Plastic Free Friday!

Shout out to all veterans today and all of America! 

Consider making this a #PlasticFreeFriday! Go plastic-free for 24 hours! Buy or drink no sodas from plastic bottles, receive no plastic shopping bags, take no plastic containers from takeout, use no plastic flatware. 

Fill your beverage bottles at home to take with you, keep reusable shopping bags in your car. Use glass containers, reusable plates and flatware for food. Why? 17 MILLION gallons of oil is used EVERY day in the USA -- just to make plastic water bottles. Then we throw out 88,000 tons of plastic, every day. And here's what's scary: 93% of us retain the plastic chemical, BPA, in our bodies. BPA and other endocrine disrupters are challenging the health of our families by depressing vitamin D levels among other harmful effects.

We can do better! Perhaps plastic free everyday is a heavy lift...but if we can do it for 24 hours we can move in that direction.

Stand up for Food that is Responsibly Grown

Farmworkers sometimes endure terrible working conditions, and food is not always responsibly grown.

Soon, a new certification system will assure that American farms meet rigorous safety standards and treat their workers with the same great care they give to the fruits and vegetables they grow so you’ll know that the fields where your food comes from are a decent and safe place to work, and that your food is the best it can be for you and your family. More retailers will carry produce that is responsibly grown and farmworker assured, but you need to make your voice heard.

My heartfelt thanks to Food Inc and Take Part for bringing important issues to light.
Go here to voice your support.

Join the March Against Monsanto May 25th

                                                       Click here to find your local March.
        
           On May 25, activists around the world will unite to March Against Monsanto.

           Why march?

• Research studies have shown that Monsanto’s genetically-modified foods can lead to serious health conditions such as the development of cancer tumors, infertility and birth defects.

• In the United States, the FDA, the agency tasked with ensuring food safety for the population, is steered by ex-Monsanto executives, and we feel that’s a questionable conflict of interests and explains the lack of government-led research on the long-term effects of GM products.

• Recently, the U.S. Congress and president collectively passed the nicknamed “Monsanto Protection Act” that, among other things, bans courts from halting the sale of Monsanto’s genetically-modified seeds.

• For too long, Monsanto has been the benefactor of corporate subsidies and political favoritism. Organic and small farmers suffer losses while Monsanto continues to forge its monopoly over the world’s food supply, including exclusive patenting rights over seeds and genetic makeup.

• Monsanto's GM seeds are harmful to the environment; for example, scientists have indicated they have contributed to Colony Collapse Disorder among the world's bee population.

      What are solutions to these problems?

• Voting with your dollar by buying organic and boycotting Monsanto-owned companies that use GMOs in their products.

• Labeling of GMOs so that consumers can make those informed decisions easier.

• Repealing relevant provisions of the US's "Monsanto Protection Act."

• Calling for further scientific research on the health effects of GMOs.

• Holding Monsanto executives and Monsanto-supporting politicians accountable through direct communication, grassroots journalism, social media, etc.

• Continuing to inform the public about Monsanto's secrets.

• Taking to the streets to show the world and Monsanto that we won't take these injustices quietly.

            We will not stand for cronyism. 

            We will not stand for poison.    
            That’s why we March Against Monsanto.

     

Study Finds 97% Consensus on Human-Caused Global Warming in the Peer-Reviewed Literature

You might think that 97% consensus among the scientific community would motivate our intelligent US public to demand some sensible changes to energy policies… BUT WAIT… 57% of the public is NOT yet ready to accept the science of man made global warming. Why not? Because of pseudonews organizations 

(Yes Fox and Drudge, I’m talking about you) promoting the fossil fuel funded, pseudo-science talking points designed to keep said 57% of the public slumbering on in a mind numbed delusional state of false security. And those same fossil fuel lobbyists get voters to keep their fossil fuel elected puppets in Washington to maintain oil, gas, coal, carbon based energy policies at status quo, choking the atmosphere with CO2 emissions at an unprecedented rate. Frack you if you don’t fall into line. Sunscreen anyone? Gas mask?

Quoting comment from the study, which you can read here.

"The public perception of a scientific consensus on man-made global warming is a necessary element in public support for climate policy (Ding et al 2011). However, there is a significant gap between public perception and reality, with 57% of the US public either disagreeing or unaware that scientists overwhelmingly agree that the earth is warming due to human activity (Pew 2012). Read the Pew study here.

Contributing to this 'consensus gap' are campaigns designed to confuse the public about the level of agreement among climate scientists. In 1991, Western Fuels Association conducted a $510 000 campaign whose primary goal was to 'reposition global warming as theory (not fact)'. A key strategy involved constructing the impression of active scientific debate using dissenting scientists as spokesmen (Oreskes 2010). The situation is exacerbated by media treatment of the climate issue, where the normative practice of providing opposing sides with equal attention has allowed a vocal minority to have their views amplified (Boykoff and Boykoff 2004). While there are indications that the situation has improved in the UK and USA prestige press (Boykoff 2007), the UK tabloid press showed no indication of improvement from 2000 to 2006 (Boykoff and Mansfield 2008).

The narrative presented by some dissenters is that the scientific consensus is '...on the point of collapse' (Oddie 2012) while '...the number of scientific "heretics" is growing with each passing year' (Allègre et al 2012). A systematic, comprehensive review of the literature provides quantitative evidence countering this assertion. 

The number of papers rejecting man-made global warming is a miniscule proportion of the published research, with the percentage slightly decreasing over time. Among papers expressing a position on man-made global warming, an overwhelming percentage (97.2% based on self-ratings, 97.1% based on abstract ratings) endorses the scientific consensus on man-made global warming."

References

Ding D, Maibach E W, Zhao X, Roser-Renouf C and Leiserowitz A 2011 Support for climate policy and societal action are linked to perceptions about scientific agreement Nature Clim. Change 1 462–5

Oreskes N 2010 My facts are better than your facts: spreading good news about global warming How Do Facts Travel? ed M S Morgan and P Howlett (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) pp 135–66

Boykoff M T and Boykoff J M 2004 Balance as bias: global warming and the US prestige press Glob. Environ. Change 14 125–36

Boykoff M T 2007 Flogging a dead norm? Newspaper coverage of anthropogenic climate change in the United States and United Kingdom from 2003 to 2006 Area 39470–81

Boykoff M T and Mansfield M 2008 ‘Ye Olde Hot Aire’: reporting on human contributions to climate change in the UK tabloid pressEnviron. Res. Lett. 3 024002

Don't frack our food and farms!

PETITION STATEMENT
California is the largest producer of food in the U.S. Fracking and farming cannot co-exist. If we frack California's farms, we put the entire country's food supply at risk. Please stop auctioning off California's public lands to the oil and gas industry for fracking.
Sign Here

Petition Background

You may not live in California, but chances are a lot of the food you buy, including organic produce, is grown there. California is the largest producer of food in the U.S. In 2011, the state's 81,500 farms and ranches had sales of $43.5 billion. What happens to our food if we frack and poison the groundwater that irrigates California’s farms?
In a move that a federal judge says violated environmental law, the U.S. Department of Interior’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has already auctioned off 1,750 square miles of California’s public lands to oil companies intent on extracting oil, using a controversial technology called hydraulic fracturing – or fracking. In May, the BLM plans to auction off even more of California’s Monterey Shale, a geological formation that extends from northern California to Los Angeles, and is home to cattle ranches, dairy farms, vineyards and organic farms.
Fracking and farms cannot co-exist, as we’ve heard over and over from farmers in Pennsylvania, Ohio, North Dakota, West Virginia and Colorado. Farmers whose lives and farms have been ruined by fracking’s methane emissions and toxic chemicals. As one farmer explained, “We depend on good water for our cows, our crops and our own health. Once you mess up your groundwater, you can’t fix it.”
The oil and gas industry argues that it’s fine to pump huge amounts of cancer-causing chemicals deep into the earth, because we’ll never use that water. U.S. environmental regulators agree – which is why fracking is exempt from the Safe Drinking Water Act, and why the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has issued more than 1,500 permits for companies to pollute aquifers in some of the country’s driest regions. But as our population grows, and temperatures rise, we may find ourselves doing what Mexico City has already been forced to do: drawing water from mile-deep aquifers that until now would not have been tapped for drinking water.
We all depend on California for our food. California’s unique Mediterranean climate allows the state to grow over 450 different crops. Some of these crops are exclusive to California: almonds, artichokes, dates, figs, kiwifruit, olives, persimmons, pomegranates, pistachios, prunes, raisins, clovers, and walnuts.
Fracking is bad for our water, bad for our air, bad for our health, bad for the climate. Without clean air and clean water, there are no farms. Without farms, there is no food.
Please sign this petition to the Bureau of Land Management asking officials there to stop auctioning off California’s public lands for fracking.

Taken from and in complete support of:

Sign up for Organic Bytes Here

Take Back the Tap Guide to Safe Tap Water

Do you drink bottled water? Do you think it is safer than tap water? So did I until I began to do some investigating.
Turns out I was wrong...and I was paying a lot of money for water that is tested less often and less extensively than my own tap water.
Tap water is tested more frequently for safety concerns than bottled water, but the water quality reports issued by local utilities can be confusing to read. Use this guide, the Take Back the Tap Guide to Safe Tap Water to help understand these reports and why they are important. Then get tips on finding the right filter for your household tap water based on the water quality in your area. 

Get the Facts. Bottled water is not safer than tap water. Despite the marketing, bottled water is not safer than tap water. In fact, tap water is subject to more stringent regulation that bottled water. Tap water is regulated by the EPA, while bottled water is regulated by the Food and Drug Administration. Perpetually under-funded and short-staffed, FDA has a poor record of protecting consumer health and safety. FDA sends inspectors to bottling plants once every two to three years. Read this: Bottled Water: Illusions of Purity and then resolve to reduce your bottled water consumption.
You can download a nifty app for your smartphone called Tap Buddy to find water fountains in your area, and you can visit Food & Water Watch's website to see what you can do to support access to safe food and water.

Why are we not up in arms about the cost of health care in America?

About Time Magazine’s “Bitter Pill”

To read Bitter Pill, click here.

The story opens with an all too common tale of life in America. We have the right to pursue life liberty and happiness, but not at a price the rest of the world might enjoy, at least not when it comes to health care.

Take Sean Recchi.

Diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma at age 42. Total cost, in advance, for Sean’s treatment plan and initial doses of chemotherapy: $83,900. Charges for blood and lab tests amounted to more than $15,000; with Medicare, they would have cost a few hundred dollars.

Why are we not up in arms about the cost of health care in America? It approaches 20% of our GDP. We pay more than anyone, ANYONE else in the world pays. And we are not even covering everyone. Nor is the care top quality. In fact we are nowhere near the top as quality of care goes. Our ranking? Paying the most? 37th. We rank 37th in quality of care.

When we debate health care policy, we seem to jump right to the issue of who should pay the bills, blowing past what should be the first question: Why exactly are the bills so high?

What are the reasons, good or bad, that cancer means a half-million- or million-dollar tab? Why should a trip to the emergency room for chest pains that turn out to be indigestion bring a bill that can exceed the cost of a semester of college? What makes a single dose of even the most wonderful wonder drug cost thousands of dollars? Why does simple lab work done during a few days in a hospital cost more than a car?

Read this article, "Bitter Pill". I implore you. It is long, but it is important for all of us to understand that health care in America is extortion. Nothing more than government sanctioned extortion.