Obamanos!

We did it! And after a decade of obstruction and denial, we will finally have in Washington a smart, future-oriented administration which will be an ally in the urgent effort to get our civilization on a path to a sustainable future. With support from the grass roots all the way up to the White House, we as a society will be able to move ahead very quickly, and none too soon, considering the looming threats. This is a time to celebrate, and also to redouble our efforts on the ground and in support of the coming Obama administration.
Obama's announced plan: In the short term, tap every available national resource to reduce our dependence on foreign oil as quickly as possible, while rescinding tax breaks for Big Oil and using the money to provide energy rebates to consumers. For the long term, a crash program to develop alternative energy technologies rapidly, providing millions of non-outsource-able jobs, so that in the next decade the US is energy independent and a leader in the coming green boom.

(see more Obama video statements on energy and environment here.


"Hopes soared in Europe on Wednesday for renewed momentum toward global cooperation on climate change following the election of Barack Obama as the next president of the United States..." (story)

Beyond Crisis: Local Food and Fuel at Ecoversity

As I write this, the stock markets are in free-fall, with the Dow down 2000 points this week. Wherever the bottom is, all agree the outlook is bleak for years out; the rebound after the dot-com crash was quick enough so that we didn't have to change our basic habits of consumption, energy, debt, and wealth inflation. This time the story is very different, and it is likely that by the time things stabilize for a return to growth we won't be back to "normal", but will be in a new world.

This fall, Ecoversity is focussing on two essential elements of the next world, local food and energy production, most particularly at home on the Ecoversity 'campus' in Santa Fe. Our alternative energy park has expanded over the summer. We have some new wind turbines set up, and we have solar installations as well, for solar heating, solar photovoltaics, and solar mirror. And we have our micro and macro demonstration setups for algae-culture- the biological production of food and fuel from sunlight and CO2.

On Oct 19th, we have two "mammoth" mules coming to turn the big field (bring your kids to see!). We'll be planting winter wheat, and also testing the local potential of some promising bioremediation techniques. By next summer we expect to be demonstrating soil development and remediation, and micro-agro strategies which are appropriate for Northern New Mexico.

The economic ride might get rough, but keep this in mind: the basics - food and fuel. We hope that Ecoversity's demonstration sites will help you and our community feel confident of our ability to ultimately supply ourselves with food and fuel during changing times.

Green Boom Coming

This coming green boom will dwarf the dot-com technology boom of the 90's; partly because it is driven by necessity as well as profits, and that means foundation and government support, but mainly because it will touch every aspect of our lives- what we eat, where we live and where we travel, what we drive, do for a living, produce, how we produce it, how we distribute, how we package, transport, and dispose of everything we make. New energy sources of course are a huge thing, ranging from photovoltaics to wind to waves to algae to geothermal to microbes making petroleum- and on and on, limited only by our ingenuity. Everything will be tried. As is the case with energy, the winners will be many and diverse- because all of these different solutions will need to be deployed to complete the picture, not just one or two.

We are looking at a once-in-a-lifetime transformation throughout all areas of human activity,  comparable to the industrial revolution but more rapid,  and more pervasive than the IT revolution. All goods and practices that pollute and degrade the biosphere will be candidates for rapid replacement by zero-waste, zero-emissions, zero-impact solutions. The current infrastructure is industrial-age. There's so much to replace and improve it'll be like shooting ducks in a barrel. For a new generation it will be the Big Game where fortunes are made and ingenuity and boldness are rewarded.

And finally, investors of all kinds will be wanting to get in on the action. Funds that get you in on the boom in a savvy way will take off, and new alignments and fortunes will be made in green investing. 
In the first period, coming to an end this year, Europeans have taken the lead- Germany particularly for solar, and for example the Danes for wind. But the collossal R&D potential of the United States is not manifested- yet- it's just beginning.
You can read more about the things I've referenced at Ecoversity's News and Links page
And you can watch video clips of some of these new solutions at Ecoversity's TV page.

Further reading:

Will Green Technologies Exceed the Internet as the "Mother of All Markets"? (article)

"We're talking about nothing less than the reindustrialization of the whole planet."
Venture Capitalist, John Doerr

The New Survivalism

I sometimes forget that the New York Times likes to hide certain articles in the Fashion & Style section which, had they appeared in the news section, might be judged overly anxiety-producing.

I didn't find this one until alerted by the User is Content blog a few weeks after it first appeared. Right at the outset of Alex Williams' "Duck and Cover- the New Survivalism", we read that Barton M. Biggs, the former chief global strategist at Morgan Stanley, writes in his new book "Wealth, War and Wisdom," that people should "assume the possibility of a breakdown of the civilized infrastructure."

"Your safe haven must be self-sufficient and capable of growing some kind of food," Mr. Biggs writes. "It should be well-stocked with seed, fertilizer, canned food, wine, medicine, clothes, etc. Think Swiss Family Robinson. Even in America and Europe there could be moments of riot and rebellion when law and order temporarily completely breaks down."

That's pretty scary. As you might guess from the emphasis on 'riot and rebellion' rather than say, floods and famine, Mr. Biggs represents the 'conservative' survivalists, the more traditional ones. But the article makes a point of the emergence of a new left-wing and green survivalist contingent, who are more concerned with the floods and famine side.

Williams quotes Alex Steffen, executive editor of WorldChanging.com
"The 'where do we land when climate change gets crazy?’ question seems to be an increasingly common one..." such questions have "really gone mainstream."

Greens like us all want to live locally and sustainably, generating our own energy, food, and warmth by the sun and natural systems, in harmony with nature and the cycles of life. We don't flourish among mammon and condos and cars, we want to be with Nature and Natural Spirituality, that is what nourishes us. We want to make our Edens. We know it can be done. We don't really want most of the things this ADD society holds as desirable anyway. We want simpler, deeper lives, naturally enriched.
We know we can do it. But we are all part of a sprawling matrix of accumulated connections to many other agendas, and few of us have broken free and begun their Edens. The thought that this kind of living may in the future be the only tolerable way of living, or even the only way of living- period, well, this might just get the ball rolling a little faster.

Monsanto and The Clintons: Bad Behavior, Good Connections

The following open letter from a classmate of Hillary's reminds me why it is preferable not to have the Clintons back in the White House. It is also a shocking survey of, one has to say, the evil activities of this corporation, along with it's strategic infiltration of the Clinton White House and potentially the Hillary White House too. -SM

Note: GE= genetically engineered; GMO= Genetically modified organism. BGH= Bovine Growth Hormone

An Open Letter to Hillary Clinton From a Wellsley College Alumna
Sunday, 03 February 2008
by Linn Cohen-Cole

Dear Hillary,
By polling logic, I should be your supporter - Democrat, older woman, white, liberal. I was even in a dorm with you in college. I have pulled for you for years. But something this past summer fundamentally changed my responsibility to my children and grandchildren. In the time I have left in my life to protect them and others, I need to speak out.
I saw a News Hour piece on Maharastra, India, about farmers committing suicide. Monsanto, a US agricultural giant, hired Bollywood actors for ads telling illiterate farmers they could get rich (by their standards) from big yields with Monsanto's Bt (genetically engineered) cotton seeds. The expensive seeds needed expensive fertilizer and pesticides (Monsanto, again) and irrigation. There is no irrigation there. Crops failed. Farmers had larger debt than they'd ever experienced.
And farmers couldn't collect seeds from their own fields to try again (true since time immemorial). Monsanto "patents" their DNA-altered seeds as "intellectual property." They have a $10 million budget and a staff of 75 devoted solely to prosecuting farmers. (ref). Since the late 1990s (about when industrial agriculture took hold in India), 166,000 Indian farmers have committed suicide and 8 million have left the land.
Farmers in Europe, Asia, Africa, Indonesia, South America, Central America and here, have protested Monsanto and genetic engineering for years.

What does this have to do with you?

You have connections to Monsanto through the Rose Law Firm where you worked and through Bill who hired Monsanto people for central food- related roles. Your Orwellian-named "Rural Americans for Hillary" was planned with Troutman Sanders, Monsanto's lobbyists.

Genetic engineering and industrialized food and animal production all come together at the Rose Law Firm, which represents the world's largest GE corporation (Monsanto), GE's most controversial project (DP&L's - now Monsanto's - terminator genes), the world's largest meat producer (Tyson), the world's largest retailer and a dominant food retailer (WalMart).

The inbred-ness of Rose's legal representation of corporations which own controlling interests in other corporations there and of corporate boards sharing members who are also shareholders of each other's corporations there, is so thorough that it is hard to capture. Jon Jacoby, senior executive of the Stephens Group - one of the largest institutional shareholders of Tyson Foods, WalMart, DP&L - is also Chairman of the Board of DP&L and arranged the Wal-Mart deal. Jackson Stephens' Stephens Group staked Sam Walton and financed Tyson Foods. Monsanto bought DP&L. All represented at Rose.

You didn't just work there, you made friends. That shows in the flow of favors then and since. You were invited onto Walmart's board, you were helped by a Tyson executive to make commodity trades (3 days before Bill became governor), netting you $100,000, Jackson Stephens strongly backed Bill for Governor, and then for President (donating $100,000).

Food and friends, in Clinton terms:
Bill's appointed friend Mike Espy, Secretary of Agriculture, who immediately significantly weakened federal chicken waste and contamination standards, opening the door to major expansion of Tyson's chicken factory farms. Espy resigned, indicted for accepting bribes, illegal contributions, money laundering, illegal dispersal of USDA subsidies, .... Tyson Foods was the largest corporate offender.
But what Bill did for Monsanto "genetic engineering" goes beyond inadequate concepts of giving corporate friends influence: He unleashed genetic engineering into the world. And then he helped close off people's escape from it.

Genetic engineering is many orders of magnitude different from "normal" (even polluting) business in its potential biologic ramifications. The warning myth of Pandora'a Box - letting irretrievable things rush out into nature - has become real. The harrowing change to the world from nuclear fission and fusion is the closest parallel.

What did Bill do?

1. Bill's put Monsanto people in at the FDA, as US Agricultural Trade Representatives, on International Biotechnology Consultive Forums, and more ... (ref) or (ref 2) or (ref 3)

2. Bill's FDA gave Monsanto permission to market rBGH (a GE bovine growth hormone), the first genetically engineered product let loose on us (or did tomatoes with fish DNA get there first?).

3. Despite reports of bovine illness and death, Bill's FDA did not recall it or put warnings on it. Even "a very angry, very vocal nationwide consumer base" had no impact."

4. Bill's FDA wouldn't even label rBGH as "present" in milk.

5. When dairy farmers tried to label their own milk rBGH-free so the public could choose, Bill's USDA threatened all dairies that their products could be confiscated from stores. Michael Taylor, USFDA Deputy Commissioner, was formerly Monsanto's counsel.

6. How were consumers to protect their family, given Bill's FDA enforced public blindness, except to buy only organic? But Bill's FDA tried to close off that last escape, proposing to include in "organic" standards, "the dirty three": genetic engineering of plants and animals, use of irradiation in food processing and use of municipal sewage sludge as a fertilizer. (My emphasis.) The FDA backed down.
Had this gone through, Monsanto could have finally labeled rBGH milk ... as "organic." And animal waste from factory farms, a pollution nightmare for Tyson and others, could have been sold as fertilizer.
USDA head Dan Glickman: "This is probably the largest public response to an [Agriculture Department] rule in modern history." In fact the response was 20 times greater than anything ever before proposed by the USDA.

Personally, I resent having spent years of effort to protect my children and now grandchildren, from that crap.

Politically, Bill sided against small farmers and against the public's right to know, and with Monsanto.

A snap shot of our food:

Oils: Sheep died in India after feeding on Bt cotton fields. We feed our children Bt cotton, as cottonseed oil in peanut butter and cookies.

Grains: 49% of US corn acreage was planted in Bt corn in 2007. A French study proved Monsanto's GMO corn causes kidney and liver toxicity.

Soft drinks and candy have highly concentrated Bt corn, in the form of high fructose Bt corn syrup. The US food system depends most on two crops, soy (90% GMO, 90% of traits owned by Monsanto) and corn, the largest crop (60% GMO, nearly 100% Monsanto traits). "Essentially our entire food supply is genetically modified, to the benefit of one company." The Grocery Manufacturers of America in 2000 estimated that 70 percent of US food contains GM traits.

Meat: Steroids bulk up atheletes. Monsanto steroids bulk up animals - more weight, more profit. We feed our children steroids in meats. Is this why our children are fattening, like Hansel and Gretel?

Poultry: Bill's USDA weakened chicken waste and contamination standards and attempted to allow sewage sludge as fertilize crops. I will say more about disease from industrialized poultry farms waste, at the end of this letter.

Milk: Over 30 scientific publications have shown increased levels of IGF-1 in milk with rBGH increases risks of breast cancer by up to seven-fold, also increasing colon and prostate cancers risks. Canada, 29 European nations, Norway, Switzerland, Japan, New Zealand, Australia, and South Africa ban U.S. rBGH dairy products. Bill's USFDA put no restrictions, no warning labels (not allowing labels at all). (My emphasis.)

American children eat that food and drink that milk, Hillary. Coincidentally, American children are increasingly fat and sick.

Here, Bill ignored pleas for labeling. Abroad, Bill ignored intense international objections over the same issue - unlabeled US food exports - badly straining trading relations. Monsanto's "good ole boy," he betrayed American families at the deepest levels conceivable - their family's health and their democratic right to know. He betrayed our rural life and American family farmers - backing corporation deceit and control, over honesty and clean farming.

But, HIllary, it is one thing to not label a regular ole food product to sell it, and quite another to sell a suspected-dangerous food product (rBGH), but Bill's administration didn't label (or stop) a well-known, terrifying threat - Mad Cow Disease.

Bill's FDA's August, 1997 regulation permitted "known TSE-positive [Transmissible spongiform encephalopathy] material to be used in pet food, pig, chicken and fish feed," only requiring the label to read "Do not feed to cattle and other ruminants" in the US.
Monsanto added to the problem. "There is evidence that rbST use [Monsanto's GE bovine growth hormone] reduces the useful lifespan of a dairy cow. ... Given that the incubation period for BSE is at least three to five years and perhaps longer, rbST-treated cows could harbor "hidden" BSE. That is, they might be infected but still asymptomatic when sent to slaughter." (ref)

Bill let TSE into our entire food chain. And who owned the feed and slaughter and genetic engineering corporations whch benefitted?

Please, tell me, Hillary, what he could possibly have gotten in friendship or favors, that could ever justify his exposing millions of people to this?

With genetic engineering itself, Bill did something to the whole world, which tried to object. Words are inadequate to express how astoundingly immoral, beyond human bounds and conceit and power, that was.

"Even for the biggest "winners," it is like winning at poker on the Titanic." -Jerry Mander: Facing the Rising Tide

He had no right.

Do you hear that?

Bill had sex from Monica Lewinsky. That's "dinky immoral." That's chicken feed immoral - excuse the Tyson pun, excuse the TSE-laced pun. Bill let genetic engineering lose on NATURE itself.

"Our way of life is likely to be more fundamentally transformed in the next several decades than in the previous one thousand years...Tens of thousands of novel transgenic bacteria, viruses, plants and animals could be released into the Earth's ecosystems...Some of those releases, however, could wreak havoc with the planet's biospheres." -Jeremy Rifkin, Biotech Century

Bill did this to us, like it was some nothing and he, some big dumb ass Southern boy, just smiling and getting in good with the Big Boys, thinking about as much about the consequences of something this immense and about us human beings out here, as he thought about you, when he was unfaithful with Monica. Just one big fool getting off on the power and used to getting away with things.

Terminator genes, developed by DP&L, a Rose Firm client, prevent seeds from "working" after only one season. Farmers "must" repurchase (patents and suing not certain enough control, it seems). Those "killing" genes pose the apocalyptic risk of breaking out into nature. Natural seeds could fail, too. Nature could fail.
Far-fetched?

GMO fields are already contaminating normal species Berkeley Professor of Microbiology, Ignacio Chapela, wrote an open letter, warning the Mexican government about just this breaking out phenomenon happening in maize.
And it has already happened with weeds - pesticide resistant GMO seeds break lose and weeds become pesticide-resistant Superweeds.

But Bill's USDA spokesman, Willard Phelps said the USDA wanted the technology to be `widely licensed and made expeditiously available to many seed companies.'

"Genetic Engineering is often justified as a human technology, one that feeds more people with better food. Nothing could be further from the truth. With very few exceptions, the whole point of genetic engineering is to increase sales of chemicals and bio-engineered products to dependent farmers." David Ehrenfield: Professor of Biology, Rutgers University.

Hillary, one third of the world's bee colonies have collapsed. Gone. Farmers in India are killing themselves. Farmers and bees. Since organic farmers in India are fine and organic farmers report no colony collapse, what does these farming catatrophes say about "industrial agriculture"?

Mad Cow Disease is another direct result of industrial agriculture. And now ....... transnational poultry factories are implicated as the source of bird flu. ... Small scale poultry farms and wild birds seem not to be the problem (just as small farmers are not the issue in Mad Cow Disease), and yet "initiatives are multiplying to ban outdoor poultry, squeeze out small producers and restock farms with genetically modified chickens. . (ref) "Of the few outbreaks that did occur in [Laos], more than 90% broke out in commercial poultry operations, not free-ranging flocks."
Monsanto (and others) is currently working with the USDA to force small farmers to tag every animal with a global tracking device (NAIS - National Animal Identification System). Allegedly related to food safety, Monsanto and others would be creating a vast corporate digital library on every move of small farmers's livestock.

But small farmers do not create the contaminated environments, do not supply the feed, do not grind up diseased animals into feed (how Mad Cow began) and then sell it. In fact, their farming methods, free range and small scale, are significantly healthier and safer for animals and food than the massive concentration of animals by corporate industrial agriculture.

Monsanto is also aggressively pushing for state laws to limit farmers' right to choose what to plant and the public's right exclude GE plants from their communities.

Cattle bloated by steroids, lapse and loss of 10,000 year old normal seeds, immense pollution from factory farms, deadly-disease-ridden feed, world-wide bee colony collapse, poisoned soil and depleted water supplies, Superweeds, lawsuits against farmers, loss of family farms, and ... India farmers killing themselves in what may be the largest mass suicide in recorded human history (on average ... one farmers' suicide every 30 minutes since 2002 - The Hindu 1.30.08) - that is industrial agriculture.

Monsanto and Tyson are two of the largest industrial agricultural corporations in the world. Industrial agriculture is represented by your Rose Law Firm.
Your claim to care about food safety is terrifying double-speak given what Bill did and who you take donations from. Your idea of a Department of Food Safety would centralize control of food - in whose corporate connected hands? You talk tough about labeling food - ah, but "foreign" food - a sleight of hand tricking a public desperate for safe US food. You talk about food safety but Bill degraded food in every imaginable way and prevented minimally sane labeling.

I am a person before I am a woman. Your gender means nothing. It is a media distraction. Your policies on health and food and women and children, are meaningless in the face of connections that have threatened those groups profoundly, connections you have never denounced.
Monsanto uses child labor in India, primarily very young girls, exposing them to a lethal pesticide 13-14 hours a day, for pennies in pay. But you take donations from their lobbyists. You say you care about black people but as the poorest people in this country, they are least able to buy organic and are forced to eat the contaminated foods Bill let into our food system. The National Black Farmers Association has a boycott out on all Monsanto products.

Do you eat organic?
So, who are you with, hapless black consumers and black farmers, or Monsanto? Mothers left to give their children rBGH milk, or Monsanto? Women exposed to 7 times greater risk of breast cancer, or Monsanto? Desperate farmers in India and young children forced into child labor in cottonseed factories there, or Monsanto? Animals suffering from lives in filthy cages and disgusting feedlots, shot up with steroids and hormones and antibiotics, or Monsanto? Our children who eat candy with high fructose Bt corn syrup associated with kidney and liver toxicity, or Monsanto?

Edwards was right about your corporate connections. I just didn't understand until I saw that PBS show and read about Monsanto, how personally affected my children and grandchildren, and all people around the world, have been.
I will not vote for you. I will vote for someone who will commit themselves to work on behalf of small farmers and real food and decent treatment of animals and to end this industrialized agricultural nightmare that is taking us off a cliff.

-Linn Cohen-Cole
Atlanta

Disclaimer. I am not a scientist. I have read for months on this subject, and am including only a tiny portion of the horrifying things I have learned. I am expressing my opinion as person and may be wrong. Perhaps things are swell out there and rBGH is fabulous and TSE-laced feed is great, and genetic engineering is the best thing since manna. But I am scared for my family and I have not only a right to say so but an obligation to do so. I am angry that Monsanto was allowed the influence it had and has done the things it definitely seems to have. I am disgusted by industrialization of every tender and beautiful part of our world and hope, for all our children's sake, we are not too late to pull back.