Tag environment | VenusPlusX

Your fridge is ground zero, Part 2 of 2

“Hunger, in your neighborhood or anywhere in the world,
is a violation of human rights, and caused by inhumane politics.
Corporations have a responsibility to get the excess food to those who need it,
and we all have a responsibility to demand that they do.”
(Your fridge is ground zero, Part 1 of 2, 4/24/15)

Yesterday, we brought an important documentary to your attention, “Just Eat It: A Food Waste Story” (trailer here, how to screen). It revealed some sobering statistics summarized here, below which you can find some of the things you can do to fight this scourge that on our environment, making all the effects of climate change much worse.

by David McLean
Flickr/creative commons

The US and Europe have 150-200% of the food they actually need, wasting the land by over planting to supply peak demand periods.
Although fruits and vegetables are the most wasted foods, their environmental impact pales in comparison to how much is wasted in the beef.
The amount of US-grown and -produced food that is wasted in the United States is a whopping 40%, costing $165 billion a year. The world as a whole wastes 30%.
While most of us might jump to the conclusion that it is restaurants, grocery stores, and farms that are doing all the wasting, it is actually consumers, you and me, who are responsible for the waste of more than half. We demand perfection, not one blemish on any fruit or vegetable, and just toss away 20% of the food we do buy.
The role that food waste plays in climate change cannot be understated. A full 4% of all the energy used in the US goes to the production of the food that we toss. Moreover, much of the wasted food goes to landfills increasing harmful methane emissions. And, the water we waste to produce discarded food in this country each year could instead supply a year of water to 500 million people.

You and I waste we waste about 20% of the food we buy, so what can we do to help . . .

Use your freezer more because practically any food can be frozen for use at a later date.
When you are cooking a meal, use what’s in your fridge rather than what you are “in the mood for.”
At the grocery store, understand expiration dates which mislead consumers. Sell By is a communication meant only for the retailer, and Use By or Best by a certain date is far short, in some case weeks or months, of the actual time you can consume the food before it is inedible.
Save and eat all your leftovers, yours and from restaurants. This is one of the biggest sources of wasted foods.
Mark a bin in your fridge that says, “Eat First.”
Frequent farmers market, of course, but offer to buy stuff they won’t sell because it isn’t necessarily attractive, like having one tiny defect.
Talk to people stocking produce and ask for expired or discarded items which you can buy at a huge discount or have for free
Volunteer at food banks, and work with your community to obtain and distribute more food to neighbors.
Encourage enterprises that turn food waste into fertilizer.
Become a gleaning volunteer to pick up all the food that will otherwise be left to rot in farm fields.
Most of all, educate yourself about food waste. It will change your life (and your fridge) forever. Start with the National Resources Defense Council.

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Your fridge is ground zero, Part 1 of 2

by bigbutpretty
Flickr/creative commons

In case you missed it, try to screen “Just Eat It: A Food Waste Story,” a documentary which premiered on MSNBC this week (trailer here). The film follows one couple’s quest to live on discarded or expired food, and showcases world food waste experts such as Dana Gunders (National Resources Defense Council), Johanthan Bloom (author of American Wasteland), and Tristam Stuart (feedbackglobal.org, Feeding the 5K campaign, and author of Waste: Uncovering the Global Food Scandal). The couple succeeded in their task, by the way, and ate heartily (and gave some food away). For the entire 6-month period, they spent less than $200 for food worth $20,000.

The US and Europe have 150-200% of the food they actually need, wasting the land by over planting to supply peak demand periods. Although fruits and vegetables are the most wasted foods, their environmental impact pales in comparison to how much is wasted in the beef.

The amount of US-grown and -produced food that is wasted in the United States is a whopping 40%, costing $165 billion a year. The world as a whole wastes 30%. While most of us might jump to the conclusion that it is restaurants, grocery stores, and farms that are doing all the wasting, it is actually consumers, you and me, that are responsible for the waste of more than half. We demand perfection, not one blemish on any fruit or vegetable, and just toss away 20% of the food we do buy.

The role that food waste plays in climate change cannot be understated. A full 4% of all the energy used in the US goes to the production of the food that we toss. Moreover, the wasted food goes to landfills increasing harmful methane emissions. The water we waste to produce discarded food in this country each year could instead supply a year of water to 500 million people.

Watching this documentary should be required viewing so each us can start today to take an active role, at home and in our communities. It’s already motivated me to do more. Most of all, we are reminded that hunger, in your neighborhood or anywhere in the world, is a violation of human rights, and caused by inhumane politics. Corporations have a responsibility to get the excess food to those who need it, and we all have a responsibility to demand that they do.

Tomorrow, Part 2, will focus more on what you can do to make a difference, and the impact you can make in your own home and being volunteer and activist in this or any other movement trying to rescue our planet from the jaws of defeat.

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in Campaigns / Grassroots / Key Issues / News of Note / Op-Ed / Public Information by Alison Gardner 24 Apr 2015 0 comments

The Salvation of Climate Change Deniers

Climate change deniers have painted themselves into a corner. They are victims of their own rhetoric based on illogical conclusions drawn from a fairly limited world view. Many do not seem to have paid attention in grade school, let alone have the skill set for a statesman entrusted with the life and death decision-making so necessary to preserve our planet. We should be helping them find a pathway away from this dead end, even though for some it may be too late.

Woodleywonderworks
Flickr/creative commons

The theocratic GOP is a font of bad ideas and cowardly inaction, but both sides of the debate, and the media, have framed the question completely wrong in the first place, and it has nothing to do with science.

The environmental movement long ago won the science debate, and the climate change deniers will always cling to those few studies that counter the overwhelming evidence of the environmental carnage that’s here with us already with more to come.

You can produce dozens of charts that show the spiking environmental impact of man and machines since the Industrial Revolution, and it will still not be enough for a climate denier intent on allowing the rape of the earth’s natural resources for the profit of corporate elites, and those in government who benefit financially and politically by protecting them.

That fact, these seemingly irreconcilable and immovable differences — literally strangling the air we breath and the water and food we consume — proves that we have reached the end of this debate.

We need not strive in this arena anymore because there is a better, and more logical and more useful replacement for the climate change debate.

The issue of the causes of environmental changes is moot because we are already in the early decades of quite a long and fragile period that promises to be devastating to the world economies and security. We just have to look around and pay attention, real attention.

Even setting aside for a moment all the groundwater pollution (and earthquakes) caused by such enterprises as fracking, consider that entire ancient island populations have been forced already to migrate because rising sea levels have ruined all their groundwater. Entire populations, men, women, children, everything, leaving blighted land that once was a natural paradise.

More appropriate questions will replace debate, such as, “How many white people must be displaced by rising sea levels or other environmental catastrophes before we can end this grade-school debate and join in global action?”

As I wrote yesterday, this is one of VenusPlusX’s key issues because if we ruin our planet, our search for social and economic justice means little.

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As I wrote yesterday, this is one of VenusPlusX’s key issues because if we ruin our planet, our search for social and economic justice means little.

For more . . .
What do Sex and Gender have to do with Climate Change and Net Neutrality
Silencing Climate Change Deniers
Response to Climate Change Impossible Without a Revolution in Thinking

in Campaigns / Grassroots / Key Issues / News of Note / Op-Ed / Public Information by Alison Gardner 23 Apr 2015 0 comments

Love Your Earth

Earth Peace
Listen to the sound of the earth turning
(Yoko Ono, Earth Day, April 22, 2015)

We’ve been promoting the hashtag, #EarthDayIsEveryDay because the impact on climate change is still grossly underestimated. It is one of our key issues because if we ruin our planet, our search for social and economic justice means little.

Pascal B. for technovore
Flickr/creative commons

Mass migrations caused by loss of groundwater due to rising seas, extreme weather and earthquake frequency, and loss of bio-diversity are just a few of the results. We can’t rely on mainstream media to inform us about the risks of climate change, and climate deniers cannot claim they are “skeptics” because that is a word connoting an open mind.

Here are some of the stories we are investigating today that we thought you should know about . . .

Oklahoma finally agreeing that fracking is causing its very worrisome increase in earthquakes.
The strongest anti-fracking bill to date is being introduced in Congress, Protect Our Public Lands Act, H.R. 1902, banning fracking on public lands.
In the fight to save Florida’s fragile Everglades, it all comes back to politics.
The desecration of the Amazon continues. Pig Iron Plants cause lung problems in rural villages.
And, more resources, to increase our involvement.

For more . . .
What do Sex and Gender have to do with Climate Change and Net Neutrality
Silencing Climate Change Deniers
Response to Climate Change Impossible Without a Revolution in Thinking

in Campaigns / Events / Grassroots / Key Issues / News of Note / Public Information by Alison Gardner 22 Apr 2015 0 comments

Silencing Climate Change Deniers

According to a new study in the journal Science,”Four boundaries are assessed to have been crossed, placing humanity in a danger zone.”

The report defined climate change and loss of species as two core areas of concern. Each “has the potential on its own to drive the Earth System into a new state should they be substantially and persistently transgressed,” the authors wrote.

via Oxfam International
Flickr/creative commons

It would almost seem absurd at this point to recognize anyone, high or low, who would argue that the human impacts on the environment have not already reached the “danger zone.” But it’s not absurd, it’s a very, very sad state of current reality.

Alas, we must continue equip ourselves to silence climate deniers by repudiating their arguments, whether a politician or your grumpy uncle Joe, through conversations, publishing, and activism. Quoting from studies or books, such as Naomi Klein’s This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate, may help but, unfortunately, these deniers are almost always so proud of their defiance in the face of irrefutable evidence that they refuse to take new information in. If you look closely, you will see that this resistance to new information is a character flaw that seeps into other areas of their thinking, and is therefore hard to overcome.

The cataclysmic results of climate change are already upon us, mass migrations, shrinking coastlines, salinization of drinking water, food scarcity, etc. Are we doomed to wait for the elite to start suffering??

We must keep the pressure on, especially leading up to the hopeful Paris climate summit (Conference of Parties or COP) in December 2015 that will be pushing for ambitious action before and after 2020. Start, if you haven’t already, by updating yourself and staying informed through websites such as the United Nations Climate Change Newsroom. We don’t have a moment to wait, literally.

in Campaigns / Events / Grassroots / Key Issues / News of Note / Op-Ed / Public Information by Alison Gardner 16 Jan 2015 0 comments

Stop, hey, what’s that sound?

(photo by Chris Boland)
Stephen Stills / Crosby, Stills and Nash – Glastonbury – 2009
Flickr/creative commons

Stop, hey, what’s that sound?
Everybody look. What’s goin’ down?
(“What It’s Worth” chorus, 1966, lyrics or listen)

This song was written in 1966 by Stephen Stills of Crosby, Sills, & Nash fame. They recorded it and performed it thousands of times although it was first performed by Buffalo Springfield that year. The song quickly became an anthem for all those working on numerous fronts of the global struggle for human rights (in the 60s that meant the end of war and environmental protection). This song is still ranked #63 on Rolling Stone’s list of the The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time, by the way.

The song’s universal appeal was practically instant even though it was actually inspired by local Los Angeles rock fans protesting the imposition of a 10 PM curfew on the entertainment area on Sunset Boulevard, known as the Sunset Strip — you know, to keep the ruckus down. At the time, Buffalo Springfield and other bands were performing there at places like Whiskey A Go Go and Pandora’s Box. But its origins didn’t matter because it struck a chord, a truth, something that everyone on the planet could recognize.

There’s somethin’ happenin’ here
What it is ain’t exactly clear
There’s a man with a gun, over there
Tellin’ me I got to beware
(“What It’s Worth” first verse, 1966, lyrics or listen)

The young anti-war counter-cuture that emerged following the end of World War II embraced many Crosby, Sills, & Nash’s songs, but “What It’s Worth” was unique in that it so well described the educational challenges inherent in any struggle for any cause, from peace and the environment to immigration/voting/equality/human-rights, etc., even to lift an unjust curfew.

There’s battle lines bein’ drawn
Nobody’s right if everybody’s wrong
Young people speakin’ their minds, once again
Gettin’ so much resistance from behind
(“What It’s Worth” second verse, 1966, lyrics or listen)

Take for example our recent and highly successful People’s Climate March, with a follow-up Flood Wall Street sit-in quite publicly demanding corporate environmental responsibility. And, many of us are encouraged by this week’s Climate Summit at the United Nations and the specific commitments outlined by President Obama. Taken together, all three of these events can perhaps lift spirits but their impact in conveying the urgency of this issue will only be measured by how fast and how hard we work, redoubling our efforts to educate our family members, work mates, and community — everyone in our sphere of influence.

H M Cotterill
Flickr/creative commons

As we pointed out last week with this photo, time is the only commodity that can’t be recycled, so we have to do everything today to make the world a better place. Once, having envisioned a perfected future, there exists an imperative, an obligation, to materialize that vision.

Protests, rallies, meetings, summits, pamphlets, posters, banners, and speeches will only take us so far. Surely these are useful in recruiting new allies to any cause, but what will really harness the power of all the people, or at least a healthy majority, to not budge until change comes about?

Capturing the planet-at-large will require the most creative explosion of public engagement and education that we have ever seen, an expression of non-violent civil disobedience on a global scale.

Central to this effort must be the fact that climate change is already upon us. Therefore, we must move away from the elemental proof or disapproval of its causes — a never ending battle with the naysayers, a red herring. We are long over that debate.

The destruction of ocean habitats, the rising sea levels, the increasing scarcity and privatization of water, and much more, are factual realities that we are being forced to reckon with, and this can only be done through worldwide harmony. The alternative is death. People arguing against protecting our environment are akin to those in some parts of this country who will not put out your house fire unless your taxes are up to date. They don’t look at the big picture, either on purpose or because they are incapable of normal cogitation.

One of the things everyone in the world does understand, however, is the power of money, what gets spent on what, and what are the expressed priorities at any given point. We have to encourage the growth of financial divestment coalitions already in existence among universities, pension funds, venture capitalists, foundations, and corporate boards of directors. We must draw them away from technologies that have no future such as fossil fuels, the meat industry, and the privatization of water resources, and away from state regimes that hurt their population. While we cringe when we see corporations use their newly assigned personal rights to take away the rights of others (limiting their female employees’s personal birth control choices, for example), we must also recognize that without people, without customers, there are no corporations. We hold a mighty power to shape corporations by using global non-violent civil disobedience to both raise awareness/educate and reap new commitments to the people’s issues by getting powerful entities to champion our cause.

We are beginning to see this happen, and our duty is to hurry along this process. Time is all we have.

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For more on how progress happens, click here.

in Campaigns / Events / Grassroots / Key Issues / News of Note / Op-Ed / Public Information by Alison Gardner 24 Sep 2014 0 comments

Salutes and More Salutes

Naysayers who think that big marches don’t bring about real change fail to understand there is a pluralistic revolution already underway that will change the world whether they like it or not, divesting the world away from corporate rape of the world’s natural resources. (9/22/14)

People’s Climate March
New York City
September 21, 2014

People’s Climate March
New York City
September 21, 2014
regram from @_sarahwilson_

We have had time now to fully appreciate the impact of Sunday’s unprecedented People’s Climate March (400,000 souls in New York City, and millions in other American cities and in more than 160 countries), and to witness on Monday the hugely successful follow-up Flood Wall Street sit-in to demand corporate environmental responsibility. More than 3,000 protesters literally flooded Wall Street, without a city permit no less, shutting down a 10-block area despite police interference. All were trained in non-violent civil disobedience, volunteering to be arrested (100 were arrested and then all were released).

We had a big ruckus and showed ourselves to each other as a force ready and able to move forward on this uphill battle. And it is uphill, make no mistake, consider Exhibit A, if you will . . .

“I mean think about it, if your ice cube melts in your glass it doesn’t overflow, it’s displacement.”

This grade-school, startling, ignorant statement comes out of the US Congress, courtesy of Rep. Steve Stockman (R-Texas) who sits, ironically and sadly, on our tax-payer funded House Committee on Science, Space and Technology. (Worth a watch: Jon Stewart skewering Stockman and similarly ignorant Republican brethren also serving on this committee.)

But, now for some good news.

This stupidity on display is a national embarrassment, yes, but it also gives us hope that we are closer, than ever before, to turning the corner of worldwide awareness of environmental issues. The more convincing the science, the more people stand up to share the voices and skills to educate others, and the more desperate the stupid climate-deniers become in putting their stumbling and bad thinking is on display to be widely ridiculed and more quickly repudiated by larger and larger numbers of people.

As we celebrate the sheer numbers of boots on the ground in the last 2 days, we are a witness to progress: the greatest number of people in history are today mobilized to do something to save our planet, whether in their own community or on the world stage.

But that’s not all, folks. Corporations are beginning to agree with us that non-renewable energy is a very, very bad idea. A fast-growing corporate divestment movement has now firmly attached itself to the cause, underscoring environmentalists’s demands with money. This is a very good thing, emblematic of true progress.

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Information: How you can divest from the fuel economy.

More about the mechanics and built-in ecology of progress here.

in Campaigns / Events / Grassroots / Key Issues / News of Note / Op-Ed / Public Information by Alison Gardner 23 Sep 2014 0 comments