How is Twitter helping to provide clean water to developing countries?
Still fuzzy on what Twitter is? If you can express it in 140 characters, you’re ready to “tweet” yourself into the micro-blogging community some 750 thousand strong.
One thing you may find difficult to express in 140 characters, however, is the dire need for clean water in countries outside our own. Unsafe drinking water and lack of sanitation cause 80% of all the sickness and disease worldwide. So how does a seemingly trivial web gadget help this planetary plight?
On February 12th, over 100 cities will be hosting Twestivals, bringing together Twitter communities to raise money and awareness for the non-profit organization called charity:water. All donations will directly fund costly yet vital clean water bearing systems.
Because of the power Twitter has to connect, mobilize, and inform people, these Twestivals have turned a quirky phenomenon into a force for global change.
Join the Twestival in your city by clicking on the following links:
I just got off the phone with a brilliant young woman named Margaret Lloyd. She’s a grad student at UC Davis going for her Masters in International Agricultural Development and Plant Pathology.
Why is she so significant at this very moment?
Today, January 31st, is the FINAL DAY of her campaign to become the official White House Farmer! Margaret is one of over 100 nominees selected to till, sow, and harvest 5 prime south-facing acres of the White House lawn at the start of this year’s growing season.
Here’s Margaret in her own words:
Q: How’s the campaign going?
A:
Q: How did you become a nominee? What kinds of things on campus have you been doing?
A:
Q: Obviously you have farming experience but have you ever had 5 acres all to yourself? What kinds of crops do you intend to grow?
A:
Q: Do you think you’ll be able to fuel the farm with the crops you grow?
A:
Q: What other challenges are you facing going into this?
A:
Q: What do you have to say to the world in support of your campaign?
A:
Our guest has been Margaret Lloyd, grad student of International Agriculture and Plant Pathology at UC Davis and nominee for White House Farmer.
There’s only a couple hours left to vote so log onto WhiteHouseFarmer.com and vote for Margaret!
The endless supply of junk food in our society creates untold amounts of waste and causes health problems like obesity and diabetes but it’s not simply sugar and fat doing the damage. There’s a common ingredient found in almost everything sold on supermarket shelves from fatty beef to sugary soda - it’s corn.
Curt Ellis, one of the creators of the documentary film, King Corn.
Corn is the basis for fast food. When we go to McDonald’s, the hamburger is fed corn, the soda is almost completely high-fructose corn syrup, and the french fries are fried in corn oil or soybean oil.
The overproduction of low quality corn as a commodity is a huge problem but there’s a lot you can do to combat it. Buy locally produced vegetables, switch to grass fed beef, and avoid high-fructose corn syrup. These easy steps will help you right the wrongs of the American food industry and live well.
For the full interview podcast with Curt Ellis, click here.
I’m speaking today with one of the creators of the documentary film, King Corn, he’s also a Food and Society Policy fellow with the Kellog Foundation.
Q: At the very beginning of the film you talk about how our generation is at risk of having a shorter life span based on the foods we eat, specifically regarding the omnipresence of corn in our diet. Was there one thing in particular that really calcified this fear and got you off the coast and in the corn belt?
A: I think it was that announcement in a major medical journal. Around that time I was graduating from college, that my generation, I’m in my 20s, my generation is likely to have a shorter life expectancy than my parents generation and that’s something that’s really never happened before and it’s a result of this incredible explosion of obesity. The fact that obesity has doubled in the last 30 years in this country and now according to the CDC one in three kids is on a path to develop type-2 diabetes. So we’re seeing this tremendous explosion of healthcare problems that really are being caused by the way we feed ourselves.
Q: Specifically, how is corn putting us at risk of a shorter life span?
A: Corn is the basis for fast food in our country. When we go to McDonalds or Burger King and order a fast food meal, the hamburger is fed corn in confinement and as a result it’s higher in saturated fat than a grass fed cow would be; the soda is almost completely corn because of high-fructose corn syrup; and french fries are fried in corn oil or soybean oil and all those weird polysyllabic food ingredients like propylene glycol and citric acid, those are corn too. So really what we’ve done is, in the last half-century, create an industrial food system that uses these highly processed commodities like corn and soybean to fuel a conversion from eating fresh food and nutritious food to eating these empty calories like high-fructose corn syrup.
Q: You and Ian looked like you guys were having a pretty good time throughout the film, was there ever a point where farm life seemed to be getting just a little too much for you guys?
A: Definitely! We moved to Iowa with this expectation that we were gonna spend our first year out of college as farmers and I think we brought with us a lot of expectations as far as what that meant. I remember a friend of us gave us work gloves because he imagined we’d be out digging in the soil with a shovel but the reality was completely different and it’s a sign of just how disconnected from agriculture most Americans have become. For us, farming was not at all like gardening. If you’re growing 1000 acres of corn or soybeans, it’s about driving giant tractors, spraying some pretty intense herbicides, injecting gaseous ammonia fertilizer into the field. It was, to us, a totally different experience than we imagined.
Q: It’s all machines now.
A: You know, we didn’t touch the soil with our hands once in the course of growing 10,000 pounds of food and that, on a cultural level, was a real shock to us. We have this incredible bounty coming from the land but very little interaction with it.
Q: Disturbing. In your interview with former Secretary of Agriculture, Earl Butz, seemed to be one of the most tense and poignant moments on screen. Having served for 5 years in that position, Buts is depicted as having probably the greatest effect on the US farm program in history. Has there been much change to the Farm Bill he created in 1973 that indicates that the overproduction of commodity corn is being addressed?
A: No, there’s been piece meal change over the last 40 years. But the way our farm subsidy systems work today, like in the early 70s, channels an incredible amount of tax dollars to promote the production of a handful of commodities, the commodities that become the basis for fast food and processed food. In the last 10 years, we’ve spent more than 50 billion dollars just on promoting corn production through federal subsidies. And we’re not subsidizing fruits and vegetables, the kind of things we know are healthy for us so what we’ve done is tinker with the free market and create a new system in which fast food and processed food and processed commodities are artificially cheap and abundant. And the foods we know are good for us, fresh fruits and vegetables, and the things we know are good for the land like conservation practices, those things have not received their fair share of subsidies.
Q: Are we gonna need some new sort of fast food chain of natural foods in order to combat this? I mean, what can we do?
A: Well, there’s certain things consumers can do if you decide you don’t wanna feed your kids high fructose corn syrup it’s probably gonna make them healthier to not have too many empty calories in their diet but the bigger thing we can do is become policy advocates in however small a way. One reason the farm subsidy program has stayed intact for the last 40 years and is working against us as consumers and against farmers, family farmers, one reason that program has stayed intact is because there has been no outcry from the public. Most of us have just assumed that farm subsidies only apply to farmers or to the “farm states” but the reality is this is also a food bill, the farm bill is a food bill, and the way we grow food and the kind of food we promote affects our health down the line and affects what we see when we walk into the supermarket which right now is a whole lot of processed corn and soybeans.
Q: Have you continued your farming practices after this whole thing?
A: I haven’t. I will admit, I’m part of a growing number of people in my generation who want to get back to the land in some way and it’s pretty important. The typical farmer now is around 55 years of age so there’s about to be a tremendous turnover in who’s farming the land and what they’re growing. So I’m off the farm for now and making films like King Corn and traveling around showing them to people. My desire in the long run is to be a farmer and to not just grow commodities on a 2000 acre scale but also grow some food for direct consumption.
Q: Any more films of this nature that we can expect from you guys?
A: Yeah, we just finished a documentary about the first big green residential building in Boston. It’s a film called the Greening of Southie and it’s basically the story of couple hundred blue collar jobs going green and I think in many ways it comes from the same place as King Corn which is this idea that we live in the most advanced country in the world but we pay almost no attention to the fundamental things - food and clothing and shelter - which at the end of the day, are still the most important things. King Corn’s a film about where our food comes from and the Greening of Southie is a film about the buildings we live in.
Thought it would be helpful to direct your attention to this little letter put together by some freaked out Canadians about an industrial catastrophe that will nullify Quebec’s carbon reduction efforts.
As stated, if Enbridge is allowed to implement the “Trailbreaker Plan”, increase production and supply this pipeline that ends at the marinas of Portland, Maine, the emissions and massive holes in the ground will leave a tangible and indelible scar on the planet; it will distort and disfigure life as we know it. This is real.
Submit your attention as a concerned neighbor and read about the players and the plans below.
Is Pixar so prescient? Will our planet one day be deserted with no one left but WALL-E robots cubing massive heaps of trash our civilization simply couldn’t handle? If you haven’t seen the movie, this article is another clear representation of the sad irony found in our increasingly futile effort to reuse and manage waste.
The grim fact being that recycled materials are too costly for countries like China to buy back from top exporters like the US is what’s creating the log jam. This overpriced approach to renewables even goes beyond materials and scares consumers away from such energy utility programs offering wind, hydroelectric, and solar power at a costly premium. Seems the true innovation here requires absolute altruism on the part of it’s inventors to excavate us from these rising mountains of expensive trash.
Is it possible for America to save money and save the planet?
A recent Gallup poll found that 66% of Americans said the economic crisis was hurting their personal finances. Further, people are more willing to save the environment over economic growth, but not by much.
It’s misrepresented in the main stream media that the problems with the environment and the US economy are inversely related. There’s is no proof that sacrifices of one actually hurt the other.
Anne Thompson, Chief Environmental Correspondent for NBC-Universal,
How do we become less dependent on foreign oil, that is first and foremost in everyone’s mind. I think that is what’s driving people’s interests to find more environmentally friendly ways to do all sorts of things today.
While there’s panic on Wall Street, the message is that the protection of the environment is directly related to a stabilization of our economy.
For more on the environment’s role in the economy, click here.
What mutating mass lurks 1000 miles off the coast of Hawaii and is reported to be the size of Texas?
More frightening than Captain Ahab’s worst nightmare, it’s garbage island.
The floating island of garbage, or Great Pacific Garbage Patch, is a freak occurrence caused by tidal flows converging in a remote part of the Pacific Ocean. Buoys, plastic debris, and styrafoam spend years faring the high seas from as far off as the coast of Asia, tens of thousands of miles away.
The island of garbage is a highly concentrated whirlpool of plastic particles easily mistaken as food by fish and other organisms. For every one piece of sea life in this region, there are 60 pieces of plastic.
The damage done by this mat of floating trash is even more significant as it’s disrupts the base of the ocean food chain, genetically interrupting generations upon generations of life underwater and on land.
For video footage of the floating island of garbage, click here.
As our economy free falls toward a recession and possible depression, what can the government really do?
Letdown after failure after empty promise has more than discouraged American voters and investors. But there is one bright spot in the government’s plan to rescue us and it begins with the environment.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) have unveiled a $56.2 billion “economic recovery package” which includes funding for things like public transit, home weatherization, and environmental cleanup.
But that’s not all, by an overwhelming 93 to 2 vote, the full Senate approved the Baucus-Grassley tax extender bill, which includes a one-year extension of the production tax credit given out to producers of clean energy specific to solar and wind.
In this day and age of the politics of fear and the inability of large government bureaucracies to get anything done, this recent development seems to be an exception to the rule.
For more on our government going Green, the bailout, and other shreds of hope, check out some of the links below.
According to the latest results from an investigation conducted by the Associated Press, 24 major metropolitan ares from Southern California to Northern New Jersey have tested positive for traces of prescription drugs in the drinking water.
This is being caused by drugs entering the watershed through sewers and landfills. Samples taken from reservoirs serving at least 41 million Americans are showing everything from anti-pshychotics to sex hormones streaming right from our tap.
While short term effects may go unnoticed, what’s troubling scientists are the long term human health consequences. As aquatic life adapts, genetic mutations travel up the food chain and ultimately effect us.
While studies are ongoing it would be wise to think twice before flushing expired prescription drugs down the toilet.
For more on drugs and the environment, click here.
While the United States Food and Drug Administration is in bed with Big Plastic, Americans continue to suffer from obesity, heart attacks, and breast cancer.
Bisphenol A, or BPA for short, is a chemical compound that controls the hardness or softness of almost all the plastic products you can get your hands on. Since the 1930s, BPA has been known to be inherently toxic, effecting the way hormones grow, contributing to the growth of cancer cells with even the slightest contact.
Here’s the scary part: The FDA declares BPA harmless which explains why you’ll find it in things like baby bottles, flatware, and the lining of canned food.
With billions of consumer dollars behind Big Plastic, a growing concern of health advocates is that the FDA has been paid off to keep the truth of this nasty additive behind closed doors.
All things equal, buy organic plastics and ask questions when unsure.
For more on the harmful effects of BPA and where to find BPA-free products, visit the following links:
Without trying too hard to contribute to the brutal media pile-on-Governor-Palin, we’ve gone outside the American media slug fest for a piece from our friends down under to get an outside perspective on this Presidential race. It’s clear from Roslyn Beeby’s article that the 9,463 miles between our two countries hasn’t deadened the shock of McCain’s precarious VP selection.
As Governor of Alaska, home to one of the world’s most delicate ecosystems, you’d think as the elected official she would be all over environmental issues like spilled oil on an albatross. Sadly, however, Governor Sarah Palin’s environmental record is as sullied as the wildlife she allowed to be abused. With some flip flopping and fancy foot work, the VP candidate is doing her darndest to clean up the long trail of ineffectual environmental policy making to seem more marketable as McCain’s sidekick.
The door has slammed shut and the debate is over. Climate change by human hands is real.
According to the most recent report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, industrial activity has irrefutably elevated global greenhouse gasses, reduced snowfall, increased temperature, and raised ocean levels higher than ever.
Troy Ribaudo, of the University of Massachusetts, has been researching the effects of the newest laser detection devices further supporting these climate conclusions.
At the forefront of science there is little question that these findings are indeed the final nail in the coffin regarding mankind’s impact on the environment.
For the full interview with Physicist, Troy Ribaudo, click here.
For daily updates on the climate crisis, check out the following links:
The Olympics kick off in Beijing but have the Chinese succeeded in their goal to Green the Games in time?
For well over two thousand years, Olympic athletes have pushed themselves beyond the limitations of human nature. This summer, however, nature will be setting the limits for the athletes.
It’s the stifling smog mixed with hot humid temperatures forecast for Beijing that are worrying athletes more than their competitors. Despite efforts to limit city traffic and industrial emissions, a thick haze of smog is cutting visibility and threatening the health of this elite group of dedicated men and women.
World record holding distance runner, Haile Gebrselassie of Ethiopia, has pulled out of the games altogether fearing irreparable lung damage while still more athletes are flooding the International Olympic Committee’s mailbox with requests for asthma medication.
With CO2 levels fluctuating only slightly from last minute efforts, it’s now clear to the world that our climate problems require more than a quick fix.
When California’s request to control greenhouse gas emissions was turned down by the Environmental Protection Agency, two reactions formed. Not only did it upset the hope for another step towards a Greener future for America, it confounded many. To find the EPA waiving an act that it was created for in the first place garners an Otto Preminger-style investigation of the EPA’s inner workings.
Four Democrat senators have done just that. An investigation of the EPA chief for perjury and obstruction of Congress has been proposed. With evidence of much White House involvement in the deciding what regulations the EPA can or cannot pass, one has to wonder whether the EPA is really doing its job or is it just another cog in the partisan politics machine.
What’s lurking along China’s eastern coastal waters?
As the Summer Games creep up, the Chinese coastline is blooming with miles of carpet-like blue green algae directly in line with the only route set aside for the world sailing event. The algae creates a sticky, gooey mess for ship rudders and has proven to be more than just an obstacle, but an insurmountable green menace for some of the international competitors.
Prevalent in Japanese and Korean diets, blue green algae is known to be the perfect food for humans as it is high in beta-carotene, balanced in amino acids and helps with weight control. Further, the race-stopping green blob absorbs carbon dioxide and cleans sea water through photosynthesis.
Regardless of its impact on the Olympic event, it seems that the Chinese fisherman and Navy removal crews should start cooking instead of netting this benevolent yet pesky green sea monster.
A few months ago, one of the biggest news stories of the year hit the press. Photos of a “lost tribe” were circulated and piqued the interests of everyone from anthropologists to tinfoil-hat conspiracy theorists. Accompanying the photos of men in red paint huddled outside their straw huts were accounts of savagery that included shooting arrows at helicopters. This was a fantastical story that had people salivating.
But that was exactly the case. It was all a fantasy. This is not to say that the tribe really consisted of out-of-work actors on a back lot in Hollywood. However, the lost tribe was not exactly lost. Photographer José Carlos Meirelles admitted that he only sold the photos as an attempt to bring awareness to deforestation; not exactly the typical reason for creating media hoaxes.
This event reveals a new aspect to the plight of the environmentalist and several questions beg to be asked. Is sensationalism the only way to get us to pay attention? How far will other environmentalists go for their agenda to see light? And are we really so apathetic to issues regarding the Earth that we will act only to pretend-play Indiana Jones?
It is a bit pathetic to think that we need shock tactics for us to come to realizations with what we are doing as a population and the effects these actions have. Maybe it is our mundane (as well as hectic) lifestyles that push seemingly frivolous environmental agendas to the back of our minds. Or maybe, we simply don’t care. And in that case, José Carlos Meirelles has started a new wave of environmental activism that can actually make us sit up and take notice.
Just when you thought it was safe to go back to the fruit stand…
A new menace is coming to your town when you least expect it…
It’s not the summer horror matinee, it’s what’s in the pico de gallo! I’m sorry to report but KILLER TOMATOES ARE ON THE LOOSE!!!
Tomatoes tainted with Salmonella have been detected in Texas and New Mexico. An FDA update on the outbreak can be found here.
Ever had Salmonella poisoning? If not, be glad. It’s a bacterial infection that lives in the intestinal tracts of humans and other animals. That means the infection gets to you if whatever you’ve just eaten had, at some point, come in contact with animal (gulp) FECES! BARF!!!
Someone out there, right this moment, is living in a hut. It is not the idealized hut either in which Hollywood has helped us envision with temperature control and just the right amount of ambient sunlight through the jungle greens.
There is a word that is fitting for our current norms and way of life. The word is prepackaged. Everything comes in a box; our food, our clothes, we live in giant boxes, and we do our work in boxes. The whole point of living has become moving different types of boxes around in order to obtain more boxes for our constantly growing collection of boxes. So it is very difficult to imagine living outside the box. Let alone want to live outside it.
This is the case with several Brazilian Indian tribes which have stayed unseen for several years until the deforestation in the Amazon for the last decade has finally caught up with them. And there is nowhere to run to, for moving from Amazonian jungle to another inhabitable jungle is not exactly the same as changing area codes. About 1/5 of the Amazon has already been cut down. And for what reason? It is mostly likely for our boxes, big and small. We may not have the same ideals and goals in mind as these Brazilian Indian tribes, but we all deserve a home.
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