Category: Environment

Scientists warn: Farmed fish possibly = mad cow disease

Scientist Warns that Farmed Fish Could be a Source of Mad Cow Disease


In a paper that shows just how strange our modern world has become, Robert P. Friedland, neurologist from the University of Louisville, warns that farmed fish could be at risk of Creutzfeldt Jakob disease, or mad cow disease.

Currently, farmed fish are fed cow byproducts-a food source they would never find natural environment (unless society started dumping cow carcasses in oceans or lakes).

Friedland and co-authors raise the issue in the Journal of Alzhemier’s Disease and call on food regulators to ban feeding cow bone or meat to farmed fish until it can be determined if the practice of feeding fish cow-parts is safe.

“We have not proven that it’s possible for fish to transmit the disease to humans. Still, we believe that out of reasonable caution for public health, the practice of feeding rendered cows to fish should be prohibited,” Friedland said. “Fish do very well in the seas without eating cows.”

Great, just another thing to avoid.  Pretty soon it seems we’ll all be starving out of a vain attempt to eat only good clean food.

This latest is from The Organic Consumers Association, and I heartly recommend everyone sign up for their e-mail service, where you can learn about these sorts of things, seeing as how they are completely unreported in the mainstream Corporate Mouthpiece Media.

Luke Cole: An Appreciation

It is with broken heart that I report the death of one of this nation’s most important and innovative environmental attorneys.

Luke Cole graduated with honors from Stanford, and cum laude from Harvard Law School. He could have done anything. He could have gone to work for any law firm in the country, and made a fortune. Instead, he moved to San Francisco and co-founded the non-profit Center on Race, Poverty & the Environment. As described on their website:

The Center on Race, Poverty & the Environment is an environmental justice litigation organization dedicated to helping grassroots groups across the United States attack head on the disproportionate burden of pollution borne by poor people and people of color. We provide organizing, technical and legal assistance to help community groups stop immediate environmental threats. In the 16 years that CRPE has been helping the poor and people of color resist toxic intrusions and protect their environmental health, among our many victories we have beaten toxic waste incinerators, forced oil refineries to use cleaner technology, beaten a 55,000-cow mega-dairy, stopped numerous tire burning proposals, helped bring safe drinking water to various rural communities, stopped a garbage dump on the Los Coyotes reservation in southern California, and empowered hundreds of local residents along the way.

His recent work included a groundbreaking case that is succinctly explained by his law school classmate, Ann Carlson:

Cole was well-known for his work on numerous leading environmental justice cases, including as counsel for the Native Village of Kivalina in its pathbreaking case seeking damages from large greenhouse gas emitters from the melting away of their Alaskan village.

If that sounds like he was tilting at windmills, you didn’t know Luke. He wouldn’t have pursued such a case if he hadn’t believed he could win it. His successful pioneering work, taking on the California dairy industry, made him the cover boy of the February, 2002 issue of California Law Magazine, in an article titled: Got Manure? How Environmental Lawyer Luke Cole Brought Dairy Construction in the San Joaquin Valley to a Standstill.

The Hidden Danger in Coal Ash The Selenium Wars – in the TN. Legislature.

This is up at DK now – not getting ANY attention, but it’s an important story – so Ill put it up here but don’t have time to edit.

Who knows how the polo ponies were killed in Florida?  

“An overdose of selenium is the probable cause of death of 21 polo horses in Wellington last week, the state veterinarian said today.” http://www.palmbeachpost.com/h…

While a little bit of selenium may be health promoting, at amounts of just a little bit more, it becomes a deadly toxic.  http://ods.od.nih.gov/factshee…

Aquatic selenium pollution is a global environmental safety issue. http://www.treesearch.fs.fed.u…

Kossacks have heard previously in many good diaries about  the Kingston coal ash disaster, including this one TOXIC BREW IN TENNESSEE: A look at what’s in TVA’s coal ash. http://www.dailykos.com/storyo…

There have also been diaries about the absurd things happening in the Tennessee legislature this year, particularly with guns http://www.dailykos.com/story/…

and our water laws.

Your victory garden and your local farmer can change the world

     The concept is very simple. You are what you eat.

     Economically speaking, this also means that you are what you consume.

    Since consumer spending makes up over 70% of our national eonomy, logic dictates that the smarter, healthier and more sustainable our purchasing is as individuals, the more sustainable and strong our national economy will become.

    The simple ripples in the water can have drastic effects, in the long run.

     So, here’s what we do.

    If Americans ate less meat, less fast food and manufactured food and instead ate more locally grown fruits and vegetables, as well as whatever food you can grow yourself, we could bring about the change we need without having to wait for anyone to take the lead.

    Simple changes to your daily diet, even if done in moderation, combined with enough people doing the same thing can literally change the world.

On Being American, Or, “A Hybrid? Not Unless It Has Tail Fins”

It’s great to see that people are starting to think about hybrid vehicles, but so far, they really haven’t been for me.

You know why?

Because for the most part, they have no…style.

The Prius?

If you look at it sideways, and squint, it looks more like a pepita than a car.

The Insight?

They say it’s stylish…but it looks like a Prius to me.

You know what I want?

I want someone to build the biggest, nastiest, most oversized hybrid the world has ever seen.

Something drenched with chrome, with seating for…many, and a convertible top; and maybe, if all my dreams come true: tail fins.

Something crazy.

Something ridiculous.

Something…American.

Well, guess what?

Somebody’s already gone out and had one built-and ironically, that somebody is Neil Young, Canadian.

Need a Green Mother’s Day Gift? There’s still time!

Yellowstone

Sierra Club Sponsor a Wild Place  

Wolves, hunting, and “The Big Howl”

Photobucket

Just wanted to pass along this email I got from the NRDC, so anyone who didn’t know about Obama’s Interior Secretary Salazar’s plan to allow wolf hunting to commence in May can take action.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

In just a few weeks, the mass killing of wolves could begin in

Idaho and Montana — and not even newborn wolf pups and their

nursing mothers will be spared.

Please don’t miss this opportunity to speak out before this slaughter unfolds. On May 4, the wolf’s federal protection will be lifted, and hunters and government agents will be free to open fire. After that, the states will launch

public hunts, targeting wolves.

Time is critical, so please take a moment to act now to call off what may become a disaster to the survival prospects of wolves living in and around Yellowstone National Park and the Norther Rockies.

The Thin Green Line

Cross posted from DailyKos.

This is a very disturbing “canary in the coal mine” environmental diary. I’m sure the twenty-seven year old PBS series Nature needs no introduction but this week’s episode The Thin Green Line was by far the most devastating to watch. We are wiping out the frogs and amphibians.

The thirty second preview offers a quick look and some amazing photography;

But the entire program points out that we have created the perfect storm against our amphibians.  

Ending MTR Mining With Change That Works

Mountaintop removal mining dumps tons of waste into streams and eco systems that are literally killed by suffocation. Mining companies claim their euphemistic “valley fills” are an industry necessity because it would be too expensive to pay for waste disposal. If Congress outlaws “valley fills,” it would help stop MTR mining, which causes massive environmental disasters and violates human rights.

A clear definition of “fill material,” which affects what can be discharged into our waters, can be used to stop “valley fills”. The government admitted that the Corps’ definition prohibited valley fills. The EPA later adopted a definition to allow valley fills. The inconsistency and confusion between these two rules was seized as cover to issue permits for valley fills. After environmental groups obtained injunctive relief against MTR mining based on the Corps’ definition, Bush changed the law. Bush’s definition of fill material is based on the EPA rule. The problem with HR 1310 is that it is based on the same rule used by the EPA and Bush. Instead of clarity, we have muddy waters ripe for more years of litigation delaying the end of MTR.

Changing the social imaginary

This is a diary about the social imaginary — those aspects of our everyday practice that depend upon our imagining the existence of social institutions.  As our social institutions are increasingly inappropriate to our physical survival on planet Earth, we should be in the business of imagining new institutions which will give us a fighting chance.  I will investigate the case of global warming to discuss why this is so, and end with a series of photographic reflections.

The concept of “social imaginary” was developed as a tool of social critique by Cornelius Castoriadis, a philosopher whose pessimistic assessment of the present-day “social imaginary” will be examined in detail here.

(crossposted at Big Orange)

What is this all about?

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. – That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, – That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

                                                                                                 Declaration of Independence

1776

Has our form of Governance become destructive to the majority?  If so how shall we work to change our government?  What would a future with a different form of government, economy, social order look?  Where is our current governance taking us?

Once a week I publish an installment in the story.  This is followed by the Concepts Behind the Fiction section.  This section is filled with information and links for you to investigate.

About a week after I publish on this site, I will publish on The Daily Kos, Z Communications and here.  Check my Links button on my website to connect to one of these discussions. These posting will happen simultaneously and on a Saturday or Monday afternoon (depending on which day of the week I have off from my paying job).  The day of the posting will be announced on my website. I will make myself available to moderate a discussion and for comments and questions during that time.

A running Post of what readers think are the most important issues for our future and how to get to the future we want will then be created as part of these discussions.

If you are coming to this blog in the middle then check out the Characters List and the Plot Summary pages.

The Latest from The Environmentalist

Four (wow) articles from THE ENVIRONMENTALIST (many more on the site):


US Climate Change Envoy in Place and Ready to Negotiate

by Jake Schmidt.  Today, a ceremony was held at the US State Department to announce Todd Stern as the Special Envoy for Climate Change (see short bio and video of the event). As we outlined in our transition recommendations, it is crucial that President Obama appoint a climate negotiating team early in his Administration.

http://climate.the-environment…


Deniability: Facing the War on Terror through Poetry

There are times in history when it is best for a people to move on from past mistakes. There are other times, such as now, when the past cries out to be explored. For those who are searching for meaning to the last eight years, a new book by American poet, George Witte, Deniability, is the place to start. This is not only for the writing that is spectacular in its simplicity, its perfect placement of each word, its prose, but for its bravery in peeling back the layers of the war on terror as an eight year journey that is stark and unforgiving in its verse.

http://op-ed.the-environmental…


Global Temperature Trends: 2008 Annual Summation

by James Hansen. The Goddard Institute for Space Studies has analyzed the global temperature trends based on 2008 surface air temperature leading to the conclusion that, despite the cold brought on by the strong La Nina event last year, 2008 was the ninth warmest year since measurements began in 1880.

http://world.the-environmental…


Unleashing the Geeks

by William S. Becker.  There is good climate change and bad climate change. One of the very best types is the radical warming of the atmosphere for scientific inquiry we’re already feeling from the incoming Obama Administration.

http://science.the-environment…

See The Environmentalist for more

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