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January 30, 2007

Environment All Over the News

Four environmental stories caught my eye today. In the first one, we have just learned that – surprise – the Bush Administration has been lying to us about global warming. According to the scientists whose papers have been relied upon by the government, the Administration has been subjecting them to political pressure to downplay the threat of global warming. Two-fifths of the 279 climate scientists surveyed (who work for NASA, the EPA, and departments of Agriculture, Energy, Commerce, Defense, and the Interior), said their scientific papers had been edited in a way that changed their meaning. Almost half of these scientists said they were told to eliminate phrases like "global warming" or "climate change" from their reports.

The second story is an update on the complaint filed with the USDA by the Cornucopia Institute two months ago that Wal-Mart was using the placement of "organic" signs in its produce section to mislead people into believing foods were organic when they were not. Guess what. Wal-Mart hasn't stopped its mis-labeling, and its buddies at the USDA have done nothing about it. The Cornucopia Institute is asking consumers to boycott Wal-Mart. If you're not into boycotts, perhaps just don't buy your produce there – after all, it isn't really organic.

The third story really frightens me. It would seem that we are 2-5 years away from being able to synthesize any virus. In other words, very soon we will be able to create designer self-replicating viruses that never existed before. And within 5-10 years we can expect that this technology might either fall into the wrong hands or even be used by our own country to create horrible bioweapons that could threaten the entire planet. The ETC Group has released a new report that is free to download from theirwebsite called "Extreme Genetic Engineering: An Introduction to Synthetic Biology."

Finally, if you want to do your part to stop global warming, becoming a vegan will help even more than buying a Prius. The UN is reporting that livestock production creates more greenhouse gases than automobiles. Every calorie of meat you eat uses ten calories of fossil fuels to produce it. Even if going vegan is over the top for you, simply reducing the amount of meat you eat will make a tremendous difference. To give you some idea of what we're up against, the 10 billion land animals slaughtered for food every year in the U.S. produce 5 million tons of manure every day. So stop the bullshit and eat a vegetable - it's good for you and for the planet!

Posted by Becky at January 30, 2007 01:41 PM