Are biofuels fueling hunger?
From Sound Consumer magazine (Sept. 2010)
The U.S. Navy celebrated Earth Day this year by running a biofuels test on a supersonic F/A 18 Green Hornet fighter jet powered by a mixture of traditional jet fuel, and oil pressed from Camelina sativa, a relative of the mustard plant.
The test underscores two trends in U.S. energy policy: an almost fanatical reliance on biofuels as a substitute for oil, and the misconception that anything ‘green’ is good—even if it sports Sidewinder missiles and makes the Hummer look fossil-fuel efficient.
Some experts on food security claim otherwise. Once touted as a panacea for America’s energy ills, biofuels now are charged with jacking up food prices, felling rainforests, boosting greenhouse… Read More »
Asparagus Now
From In Good Tilth magazine: March/April 2010
“Thank you for taking the time to produce this film. I pray that it will spread like modified canola seed to all parts of our culture and open some eyse [sic].”
— Email, from ‘Tyler’, to Deborah Koons Garcia, writer, producer and director of The Future of Food
“I was the East Coast distributor of ‘involved.’ I ate it, drank it, and breathed it … Then they killed Martin, Bobby, and they elected Tricky Dick twice, and people like you must think I’m miserable because I’m not involved anymore. Well, I’ve got news for you ... I have no more pain for anything. I gave at the office.”
— James Earl Jones, as the disillusioned activist Terence Mann,… Read More »
Who’s Afraid of Cap & Trade
Tags | Culture & Social Issues | EnvironmentFrom The Bear Deluxe magazine: June 2009
When you cheat on your partner you add to the heartbreak, pain and jealousy in the atmosphere. Cheatneutral offsets your cheating by funding someone else to be faithful and not cheat. This neutralises [sic] the pain and unhappy emotion and leaves you with a clear conscience.
—Spoof of Cap & Trade schemes at Cheatneutral.com. “Helping you because you can’t help yourself.”In 2007, psychologist Paul Slovic and his colleagues conducted an obscure experiment in which starving children in Mali were used to quantify the breaking point of human compassion. His findings, and those of others who research the relationship between emotion, logic and the will to act altruistically, speak ill of our efforts to solve such nebulous problems as global warming.… Read More »
Out, out, damn dams
Tags | EnvironmentFrom The Bear Deluxe magazine: June 2009
Molli Jane White, a Karuk Indian from the banks of the beleaguered Klamath River, says her husband, Leaf Hillman, drove four hours (one way) last September in order to ask the Yuruk Tribe in Happy Camp, Calif. for two salmon so that the Karuk would have a few forkfuls of fish to offer tribal members during their annual salmon renewal ceremony. White, 26, appreciates the irony, she says, but she’d rather see PacifiCorp, which operates four hydroelectric dams along a 300-mile stretch of the Klamath in Southern Oregon and Northern California, eat concrete. So to speak. At the present moment, she is vying for mike time at the annual Berkshires Hathaway, Inc. shareholders meeting in Omaha, Neb. where Warren Buffet, PacifiCorp’s billionaire owner,… Read More »
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