s slated to be done in the next decade.

The project will probably be a wind power bellwether, affecting the way renewable energy deals are financed, the development of new electricity storage systems and how governments regulate the industry, said Billy Gamboa, a renewable energy analyst with the California Center for Sustainable Energy.

“It’s a super-mega-project — it’ll definitely set a precedent for the rest of the state and have a pretty large impact on the wind industry in general,” he said.

The project’s developer, New York-based Terra-Gen Power, plans to coax three gigawatts of power from the wind farm over the next eight years. It has led some industry experts to predict that California might have a shot at reclaiming the wind energy crown from competitors such as Texas and Iowa.

Click here to read the entire article:

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“Organic agriculture promotes more balanced communities of predators,” says David Crowder, author of the new study published June 30 in Nature.

“Our study does not tell farmers they should shift to organic agriculture. What our study suggests is that organic agriculture is promoting these more balanced natural enemy communities and they may have better, organic pest control.”

Much focus is put on species numbers or ‘richness’. But the research by Crowder, an insect ecologist at Washington State University in Pullman, and his colleagues, shows the importance of “evenness”–the relative abundance of different species. Evenness quantifies not just the presence of different species, but whether one is dominant or whether there is an equal distribution of numbers between species.

The team looked at the bugs, nematodes and fungi that attack the hated Colorado potato beetle (Leptinotarsa decemlineata).

They conducted a meta-analysis of data collected on these denizens of Washington potato fields and found that although organic and conventional farms did not differ markedly in the richness of beetle eaters, the evenness of predators differed “drastically”. Organic fields–where only a limited number of man-made chemicals can be used–had far greater evenness than those where pesticides were applied regularly.

Furthermore, the team set up an experimental field in which they manipulated the evenness of predators. Increasing the evenness led to what the researchers call a “powerful trophic cascade,” resulting in fewer potato-munching beetles and larger potato plants.

Although the work of Crowder and his group does not address the issue of yields from organic versus conventional farms, their study found that the increased evenness of organic farms compared with that of conventional farms led to 18 percent lower pest densities and 35 percent larger plants. Bigger plants generally mean greater potato yields.

Even richer

At least as important as what the research says about organic farming is what it says about species evenness.

“Almost all the studies that have been done have looked at the number of species in an ecosystem,” says Crowder. “Very few studies have looked at the relative abundance. We think our study is really one of the first to highlight that evenness is also important.”

Understanding evenness can be extremely useful to those studying biodiversity, agrees Marc Cadotte, a community ecologist at the University of Toronto at Scarborough. This knowledge can shed light on, for example, the processes maintaining species abundance, and can also be crucial for determining how ecosystems will respond to challenges, such as those posed by climate change.

This paper, says Cadotte, demonstrates that different agricultural practices have distinct effects on evenness, and that manipulating evenness leads to the cascading reactions identified by Crowder and his team.

“Evenness is a critical component of biodiversity,” says Cadotte. “Much research has emphasized species richness, maybe at the detriment of studying evenness.”

Meanwhile, Crowder says that the next step is to discover what it is about organic agriculture that promotes evenness, and to determine whether this finding also applies in systems other than potato fields.

References
1. Crowder, D. W., Northfield, T. D., Strand, M. R. & Snyder, W. E. Nature 466, 109-112 (2010). | Article

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So says a report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO): Nanotechnology: Nanomaterials Are Widely Used in Commerce, but EPA Faces Challenges in Regulating Risk. GAO-10-549, May 25, 2010:

“GAO identified a variety of products that currently incorporate nanomaterials already available in commerce … [in] food and agriculture …The extent to which nanomaterials present a risk to human health and the environment depends on a combination of the toxicity of specific nanomaterials and the route and level of exposure to these materials. Although the body of research related to nanomaterials is growing, the current understanding of the risks posed by these materials is limited.”

The effects of nanotechnology on the environment are regulated by the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency), which is why this report targets recommendations to EPA.

Shouldn’t some of those recommendations be directed toward FDA, the agency that regulates food safety? Maybe GAO needs to do another report?

In the meantime, the European Food Safety Authority is preoccupied with issues related to the safety of food nanotechnology:

“The risk assessment framework for nanotechnology in Europe—like so much else connected to the technology—appears to be in its infancy but developing at a rapid pace … Nano knowledge gaps have led some to call for a ban on the use of nanomaterials in food products until their safety has been fully established. One area of concern is whether nanoparticles can migrate from packaging materials into foods.
In seeking to assess nanomaterials, the food safety body repeatedly used phrases such as “specific uncertainties”, “limited knowledge” and…”difficult to characterise, detect and measure” in relation to toxicokinetics and toxicology in food. Likely usage and exposure levels are also largely a mystery.”

The European Food Safety Authority says that lack of knowledge means that risk assessments must be done on a “cautious case-by-case approach.”

Last April, the European Parliament’s environment committee said nanotech products should be withdrawn from the market until more is known about their safety. In June, that committee added that nanotech foods should be assessed for safety before they are approved for use and labeled.

Doesn’t that sound reasonable? Let’s hope it’s not too late to put such constraints in place, and in the U.S., too.

Marion Nestle is the Paulette Goddard Professor of Nutrition, Food Studies, and Public Health at New York University and author of Food Politics; Safe Food; What to Eat; and Pet Food Politics. Her website is www.foodpolitics.com.

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The combined global land and ocean average surface temperature for June 2010 was the warmest on record at 16.2 degrees Celsius, which is 0.68 degrees Celsius above the 20th century average of 15.5 degrees Celsius.

‘Warmer-than-average conditions dominated the globe, with the most prominent warmth in Peru, the central and eastern contiguous US, and eastern and western Asia,’ the report said. There are exceptions to this overall rise in temperature, with some regions experiencing the coolest weather on record for the same period.

The report also said that the area covered by Arctic Sea ice has reduced by 10.6 percent against the 1979-2000 average level.

According to NOAA:

• The combined global land and ocean average surface temperature for June 2010 was the warmest on record at 61.1°F (16.2°C), which is 1.22°F (0.68°C) above the 20th century average of 59.9°F (15.5°C).
• The global June land surface temperature was 1.93°F (1.07°C) above the 20th century average of 55.9 °F (13.3°C) — the warmest on record.
• Warmer-than-average conditions dominated the globe, with the most prominent warmth in Peru, the central and eastern contiguous U.S., and eastern and western Asia. Cooler-than-average regions included Scandinavia, southern China and the northwestern contiguous United States.
• According to Beijing Climate Center, Inner Mongolia, Heilongjiang and Jilin had their warmest June since national records began in 1951. Meanwhile, Guizhou experienced its coolest June on record.
• According to Spain’s meteorological office, the nationwide average temperature was 0.7°F (0.4°C) above normal, Spain’s coolest June since 1997.
• The worldwide ocean surface temperature was 0.97°F (0.54°C) above the 20th century average of 61.5°F (16.4°C), which was the fourth warmest June on record. The warmth was most pronounced in the Atlantic Ocean.
• Sea surface temperature continued to decrease across the equatorial Pacific Ocean during June 2010, consistent with the end of El Niño. According to NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center, La Niña conditions are likely to develop during the northern hemisphere summer 2010.

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The panel advised President Obama “to use the power of your office to remove the carcinogens and other toxins from our food, water, and air that needlessly increase health care costs, cripple our nation’s productivity, and devastate American lives.”

The 240-page report by the President’s Cancer Panel is the first to focus on environmental causes of cancer. The panel, created by an act of Congress in 1971, is charged with monitoring the multi-billion-dollar National Cancer Program and reports directly to the President every year.

Environmental exposures “do not represent a new front in the ongoing war on cancer. However, the grievous harm from this group of carcinogens has not been addressed adequately by the National Cancer Program,” the panel said in its letter to Obama that precedes the report. “The American people – even before they are born – are bombarded continually with myriad combinations of these dangerous exposures.”

The panel, appointed by President Bush, told President Obama that the federal government is missing the chance to protect people from cancer by reducing their exposure to carcinogens. In its letter, the panel singled out bisphenol A, a chemical used in polycarbonate plastic and can linings that is unregulated in the United States, as well as radon, formaldehyde and benzene. Environmental health scientists were pleased by the findings, saying it embraces everything that they have been saying for years.

“…the panel singled out bisphenol A, a chemical used in polycarbonate plastic and can linings that is unregulated in the United States, as well as radon, formaldehyde and benzene.”

Richard Clapp, a professor of environmental health at Boston University’s School of Public Health and one of the nation’s leading cancer epidemiologists, called the report “a call to action.”

Environmental and occupational exposures contribute to “tens of thousands of cancer cases a year,” Clapp said. “If we had any calamity that produced tens of thousands of deaths or serious diseases, that’s a national emergency in my view.”

The two-member panel – Dr. LaSalle D. Lefall, Jr., a professor of surgery at Howard University and Margaret Kripke, a professor at University of Texas’ M.D. Anderson Cancer Center – was appointed by President Bush to three-year terms.

“If we had any calamity that produced tens of thousands of deaths or serious diseases, that’s a national emergency in my view.”

Lefall and Kripke concluded that action is necessary, even though in many cases there is scientific uncertainty about whether certain chemicals cause cancer. That philosophy, called the precautionary principle, is highly controversial among scientists, regulators and industry.
“The increasing number of known or suspected environmental carcinogens compels us to action, even though we may currently lack irrefutable proof of harm,” Lefall, who is chair of the panel, said in a statement.

The two panelists met with nearly 50 medical experts in late 2008 and early 2009 before writing their report to the president. Cyclist and cancer survivor Lance Armstrong previously served on the panel, but did not work on this year’s report.

The report recommends raising consumer awareness of the risks posed by chemicals in food, air, water and consumer products, bolstering research of the health effects and tightening regulation of chemicals that might cause cancer or other diseases.

They also urged doctors to use caution in prescribing CT scans and other medical imaging tests that expose patients to large amounts of radiation. In 2007, 69 million CT scans were performed, compared with 18 million in 1993. Patients who have a chest CT scan receive a dose of radiation in the same range as survivors of the Hiroshima atomic bomb attacks who were less than half a mile from ground zero, the report says.

The panel also criticized the U.S. military, saying that “it is a major source of toxic occupational and environmental exposures that can increase cancer risk.” Examples cited include Camp Lejeune in North Carolina, where carcinogenic solvents contaminate drinking water, and Vietnam veterans with increased lymphomas, prostate cancer and other cancers from their exposure to the herbicide Agent Orange.

Patients who have a chest CT scan receive a dose of radiation in the same range as survivors of the Hiroshima atomic bomb attacks who were less than half a mile from ground zero.

Overall cancer rates and deaths have declined in the United States. Nevertheless, about 41 percent of all Americans still will be diagnosed with cancer during their lifetime, and about 21 percent will die from it, according to the National Cancer Institute’s SEER Cancer Statistics Review. In 2009 alone, about 1.5 million new cases were diagnosed.

For the past 30 years, federal agencies and institutes have estimated that environmental pollutants cause about 2 percent of all cancers and that occupational exposures may cause 4 percent.

But the panel called those estimates “woefully out of date.” The panel criticized regulators for using them to set environmental regulations and lambasted the chemical industry for using them “to justify its claims that specific products pose little or no cancer risk.”

The report said the outdated estimates fail to take into account many newer discoveries about people’s vulnerability to chemicals. Many chemicals interact with each other, intensifying the effect, and some people have a genetic makeup or early life exposure that makes them susceptible to environmental contaminants.

“It is not known exactly what percentage of all cancers either are initiated or promoted by an environmental trigger,” the panel said in its report. “Some exposures to an environmental hazard occur as a single acute episode, but most often, individual or multiple harmful exposures take place over a period of weeks, months, year, or a lifetime.”

Boston University’s Clapp was one of the experts who spoke to the panel in 2008. “We know enough now to act in ways that we have not done…Act on what we know,” he told them.

“There are lots of places where we can move forward here. Lots of things we can act on now,” such as military base cleanups and reducing use of CT scans, Clapp said in an interview.

Dr. Ted Schettler, director of the Science and Environmental Health Network, called the report an “integrated and comprehensive critique.” He was glad that the panel underscored that regulatory agencies should reduce exposures even when absolute proof of harm was unavailable.

Also, “they recognized that exposures happen in mixtures, not in isolation” and that children are most vulnerable.

“Some people are disproportionately exposed and disproportionately vulnerable,” said Schettler, whose group was founded by environmental groups to urge the use of science to address public health issues related to the environment.

Also, “they recognized that exposures happen in mixtures, not in isolation” and that children are most vulnerable.

Schettler said it “took courage” for the panel to warn physicians about the cancer risk posed by CT scans, particularly for young children.

“It’s almost become routine for kids with abdominal pain to get a CT scan” to check for appendicitis, he said. Although the scans may lead to fewer unnecessary surgeries, doctors should consider the high doses of radiation. “I’m very glad this panel took that on,” Schettler said.

Another sensitive issue raised in the report was the risk of brain cancer from cell phones. Scientists are divided on whether there is a link.

Until more research is conducted, the panel recommended that people reduce their usage by making fewer and shorter calls, using hands-free devices so that the phone is not against the head and refraining from keeping a phone on a belt or in a pocket.

Even if cell phones raise the risk of cancer slightly, so many people are exposed that “it could be a large public health burden,” Schettler said.

The panel listed a variety of carcinogenic compounds that many people routinely encounter. Included are benzene and other petroleum-based pollutants in vehicle exhaust, arsenic in water supplies, chromium from plating companies, formaldehyde in kitchen cabinets and other plywood, bisphenol A in plastics and canned foods, tetrachloroethylene at dry cleaners, PCBs in fish and other foods and various pesticides.

Chemicals and contaminants might trigger cancer by a variety of means. They can damage DNA, disrupt hormones, inflame tissues, or turn genes on or off.

The panel criticized regulators and industry for using “woefully outdated” estimates of environmentally caused cancers to set regulations and “to justify its claims that specific products pose little or no cancer risk.”

“Some types of cancer are increasing rapidly,” Clapp said, including thyroid, kidney and liver cancers. Others, including lung and breast cancer, have declined.

Previous reports by the President’s Cancer Panel have focused largely on treatment and more well-known causes of cancer such as diet or smoking.

Some experts are concerned that the report might just sit on a shelf at the White House. But Clapp said the findings are so strongly stated that he is confident the report will be useful to some policymakers, legislators and groups that want tougher occupational health standards or other regulations.

“We’re not going to get any better than this,” Clapp said. “This goes farther than what I thought the President’s Cancer Panel would go. I’m pleased that they went as far as they did.”

Environmental health scientists said they hope the report raises not just the President’s awareness of environmental threats, but the public’s, since most people are unaware of the dangers.

“This report has stature,” Schettler said. “It is a report that goes directly to the president.”

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Protecting home and family are at the forefront of any emergency preparedness actions taken by the homeowner. Storing clean drinking water and making ‘grab ‘n go’ preparedness kits should be standard practice in homes everywhere. But protecting the environment is also important, and easily overlooked when assessing risks and making plans to reduce them. In the aftermath of the Katrina hurricane, New Orleans was flooded by a toxic gumbo of water spiked with tons of toxic chemicals and contaminants ranging from industrial waste, household chemicals, oil, paints and toxic materials from flooded basements and garages. Experts say the contamination will continue to poison the Gulf of Mexico region for more than a decade. A senior policy analyst at the Environmental Protection Agency commented “This is the worst case…There is not enough money in the gross national product of the United States to dispose of the amount of hazardous material in the area.”

Forethought and planning from homeowners can minimize damage to home and property while also helping to reduce the chance of toxic materials escaping into the environment. Here are a few tips to consider in preparing your home for environmental emergencies.

Reinforce shutters and windows

Hurricanes and windstorms are occurring with more frequency and, due to rising sea temperatures, have been extending beyond their usual range. In many parts of the country building codes have not yet caught up with changes in climate patterns. The first line of defense homeowners should take against high winds is to secure windows and doors.
“In a coastal area, the single most important thing we recommend is the protection of the openings of the house with either storm shutters or impact-resistant glass,” said Barry Davis, a regional manager for risk services at Fireman’s Fund Insurance Company in Orlando, Fla. And he pointed out that homeowners might have reinforced doors and shutters, but if the latches or hooks had been corroded by salt air, they would not hold.

Your insurance company should have advice for appraising the security of your home windows and doors against windstorms, and local resources for upgrading them if necessary.

Secure garage doors

The garage doors are often overlooked when assessing home security against wind. While the rest of the house is built with structural integrity in mind, garage doors have little reinforcement. During a windstorm their large surface area acts as a sail, catching the wind and bowing inwards. If the garage door blows in, the structure of the house can be compromised. Todd Triano, a loss prevention professional, said 80 percent of catastrophic damage to houses during hurricanes was caused by garage doors being blown in.

When preparing for a ‘wind event’, move heavy objects against the inside of the garage doors for added strength. You can even back the car against the garage door to help keep it from blowing in.

Identify and secure hazardous trees

Take a look at the trees around your home with an eye towards their structural health. Besides the obvious concern of a tree falling on your home or coming in contact with an electrical line, there may be measures you can take to help the tree itself survive a windstorm.

Certain indicators will give clues that a tree is prone to failure. For instance, if a tree has large branches attached with tight, V-shaped forks, you should consider having those branches removed or lightened. If part or all of a tree is not leafed out, it may be unhealthy or dead. If you have excavated around a tree, the root system could be weakened. Heaving soil at the tree base is an indicator of a potentially unsound root system. Other warning signs of structural instability include cracks in the trunk or major limbs, hollow and decayed areas, or the presence of extensive dead wood. Mushrooms growing from the base of the tree or under its canopy may be a sign of root decay. Damaged or diseased limbs should be removed to reduce the hazard of falling on homes or power lines, and this also helps the tree by minimizing area exposed to wind.

Some tree species, such as catalpa, boxelder, Chinese elm, cottonwood, poplars, silver maples, and willows, have brittle wood which is easily broken in storms. These rapid-growing trees are prone to damage. Homeowners should be aware of these characteristics and avoid planting such species close to buildings, utilities, pedestrian areas, etc. where damage could occur.

If storm-damage prone trees are already growing in these locations, some preventive practices, such as pruning and bracing or cabling, may help reduce the potential of storm damage.

Know how to shut off the electricity, gas and water to your home

Everyone in the family should know the layout of utilities to your home. Turning off the gas before leaving the house in an emergency will reduce potential hazards to emergency personnel and minimize the risk of fire. Shutting off the main water valve may save your home from flooding and reduce the risk of toxic materials being released during minor flooding. Try turning off the water valve yourself – is it easy to do? Would a person need pliers to turn the valve? If so, leave a pair on standby.

Store household, garage and garden chemicals in totes with locking lids

Storing toxic materials in plastic totes will help you be more organized while also helping to keep these materials secure during an environmental emergency. Totes come in all shapes and sizes, and many have lockable lids. A small tote can fit under your kitchen sink for storing cleansers, and larger totes can be placed in the garage for other household and automotive chemicals. Storing these items in totes will also help family members and emergency personnel to identify and further secure these materials. Do the same for lawn chemicals and pesticides in your garden shed and workshop. Be sure to mark the contents on the outside of the tote with a permanent marker.

Store paints and chemically-based products on elevated shelves

Flooding is one of the most common environmental threats, since it can be caused by many factors and can affect homes in all regions of the country. Look in your basement and garage to see if paint cans, oil, cleaning chemicals, pesticides, batteries and similar materials are stored high enough to stay dry during minor flooding. These materials should ideally be stored on raised shelves with either secure doors or shelf guards to keep them from falling off during a windstorm or earthquake.

And don’t forget your garden shed

Garden and lawn care supplies, unfortunately, are often hazardous to the environment. Lawn care chemicals, pesticides and herbicides, gas and oil for the mower, and similar items should be stored in totes where possible, and set on secure raised shelves. Shed doors and windows deserve the same scrutiny as those on your home; be sure latches are in good shape and all containers containing fluids are well sealed.

The environment around our homes, most people would agree, is important and well worth protecting. Keeping this in mind as you make preparedness plans will add a level of security which will benefit your family and the greater community.

Additional Reference:

Protect yourself from chemicals released during natural disaster: CDC Emergency Preparedness and Response.

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The power stations that supply electricity vary in their carbon dioxide emission rates, depending on the fuel they use: those that burn fossil fuels (coal, gas and oil) have higher emissions than those driven by nuclear power and wind. In general only the fossil fuel power stations are able to respond instantly to changes in electricity demand.

Dr Adam Hawkes, the author of the new study from the Grantham Institute for Climate Change at Imperial College London, says the government should keep track of changing carbon emission rates from power stations to ensure that policy decisions for reducing emissions are based on robust scientific evidence. The new study suggests that excluding power stations with low carbon emission rates, such as wind and nuclear power stations, and focusing on those that deal with fluctuating demand would give a more accurate emission figure.

Scientists advising government on for the best ways to reduce electricity demand currently use an estimated figure for emission rates. The new study shows that, at 0.43 kilograms of carbon dioxide per kilowatt hour of electricity consumed, this figure is 60 percent lower than the actual rates observed between 2002 and 2009 (0.69 kilograms of carbon dioxide per kilowatt hour), meaning that policy studies are underestimating the impact of people reducing their electricity use.

Dr Adam Hawkes, author of the paper, and a Visiting Fellow at the Grantham Institute for Climate Change at Imperial College London, said: “One way governments are trying to mitigate the effects of climate change is to encourage people to reduce their energy consumption and change the types of technologies they use in their homes. However, the UK government currently informs its policy decisions based on an estimate that, according to my research, is lower than it should be.

“This means any reduction we make in our electricity use – for example, if everyone switched off lights that they weren’t using, or turned off electric heating earlier in the year – could have a bigger impact on the amount of carbon dioxide emitted by power stations than previously thought. However, this also acts in reverse: a small increase in the amount of electricity we use could mean a larger increase in emissions than we previously thought, so we need to make sure we do everything we can to reduce our electricity use,” added Dr Hawkes.

Dr Hawkes drew upon 60 million data points showing the amount of electricity produced in each half-hour period by each power station in Great Britain from the start of 2002 to the end of 2009. He also calculated the emissions of each different type of generator by examining government data showing their average annual fuel use. Finally, he took these two sets of data to calculate the emissions rate that should be attributed to a small change in electricity demand.

The results show that, for 2002-09, the carbon dioxide emission rate for estimating the effect of a small change in electricity demand is 0.69 kilograms of carbon dioxide per kilowatt hour of electricity consumed. This is 30 percent higher than the average emissions rate across all power stations, which is 0.51 kilograms of carbon dioxide per kilowatt hour, and 60 percent higher than the figure currently used by government advisors, which is 0.43 kilograms of carbon dioxide per kilowatt hour.

Professor Sir Brian Hoskins, Director of Imperial’s Grantham Institute for Climate Change, said: “This is a very important study that could help policy makers make more informed decisions to reduce our carbon emissions. The government needs a good understanding of the figures it uses to support policy analysis, because this has a big impact on which technologies we employ to reduce our energy use. With a more accurate picture of what is going on, we will be much better equipped to tackle our carbon dioxide emissions.”

Research for this study was funded by the Grantham Institute for Climate Change at Imperial College London.

Reference:
A.D. Hawkes. Estimating marginal CO2 emissions rates for national electricity systems. Energy Policy, 2010; DOI: 10.1016/j.enpol.2010.05.053

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I’ll make a one-page handout, I thought. I’ll pin it up here and there and we’ll all catch on, won’t we? For no one would do such a crazy thing, if they only knew.

My handout became a book, Diet for a Small Planet, which showed how our newly emerging diet—based on grain-fed meat produced with chemical inputs—reflects neither our bodies’ needs, nor what the Earth can sustain.

That was then.

Today, hunger’s toll breaks all records, and we’re now facing another huge downside to our reductive, extractive approach to farming: a warming climate. My daughter, Anna Lappé, has just released Diet for a Hot Planet, which continues the conversation I helped to start. She shows how much our global food system now drives the climate crisis—even more than transportation.

I’m beyond proud. It’s a fabulous book (moms have a right to say what we think), shocking and empowering at once. And in June the U.N. Environment Programme released a report backing up her message, calling out industrial agriculture, particularly large-scale livestock production, as among the world’s most energy-intensive and environmentally destructive industries. Among the UNEP’s recommendations? We individuals adopt plant-centered diets to lower our own carbon “foodprints.”

The report also highlights how agriculture itself can be part of the solution: Ecological farming actually binds carbon in the soil, and its abundant crop varieties can boost biodiversity. So it’s not agriculture per se, but a certain kind of agriculture, that threatens our planet (and our health).

So it’s not agriculture per se, but a certain kind of agriculture, that threatens our planet.

I could never have imagined, writing my little handout 40 years ago, that today I’d be living in a world in which earth-friendly, hunger-ending farming is proving its potential from Ethiopia to Brazil to India to the U.S.—but where citizens still go along with policies spreading hunger and the destructive, corporate-controlled industrial farming that helps to cause it.

Clearly, we have to dig much deeper.

So, while I celebrate the UNEP’s call-to-diet-action, I wish the report had framed the problem more precisely. It names population and economic growth, which increase consumption of animal products, as culprits. Ernst von Weizsaecker, an environmental scientist who co-chaired the panel, is quoted in press coverage saying, “Rising affluence is triggering a shift in diets towards meat and dairy products.”

I wish the UNEP had emphasized that population growth and our kind of economic growth (producing vast waste) are themselves symptoms of deeper problems.

Almost all population growth in the next 30 years is predicted to be in poor countries, in large measure reflecting the lack of power many women have over their fertility and the dearth of economic opportunities available to them.

And the destructive planet-heating food production and distribution we now experience are themselves consequences of a particular kind of growth—centralizing control of farmland, processing and distribution by national elites and global mega-corporations; power that both reflects and strengthens their political influence. The deepening, gross inequities that result do in fact spur consumption of animal food by the better off—animal products produced using environmentally egregious practices.

But might the UNEP’s frame emphasizing “growth” itself as the problem further distract us from the root problem, deepening worldwide power inequities?

If, by contrast, we were as societies redressing power inequities and reclaiming our democracy from private interests, and if our world’s poor majorities were gaining access to land and agroecological knowledge, enabling more local food distribution, too, then it’s possible we’d see the meat question differently. We’d see that those without access to animal food could produce and consume modest increases, integrating livestock into healthy farming—and reducing our collective climate impacts.

Of course, as author of Diet for a Small Planet, I also know that for the world’s minority who now consume much more protein than our bodies can even use, eating less animal food is great for our health and useful in sending countless messages through the market for saner use of resources.

But that’s a very different proposition than suggesting that overconsumption causes the crisis, and that less is the primary cure.

So I applaud all who are now embracing planet-friendly diets. Hurrah for us! But let such a diet serve as a daily reminder—a string around our fingers that we notice at least three times a day, reminding us of the root of our ecological and hunger crisis: the concentration of corporate power. From there, all that good plant food in our bellies can not only enhance our health, but also bulk up our courage to name this deeper challenge and take it on.

Frances Moore Lappé wrote this article for YES! Magazine, a national, nonprofit news organization that fuses powerful ideas with practical actions. Frances is the author of many books including Diet for a Small Planet and Getting a Grip 2. She is co-founder of Food First and the Small Planet Institute, and is a YES! contributing editor.

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In this TED talk video, mycologist Paul Stamets talks about mushrooms. He believes there are six ways that mycelium fungus can save our planet. This brief presentation is not only fascinating, but a reminder of why it is so important to preserve unique species and critical habits within ecosystems.

As the oil continues to gush in the Gulf of Mexico, attention is being directed on the potential for mycelium fungus to clean up oil spills and to rehabilitate waterways. Mushrooms also have value in cleaning polluted soil, making non-toxic insecticides, treating smallpox and even as an inexpensive fuel source. There are cosmic implications as well. Stamets believes we could terraform other worlds in our galaxy by sowing a mix of fungal spores and other seeds to create an ecological footprint on a new planet.

The focus of Stamets’ research is the Northwest’s native fungal genome, mycelium, but along the way he has filed 22 patents for mushroom-related technologies, including pesticidal fungi that trick insects into eating them, and mushrooms that can break down the neurotoxins used in nerve gas.

To demonstrate how we can use mushrooms to kill carpenter ants, termites and fire ants, Stamets makes a mixture of a particular mushroom. The ants eat the solution and die, and a mushroom sprouts from the mummified remains. In time, the entire house becomes naturally inoculated against the pests. This could have significant economic impact as an alternative to traditional chemical pesticides, while reducing harm to human health and the environment. Only a teaspoonful of the fungus grown on a substrate such as rice and costing a few cents to produce is sufficient to treat a single home for years, Mr. Stamets says. In addition, M. anisopliae and the active compounds it generates don’t appear to be harmful to humans, other mammals, fish, useful insects such as honeybees, or plants.

What is probably the largest living organism on earth has been discovered in the Malheur National Forest in eastern Oregon. A fungus living three feet underground is estimated to cover 2,200 acres. After testing samples from various locations, scientists say it is all one organism.
This Ted talk helps to confirm what many people feel intuitively – that the earth is a single living, breathing entity. Discovering the miraculous potential within mushrooms offers hope for a more sustainable future, while inspiring us to protect all species for their unique and potentially profound contributions to human well being.

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While the book has received a delightfully warm reception, that last description—omnivore—has raised the eyebrows of a few folks, particularly when they consider my personal and professional background. It involves a lot of meat. My family raises and processes our livestock. I have written two books about cooking sustainable meats. I maintain grassfedcooking.com to answer people’s questions about working with local livestock farms and purveyors of local meats. I’ve achieved some regional notoriety, if not for my writing, then for my artisanal sausages. Every Saturday from mid-May through mid-October, I can be found at a farmers’ market in the Catskill Mountains, standing beside my husband, selling my family’s meats.

Not surprising, then, that since the book’s release a common question I have been asked regarding sustainable living can be paraphrased this way: “I agree with your premise that Radical Homemaking is possible and important. But, really, do you honestly think animals and people can live together sustainably?”

Anyone who has ever leaned their cheek against the side of a dairy cow, breathing in her sweet scent while squeezing her milk into a pail; who has watched a crowd of spring lambs prance across pasture, punctuating their dance with spontaneous four-footed leaps; who has witnessed the amazing fertility of a manure-nourished garden; who has wiped grease off her chin after secretly feasting on cracklings before presenting a fresh roasted leg of pork to the family at Easter dinner; or who has reached under a hen and found a warm fresh egg after delivering a bowl of kitchen scraps to the flock might ask a different question: Is there any sustainable way that humans and animals could not live together?

Meat as a Community Affair

Historically, in my community, humans and livestock have been nearly inseparable. West Fulton, N.Y., is a series of frosty hollows surrounded by forested hills and rocky, steep pasture lands. When agricultural industrialization swept through the country, our small fields and pitched slopes made machine cultivation not only problematic, but treacherous. A previous owner of our own farm was killed by a tractor rollover decades ago, not an uncommon death for earlier generations around here. But even after local farms were deemed nonviable decades ago by agricultural officials who saw the ground couldn’t be adapted to big technology (our eleven months of frost didn’t help), many farms stayed in production. And although most incomes were well below the poverty line, people in West Fulton could feed themselves by maintaining hand-cultivated vegetable patches and small herds of livestock. Cattle, sheep, chickens, goats, and pigs are well adapted to our landscape and difficult climate. And they can produce food on fields that never saw a plow.

In an era of fossil fuel shortages, climate change concerns, swelling population, dwindling food security, and economic hardships, the symbiosis between animals and humans becomes even more important to understand.

Ruminants and the Environment

The consumption of meat has come under increasing scrutiny for a variety of ecological reasons, from resource efficiency to water pollution to climate change. Livestock, particularly ruminant animals, like cattle and sheep, play a critical role in all of these current global problems. Managed improperly, as we’ve seen, they are a big part of the problem; but stewarded properly, they can also be a part of the solution.

Because it’s inefficient to raise ruminants on grain, the consumption of these animals as a food source has been criticized by some as a ruinous misuse of cropland. The calculated ratio of the amount of grain an animal requires to gain a pound of weight is called the conversion factor. When grain is fed to fish, the conversion ratio is about 1.25 to 1; in other words, for every 1.25 pounds of grain product fed to a fish, there is a pound of weight gain. The conversion ratio for chicken is 2 pounds of feed per pound of gain on the bird. Pork requires 4 pounds per pound of gain. And when ruminants enter the equation, it skyrockets: estimates vary, but generally lambs require 8 pounds of feed for a pound of weight gain, and beef cattle consume some 9 pounds of feed per pound of gain.

When assessed by this factor alone, red meat does present a serious ecological problem. Grain production is extremely taxing on the environment, particularly when considering the impacts of industrial practices: soil degradation, nitrous oxide emissions, the introduction of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, and the use of fossil fuel-intensive mechanized farming and transport. Not to mention, a lot more people could be nourished with that grain if it weren’t being dumped into livestock first.

But there is a problem with relying solely on this equation to evaluate the efficacy of meat production: Ruminants are not designed to eat grain. Their digestive systems are actually better suited for foraging. They can even convert crop waste inedible to humans, such as corn stalks, into food. Industrialized agriculture relies on grain-feeding, not because the animals require it (in fact, it is harmful to their health), but only because it makes cattle gain weight uniformly faster. When raised on properly managed pastures, ruminants don’t compete with humans for grain-producing acreage; in turn, they supply us with bountiful nutrients and leave the earth better for having walked upon it. On intensively-managed pasture, they have been shown to restore vegetative cover, increase biodiversity, and improve soil fertility, thereby making our fields more resistant to both drought and flood.

As awareness of climate change increases, methane emissions have become an important concern about ruminant livestock production. Enteric fermentation, the fermentation of forage in the rumen (the first stomach chamber), is a natural part of the digestion process for ruminant animals. Because their diet is naturally high in roughage, grass-fed animals will belch more than their factory-farmed counterparts (the process is unnaturally suppressed in factory farming due to a coating of slime that grain-feeding causes in the rumen). But grass-fed animals are still far more climate friendly: their food doesn’t require fossil-fuel based fertilizers, chemical pesticides, or miles of transport. Add in the carbon sequestered in the soils and plants of well-managed pasture-lands, and some studies suggest that grass-fed cattle ranching can be carbon neutral, if not carbon negative.

Pigs and Chickens: Omnivores and the Sustainable Household

While they don’t forage the same way as ruminants, omnivorous animals, like pigs and chickens, can also play a part in regaining global sustainability. Raised in concentrated factory farm settings, these animals require large amounts of grain (which could more efficiently be fed directly to people) to be processed and trucked in. Kept in these horrific densities, their accumulated wastes are also a potent source of pollution. But dispersed on small farms and backyard or urban farm settings, these animals have a greater purpose. Their grain requirements are minimized because they forage and also recycle human food waste and turn it into more food.

The backyard pig is a common phenomenon in rural communities all over the world. Allowed controlled foraging, the pig will eat fallen nuts and acorns, dropped apples, insects, weeds, and household food scraps. In exchange, they yield meat, skin for cracklings, bones for stocks, and lard for cooking and making soap. Chickens perform similarly, if on a smaller scale. The backyard hen converts household food scraps into eggs. Later, when her egg-laying begins to fail, she adds sustenance to the soup pot. Both animals produce nutrient-rich manure, which then invigorates household gardens—and the surplus of those gardens then goes back into the livestock. These animals help us to round out our household and local ecosystems, enabling us to constantly regenerate nutrition on a local scale.

The Union of Life and Death

While I hope the above points will reassure the human omnivore eager for a pasture-raised pork chop or some free-range eggs and hash, I suspect they might ring hollow to those who are averse to the killing of animals for meat, period.

Any vegetarian who has ever challenged the morality of a livestock farmer (especially one involved in the sustainability movement) face-to-face can probably report receiving a touchy and defensive retort. This is because—contradictory as it might seem—farmers choose this life because we like animals, and not because we enjoy killing them or see slaughter as a means to a profitable end.

Sadly, those of us who make our lives farming have become a national cultural anomaly. From my own view from my family’s land, it seems that mainstream American culture harbors incongruous ideas about life and death, adoring one while abhorring the other. When daily life is directly tied to the ebbs and flows of nature, as it is in agriculture, one cannot help but observe that life and death are forever in service to one another. We cannot have one without the other. We nurture the newborn livestock, and we process the ones that are ready for market. We harvest one crop, we plant seeds for another.

I believe that all beings, whether human or other-than-human, have an inherent right to a natural existence in the world, and each has a way to contribute to the welfare of the greater whole. Inevitably, a time will come when every life must give way to sustain balance on the Earth. On the farm, there is an understanding that nothing we eat to sustain ourselves comes without sacrifice from another living being, be it animal, plant, or microorganism. Thus, we take all food, whether it is a hamburger, a pork chop, a carrot, or a spoonful of yogurt in moderation and gratitude. Nothing is eaten without an understanding of the sacred life and spirit that created the nourishment, or of the ecosystem that was required to sustain it.

I understand that there are many vegetarians out there who will disagree with me. Our divergences are a necessary, important tension. Conscientious eaters long before the locavore movement, vegetarians can be thanked for helping draw attention to the ecological havoc and animal welfare abuses that have come to define our conventional livestock production system. Their criticisms and questions have also assisted small family farms, like my own, to devise ways to improve our practices and to reflect deeply upon the nature of our work. The lessons taught by vegetarians have entered my own kitchen. Meat will always be a part of my life, but I believe that it should not be used in the extreme and wasteful way our culture has defined as acceptable. We cannot produce such tremendous volumes of meat sustainably, and wasteful and nonchalant consumer habits fail to honor the sacrifice of the animals’ lives.

I understand that no amount of explanation of the hows and whys of grassfed livestock production will convince a person opposed to killing animals that eating meat is OK. Life on my family’s farm and in my own household is informed by and is reflective of the concerns of such folks; I remain thankful that those perspectives and questions continue to come forward. But back to the question: Can animals and humans sustainably live together? My personal vote is “yes.”

Shannon Hayes wrote this article for YES! Magazine, a national, nonprofit media organization that fuses powerful ideas with practical actions. Shannon is the author of Radical Homemakers: Reclaiming Domesticity from a Consumer Culture, The Grassfed Gourmet and The Farmer and the Grill. She is the host of grassfedcooking.com and radicalhomemakers.com. Hayes works with her family on Sap Bush Hollow Farm in Upstate New York.

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Rajendra Singh beside a check dam in Rajasthan

Rajendra Singh, founder of Tarun Bharat Sangh, (TBS, or Young India Association), always wanted to be a farmer. Bowing to family pressure, he studied to be a doctor of traditional Indian Ayurvedic medicine and after school moved to the Alwyn district in the arid state of Rajasthan. Singh was not simply practicing medicine, he wanted to test some ideas about healing ecosystems.

The local Arvari River had dried up during the 1940s when the surrounding hills were stripped of trees. It flowed only during the monsoon season. Since that time most people fled local villages to seek a livelihood elsewhere. When Singh arrived in 1985, he noticed that only the oldest and poorest people were left in the area.

Rajendra Singh, "Waterman of India"

Drawing on indigenous Indian knowledge of geology, hydrology and ecology, he began building tiny dams with johads (reservoirs) on streams flowing to the river in the hopes of reviving the natural water flow of both surface and underground water in the region. The local elders chuckled as they watched him do backbreaking labor with very little results for two years. Only then, he remembers with a chuckle, did they decide he was sincere in trying to help them and began offering tips on the right spots to place dams and johads.

It worked. The water captured in the johads during monsoon season slowly rejuvenated vegetation, which helped refill the aquifers (used for local drinking water) and restore the water retaining capacity of the hillsides.

Arvari River, Rajasthan

The Arvari River came back to life and now runs all year as do four other once-dry rivers in the region. Groundwater levels have risen by an estimated 20 feet, and crucial forest cover, which helps to maintain the water-retaining capacity of the soil, has increased by 33 percent. People who abandoned the district are now moving back to farm and start businesses, Singh says.

In addition, The Young India Association challenged plans to privatize and deplete freshwater resources. In the Alwar area, where Singh began his work, activsts have prevented 40 water-intensive industrial companies (including bottled water and soft drink makers) from setting up factories. Villagers are creating their own “river parliaments” to sustain the water commons; each is governed by two leaders “one who is responsible to the community, and one who is responsible solely to the water and nature.

“Water is a very emotional, spiritual thing,” Singh explains, noting that the once-lost river is now once again sacred to local people. He says that many of the older residents now ask that when they die that their ashes be sprinkled into the Arvari rather than the Ganges.

Jay Walljasper is editor of OnTheCommons.org, a news and culture website devoted to recognizing the importance of the commons — those things that belong to all of us — in modern life.

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Each year Americans apply an estimated 27 million pounds of weed ‘n feed to parks, cemeteries, home lawns and anywhere else mown grass is found. A mix of three “phenoxy herbicides” called 2,4-D, dicamba and mecoprop typically blended together into weed killers and weed ‘n feed products, they kill broadleaf plants such as dandelions while sparing grass.

The lure of convenience, and effective marketing, have made weed ‘n feed among the most frequently used lawn care products. Short-term effectiveness is gained at the expense of long-term lawn and soil health. The overpowered chemical fertilizers these products contain actually weaken turf—causing the kind of fast, weak, unnatural growth that’s susceptible to pests and disease.

Giving up the weed ‘n feed does not mean you’ll have to live with a weed strewn lawn. Organic lawn care practices, combined with nontoxic pre-emergent herbicides, will restore your weed patch to a healthy lawn, over time.

Here are six reasons to avoid using synthetic weed ‘n feed products on your lawn:

1. Uneven, excessive application of herbicides.

Granular “weed and feed” products are applied to the entire lawn, not merely to areas of weeds, which results in herbicides being applied where they are not needed. The mixture of fertilizer and herbicide is incompatible because one ingredient should be applied to the entire lawn, and one is intended for problem spots. In most lawns, broadleaf weeds like dandelions usually occupy less than five or 10 per cent of the area.

Gary Fish, an environmental specialist at the Maine Board of Pesticide Control, who used to work with Chemlawn before it merged with Tru Green, believes the combined weed ‘n feed products, whether for pre-emergent fertilizer or for weeds, are unnecessary and harmful to the environment. Fish said weed ‘n feed products use 20 to 30 times more pesticide than is needed.

When we give lawns more food than they need, the excess fertilizers end up in the water because plants simply can’t absorb as much as we think they want.

2. Granular “weed ‘n feed” chemicals harm the environment.

Quick-release fertilizers, commonly used in most weed ‘n feed products, apply a quick and heavy dose of nutrients to the lawn, and are more likely to wash off when watered or after it rains. Even if you don’t live near the water, pesticides from your yard could travel through storm drains untreated to the nearest stream or lake, or seep into the water table. Nitrogen and other plant nutrients create algae blooms that smother aquatic life forms in streams, ponds, rivers and even the ocean. In addition, a main ingredient in “weed and feed,” 2,4-D or 2,4-Dichlorophenoxyacetic acid, has recently been cited as a contributor to contaminating salmon habitat.

Birds eat weed ‘n feed granules as grit. Studies have linked weed-and-feed and crane fly pesticides to massive bird deaths, and this has caused the removal of some of the most toxic ingredients from the market.

3. Weed ‘n feed chemicals are easily tracked indoors.

Granular weed ‘n feed products cling to shoes and children’s clothing if they have playing on the lawn, and are easily carried indoors where they persist in the home environment. Dust is carried by the wind to neighbor’s yards, where the particles can also tracked indoors. Studies show that children and pets who play on toxically treated lawns absorb pesticide residues into their bodies. In recent governmental studies, researchers found that all study participants had residual toxins in their blood, including pesticides. Children in similar studies show pesticide residue markers in their urine.

4. There are health risks associated with synthetic herbicides.

The weedkillers (phenoxy herbicides) used in weed ‘n feed products are persistent, bioaccumulative toxic substances linked to cancers and to reproductive, immunological and neurological problems. Some of the herbicides in chemical weed ‘n feeds—especially 2, 4-D—have been linked to increased rates of cancer in people and dogs.

5. Long-term lawn health is compromised.

Once you begin a program of using synthetic fertilizers, your lawn becomes dependent on these chemicals to ensure a healthy weed-free look year after year. However, over-fertilizing with synthetic chemicals disinfects or kills most of the beneficial fungi and organisms in soil. This makes it more difficult to build naturally healthy turf which contains beneficial organisms.

6. There are safer, more effective alternatives.

The good news is that you can have a beautiful, healthy lawn without using blanket applications of synthetic lawn care chemicals. Building a healthy, organic lawn is the best way to choke out weeds. Lawns that are maintained properly through regular care (i.e. feeding, aeration, watering, and mowing), should only need ‘spot treating’ of limited problem areas. To learn about organic lawn care methods, see our page on Natural Lawn Care.

Consumers should also realize that weed ‘n feed products may kill existing weeds, but do not prevent new weeds from growing. You can prevent new weeds from germinating by applying a pre-emergent herbicide during that first warm spell in spring and in the early fall. One of the best pre-emergents is corn gluten meal, a completely natural substance that also provides the benefits of fertilizing. Corn gluten meal is an organic alternative to weed ‘n feed.

Another effective method of controlling dandelions is pulling them manually. This may seem to be too difficult, but newly designed dandelion forks, which have a curved plate welded to the shaft, are very easy to use for pulling even the most stubborn dandelions. If your lawn is modest in size, a small investment in a dandelion fork will yield good results.
For the health of our families, neighbors and our environment, pesticide use should be a measure of last resort.

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The textile recycling industry is one of the first recycling industries to be formed. Given the maturity of this industry it is very, very efficient. In fact, approximately 93% of all textile waste diverted to recycling is successfully reclaimed with about 35% going out as used clothing, 33% as reprocessed fibers (filler in vehicle seats and, upholstery, insulation, etc), 25% is converted to cloth wipes and 7% to landfill.

The interesting thing is that there is massive demand for used clothing, reprocessed fibers and cloth wipes. The recycling industry cannot get its hands on enough material to keep up with this demand. However, the recycling industry reclaims only 15% of the total textile waste that is produced. So what about that additional 85% that goes straight to landfill? Well the tragedy is that over 90% of that textile waste is perfectly recyclable. It just never gets to the recycling companies.

The tragedy is that over 90% of that textile waste is perfectly recyclable.

And that is where we have to assume greater responsibility. The 85% of textile waste isn’t getting to the recyclers because it is not getting sorted at the domestic level. So, what can we do? Well, if you have old but wearable clothing that you want to get rid of, have a yard sale or hand them down to friends or family. Or, you could donate the items to a charitable organization. There are many such organizations both in Canada and the US.

In Canada, go to Charity Village. They provide a very comprehensive list of all Charities that accept used clothing. It is also a great place to find out where to donate other household items like electronics, furniture, building materials, old vehicles, etc.

In the US there are a variety of options such as:

• The Charity Guide offers a lot of options for recycling of women’s clothing across the country.
• The Vietnam Veterans Association also accepts clothing and other household donations. The organization has donation facilities in 30 states which are listed its site and you can even schedule a pick-up online!
• The Salvation Army and Goodwill are two venerable organizations that are nationally located and accept used clothing.

A really neat site that can be used to find more localized charities is the Charity Navigator. By using the Advanced Search feature, you can search for charities by focus (environmental, social, animal health, international, etc) and by state. This site also provides a great overview of each charity (over 5,300 charities in their database). Not all of the charities on this list will accept used clothing so you would have to browse around a bit to find a suitable charity that is represented in your state. Alternatively, just type the word “clothing” in the keyword field for a sure fire way to find charities that do accept clothing donations.

The Better Business Bureau offers a nice guideline here to help you ensure your used clothing is going to a good cause and to help you claim the donation for tax purposes if that is your desire.

If the clothing is not wearable, convert it into wipes that can be used around the house to clean up spills, wash your car, etc. If you are handy with a sewing machine, the clothing materials could be re-purposed into items such as cloth bags, hats, mitts, quilts, etc. Let your creativity run wild!

Even if the clothing is un-wearable and you don’t have the time to do anything with it, ask the Charity if they will still accept the item(s). In most cases the charities have agreements with recyclers to accept any clothing items that are un-wearable.

But whatever option you choose, it is important to know that there are options. We all live busy lives but with a little effort we as a society have the capacity to divert over 10 million tons of textile waste from the landfills each year! A prime example of how a little effort can go a long way!

About the Author:
Adrian Desbarats is the owner of Fashion and Earth Inc, an organic clothing and eco friendly clothing e-retailer. Adrian is passionate about the topic of sustainability and believes very strongly that we are not as powerless to effect change as we may feel. We can change the world, one individual commitment at a time! If you want to learn more about eco-fashion, you can visit Adrian at www.FashionandEarth.com.

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In the US, over 4.5 billion pounds of pesticides are used each year, with 75% used in agriculture and 25% in homes and gardens. The prevalence and widespread use of pesticides has increased our exposure to a variety of chemicals, while the long-term health implications are still being studied.

Pesticides affect different people differently. Children may be more sensitive to some pesticides than adults. Compared to adults, they breathe in more air and eat more food relative to their body size, increasing their exposure. When they play on floors or lawns or put objects in their mouths, they increase their chance of exposure to pesticides used in yards or lawns. Also, their developing bodies may not break down some chemicals as effectively as adults.

People of any age with asthma or other chronic diseases may be more likely than healthy individuals to get sick after pesticide exposure. Some individuals are also more sensitive to the odor or other irritant effects of certain pesticides.

But no matter what their individual sensitivities, people in the greatest danger of pesticide illness are those whose exposure is highest, such as workers who mix or apply pesticides. People who use pesticides in their homes may also be overexposed and become ill, especially if they do not carefully follow the directions on the product label. People living near agricultural fields are more likely than urban residents to be exposed to farm chemicals (although their exposure may not necessarily be high enough to cause harmful effects).

What can you do to minimize pesticide exposure?

1. Buy organic and locally grown fruit and vegetables.

Buying organic, in-season produce from your local market is the best assurance of pesticide-free produce. To identify fruit grown organically, look at the little sticker – the number should be five digits and start with “9” (e.g. 94223). If you are on a limited budget, look for organic choices for the produce your family eats the most. National surveys have also shown that fruits and vegetables from farmers’ markets contain less pesticides even if they’re not organic.

2. Wash fruits and vegetables before eating.

Commercial vegetable and fruit washes are available which are formulated to remove chemical residue from produce. Examples are Environné and Vitanet, available online or at your local health food stores and some supermarkets. You can also make your own produce wash using a very diluted solution of mild dish-washing detergent (1 tsp detergent per gallon, or 4 liters, water).
For grapes, strawberries, green beans, and leafy vegetables, swirl the foods in a dilute solution of dish detergent and water at room temperature for 5 to 10 seconds, then rinse with slightly warm water. For other fruits and vegetables, use a soft brush to scrub the food with the solution for about 5 to 10 seconds, then rinse with slightly warm water.

3. Know which fruits and vegetables have higher levels of pesticide residue.

Much of the health risks associated with pesticide residues on produce are concentrated in a relatively small number of fruits and vegetables. By knowing which fruits and vegetables pose the highest risks, you can take adequate precaution, such as washing the food more carefully, peeling the skin on some fruit, or avoiding commercial sources. To learn which foods have higher pesticide residues, see our page Pesticides and Produce.

4. Grow your own produce.

A backyard garden plot as small as 400 sq. ft. can provide much of the required produce for a family of four. Organic methods can replace the need for pesticides and chemical fertilizers, and tending the garden is a healthy activity for children. Planting perennial crops like asparagus, blueberries and strawberries will provide crops for years with very little work. Even homegrown produce should be washed before eating, however, since pesticides are sprayed aerially in some regions of the country, and other wind-blown contaminants may reach your garden. To learn more, see our pages on Backyard Vegetable Gardening, Natural Garden Pest Control.

5. Use non-toxic methods for controlling insects in the home and garden.

Using chemical-based commercial insect pest control treatments may introduce chemicals to your home which pose more of a threat than the insects they are designed to kill. EPA spokesman Dale Kemery recommends that parents try other pest-control tactics before resorting to pesticide use in the home or garden. There are effective, non-toxic methods for controlling insect problems in the home such as diatomaceous earth, which will kill a broad range of common indoor insects without posing any hazard to your family or pets.

To learn more about safe methods for controlling insect pests, see our page on Natural Pest Control.

In the garden, growing healthy plants using organic methods is the best pest deterrent, and there are a variety of natural pest control methods such as beneficial insects, non-toxic remedies, traps and barriers. To learn more, see our page Natural Garden Pest Control.

6. Have a ‘no shoes’ policy in your home.

When visitors to your home walk across a lawn that has been treated with chemical fertilizers and herbicides, residue from these chemicals may be tracked into your home. In some instances, these residues may last for years in carpeting and on floor surfaces. The simple practice of leaving shoes at the door will minimize this risk and reduce your home cleaning chores. You can provide inexpensive house slippers for guests who are unused to going shoeless indoors.

References:
Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder and Urinary Metabolites of Organophosphate Pesticides: Maryse F. Bouchard, PhD, David C. Bellinger, PhD, Robert O. Wright, MD, MPH, Marc G. Weisskopf, PhD

Health Hazards of Pesticides – Rupali Das, MD, MPH, California Department of Health Services, Michael O’Malley, MD, MPH, University of California, Davis, Laura Styles, MPH, Public Health Institute

To learn about non-toxic pest control methods for your home, see Natural Pest Control.
For natural and non-toxic methods for your garden, see Natural Garden Pest Control.
To learn how to avoid using lawn care chemicals, see Natural Lawn Care.
To purchase non-toxic pest control products, see Shop/Natural pest Control.

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1. Pesticide exposure may increase risk of ADHD in children
2. Pesticides & Kids – why you should be concerned
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