POWERFUL INSPIRATION Fwd: ‘what fools we were’

[V Jacobi]

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Warmly,

Roni

www.OurGreenChallenge.org

"Climate Change is not just another issue in this complicated world of
proliferating issues. It is the issue that, unchecked, will swamp all other issues." 

- Ross Gelbspan in The Heat Is On

-------- Original Message --------

Subject:	‘what fools we were’
Date:	2019-09-26 09:01
From:	Organic Consumers Association <ronnie...@organicconsumers.org>
To:	vja...@sonic.net

Lawyer representing Monsanto cancer victims says it's hard to see the history that's being made right now.  ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌  SUBSCRIBE | DONATE | VIEW ON WEB   TOP NEWS OF THE WEEK 'Linking Arms'   "Today, tens of thousands of young people with the Sunrise Movement are linking arms with the tens of thousands of farmers and ranchers in this historic coalition to demand a Green New Deal that reinvests in our family farms and empowers them to be the heroes we need them to be to stop the climate crisis." - Garrett Blad, Sunrise Movement, September 18, 2019 Last week, Organic Consumers Association (OCA) joined Regeneration International (an organization we helped co-found and continue to support) and the Sunrise Movement to officially launch the national coalition of U.S. Farmers & Ranchers for a Green New Deal. Five members of Congress joined us in front of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., to call for a Green New Deal for farmers and ranchers. Earlier in the day, we delivered a letter to every member of Congress, signed by more than 500 individual farms, and 50 organizations representing more than 10,000 farmers and ranchers, asking Congress to support the Green New Deal Resolution. Representatives of the Women, Food & Agriculture Network, Indiana Farmers Union and American Sustainable Business Council joined in the press conference. Why is a consumer and environmental advocacy group like OCA so invested in this new coalition? Because we're facing a food crisis. A soil crisis. A water crisis. And a climate crisis. And there's just no way we solve these interconnected issues without "linking arms" and working together. Read 'Linking Arms: Farmers, Consumers and Climate Activists Launch National Coalition for a Green New Deal' Read the press release More about the U.S. Farmers & Ranchers for a Green New Deal SIGN UP for the Regeneration International newsletter TAKE ACTION: Sign the Green Consumers for a Green New Deal petition TAKE ACTION: Make a tax-deductible donation to the national coalition of U.S. Farmers and Ranchers for a Green New Deal!     MILLIONS AGAINST MONSANTO 'What Fools'   The nearly 18,000 cancer victims suing Monsanto aren't alone. Farmers worldwide are taking to the courts to hold Monsanto and its parent company, Bayer, accountable for concealing the truth about the potential dangers associated with its flagship weedkiller, Roundup. The Australian version of the popular news program, "60 Minutes," earlier this month ran a segment about Michael Ogolirolo, an Australian landscaper who says exposure to Roundup caused his leukemia. The reporter interviewed Brent Wisner, the attorney who represented Dewayne Johnson, in the first Roundup trial in the U.S. Wisner said that with Roundup, we are right now at the "exact same moment" we were decades ago with cigarettes: "Forty years from now we're going to look back at this time and say, 'what fools we were, of course it [Roundup] causes cancer.'" Wisner also told "60 Minutes" that Bayer is "just lying" when the company continues to claim that Roundup is "completely safe." "We have their own studies that they themselves conducted that show when you expose animals or humans to this, you see genetic damage, you see lymphoma." Meanwhile, back in the good old U.S. of A., Bayer is desperately trying to block the next Roundup lawsuit, originally set to take place in the Biotech Bully's backyard, St. Louis, Mo. Watch the '60 Minutes' segment on Roundup in Australia Read 'Monsanto Makes New Bid to Block St. Louis Trial' TAKE ACTION: Tell Congress to Ban Monsanto's Roundup Weedkiller! SUPPORT OUR MILLIONS AGAINST MONSANTO CAMPAIGN     ACTION ALERT YUCK!   According to the company website, D'Artagnan's foie gras "is considered a great delicacy around the world." But if you're eating D'Artagnan's foie gras, what you're actually eating is the diseased liver of a tortured duck or goose. Samples of D'Artagnan's foie gras, submitted by Organic Consumers Association for independent lab testing, confirm that the product is made from the livers of ducks that suffer from "severe hepatic lipidosis," or what's commonly known as fatty liver disease. Setting aside the "yuck" factor for a minute, what do these test results mean? They mean that the birds used to produce this "great delicacy" for consumers lived painful, tortured lives. Read 'Tests Confirm: If You're Eating this 'Delicacy,' You're Eating a Diseased Liver' TAKE ACTION: California Banned Foie Gras. Ask Your State to Do the Same.     VIDEO OF THE WEEK Straight Talk   Less than a week after the launch of the national coalition of U.S. Farmers & Ranchers for a Green New Deal, Beth Hoffman, a coalition member, sent us a video, with a little straight talk straight from a farmer. Hoffman's message? "I think America has to make some decisions about farmers and farming, and making them viable . . . How we're going to support people on the land is a critical question right now." Hoffman and her partner, John Hogeland, are taking over her family's Iowa farm, Whippoorwill Creek Farm. As Hoffman has written before, it's not easy for beginning farmers, especially those who want to transition to organic regenerative practices, to make a living: But farming - even in a place like Iowa - is a profession that doesn't pay. Not "doesn't pay" like teachers should be paid more or cooks make so much less than waiters. No, farming at small scale like we are talking about doing on the farm literally does not make any money. In fact, farmers often pay to farm. A Green New Deal, with transformational ag policy reforms, could change things for farmers like Hoffman. Watch 'A Young Farmer's Plea for a Green New Deal' SIGN UP for the Regeneration International newsletter TAKE ACTION: Support the national coalition of U.S. Farmers and Ranchers for a Green New Deal!     NEW STUDY Diversity Rules   A new study confirms what most scientists already know, and what proponents of industrial agribusiness either don't get, or won't admit: Nature abhors a monoculture. The study suggests that by restoring biodiversity, we can vastly enhance the soil's potential to store carbon. That's good news for the climate. And there are co-benefits, too: healthier, more resilient soil and plants, not to mention wildlife habitats. Scientists have long believed that soil aggregates—clusters of soil particles—were the principal locations for stable carbon storage. These clusters develop when tiny particles of soil clump together. Mycorrhiza—the microscopic fungi which live in healthy soils—produce sticky compounds that help "glue" these clusters together helping to stabilize and protect the carbon particles inside them. Now, a recent study out of the Michigan State University (MSU) Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center, suggests that this soil clustering is most efficient when soil has a healthy "pore structure." And the key to a healthy pore structure is plant biodiversity. According to the report: Soils from restored prairie ecosystems, with many different plant species, had many more pores of the right size for stable carbon storage than did a pure stand of switchgrass. Read 'Study: Plant Diversity Leads to More Carbon Stored in the Soil'     ACTION ALERT What's for Lunch?   Schoolchildren deserve access to fresh, locally grown food. Yet the foods served up by most school cafeterias are bad for kids, bad for local farm businesses and bad for the environment. Who gains when the school menu is full of chicken nuggets, "cheese" pizza, french fries and tater tots? Giant food corporations that support factory farms and chemical companies, like Monsanto. Feeding kids processed food filled with cheap ingredients can have profound and long-lasting health effects. Eating ultra-processed food is linked to heart attack, stroke and early death. It also promotes obesity and diabetes, two life-threatening conditions that are on the rise among kids in the U.S. The "Kids Eat Local Act" (HR 3220), Introduced by Rep. Chellie Pingree (D-Maine), would help public schools source more local food, which would in turn give kids access to healthy, nutritious lunches. The "Kids Eat Local Act" would also help support local farms by creating more market opportunities. What's not to love? TAKE ACTION: Tell Congress to Support the "Kids Eat Local Act"     LITTLE BYTES Essential Reading   Today's Special: Grilled Salmon Laced With Plastic Don't Go Vegan to Save the Planet. You Can Help by Being a Better Meat-Eater. Genetically Engineered Animals: From Lab to Factory Farm Genetically Modified Mosquitoes Yield Unintended Consequences, Yale Study Finds Noam Chomsky and Robert Pollin: If We Want a Future, Green New Deal Is Key A Big New Study Finds Bee-Killing Pesticides Aren't Even Worth It for Soybean Farmers The Link Between Fast Food and Teenage Depression     Follow on Twitter | Friend on Facebook | OCA on Pinterest   Donate Received this email from a friend? Subscribe   Organic Consumers Association is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. 6771 South Silver Hill Drive - Finland, MN 55603 - Phone: 218-226-4164 - Fax: 218-353-7652 Unsubscribe

[Kamran Nayeri]

Organic or not, in the year 2000, about 37 percent of Earth's land area was agricultural land. About one-third of this area, or 11 percent of Earth's total land, is used for crops. The balance, roughly one-fourth of Earth's land area, is pastureland, which includes cultivated or wild forage crops for animals and open land used for grazing. (The Habitable Planet) It is well-known such massive human use of land surface is an environmental problem because it has destroyed existing ecosystems and undermining the web of life. 

As I noted earlier, Green New Deal which promises "prosperity" for all Americans by raising the standard of living through a program of Green Keynesianism ("'green" growth") undermines the very aim of the climate justice movement if it is taken as a planetary movement where the masses of working people in Asia, Africa, and Latin America still need to achieve a sufficient level of development to allow for human development. 

Meanwhile, the ever-more growth in the United States and the Global North will have the opposite effect even for the working people in the Global North. Farmers and ranchers have an economic interest in the Green New Deal. The climate justice movement's interest is not aligned with it. We need a redistribution of income and a redirection of economic activity that would support a culture of being (human development) as opposed to a culture of having (economic development), It is crucial that our movement understand the difference between these two goals. The Greem New Deal is a Green Capitalist vision which supports the latter but not the former. 

It is high time for our movement to choose between capitalism and the future of life on Earth. Simply ignoring the fact that the crisis is systemic, that is it is caused by the capitalist system itself, will not help us move even one step closer to a solution. Leaning on the left-leaning Democrats is not a solution, it simply delay a solution as it has for the past quarter of a century by leaders such as Bill McKibben.This way we wasted 25 years. we cannot afford wasting another 25 years.  A new generation is coming to politics. Let not confuse them with out own confusions. Let talk about these issues, ask questions, criticize, learn from each other, but most importantly, stand on out own feet instead of leaning of the two-party system that has brought us to the edge of the abyss.

Thank you.

Kamran Nayeri  

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www.OccupySonomaCounty.org
 
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Kamran Nayeri

[V Jacobi]

earlier today I was looking at socialist organizations flyer and what I was thinking and still think is I AM FOR PROGRESS ON EVERY FRONT ASAP.  So yes, putting the most effort with our limited time to the MOST effective route, sure.  However, again progress is progress and we need tonsssssssssss of progress and tonsssssssssssss of allies.  How does that feel for you Kamran?  THANKS!

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Warmly,

Roni

www.OurGreenChallenge.org

"Climate Change is not just another issue in this complicated world of
proliferating issues. It is the issue that, unchecked, will swamp all other issues." 

- Ross Gelbspan in The Heat Is On

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/osc_earth-action/CALCSvSW18OpyGa2483neKc81SdEx9WKt5DwZN%3D%3DE0RMOnv%3DoWA%40mail.gmail.com.

[Kamran Nayeri]

Please allow me to share with you a couple of sources that support my statements earlier. 

First: Yesterday, KPFA's Against the Grain rerun an hour interview with the environmental historian Troy Vettese (at Harvard University at the time of the interview) centered on his idea of "rewiliding" as the strategy to combat climate change and the Sixth Extinction. It tuns counter to those who organic farmers and rangers who signed onto the Green New Deal.  I urge you to listen to this interview and read his essay provided as a downloadable PDF from Against the Grain site. (“To Freeze the Thames: Natural Geo-Engineering and Biodiversity,” New Left Review, May-June 2018)

Second: For anyone interested in details about my criticism of Bill McKibben and 350.org politics please see "Making Progress: A Critical Assessment of Climate Action Plans by Bill McKibben and The Climate Mobilization." (2016)

Third: For quiet supporters of capitalism who may think I am some wild-eyed "bomb-throwing" radical, let me ask you a simple question: Capitalism is widely and rightly admitted to being the greatest wealth-creating machine in history. Would you ask yourself what is wealth and where it comes from? Wealth is simply exploitation and expropriation of nature, including humanity (the working masses from housewives to slave to serfs to wage workers).  Being the greatest wealth-generating machine in human history simply means exploiting and expropriating the ecosystem and its species, including the bulk of humanity.  There is a point beyond which the exploited and expropriated simply die-off--that is how Indonesia Gross Domestic Product took off with cutting down of rainforests, for examples. 

But who is getting all the wealth being generated by world capitalism? According to the latest Credit Suisse report (2016) the richest 3.5 million people worldwide (o.7% of world population) control $116 trillion, or 45.6% of the world’s wealth, or more than $1 million each (of course, even in this group a tiny minority controls much of the world’s wealth).  The poorest 3.5 billion people (73% of the world population) control only $6.1 trillion of wealth, or less than $10,000 in wealth each (Of course, a majority in this group have no wealth or even have negative wealth, debt).  IF WE STOP CREATING THIS WEALTH (DEPRIVING E.5 MILLION CAPITALISTS WORLDWIDE) THE ECOLOGICAL FOOTPRINT WOULD BE CUT BY HALF! Why climate justice people does not demand an end to all wealth and an end to growth in the Global North? 

In the 1970s, the environmental movement had a slogan: "Think Globally, Act Locally." Is it not time that the U.S. climate justice movement think globally and provide a program to transition to a post-capitalist just and sustainable society?

Thank you for your attention.

Kamran 

 

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Kamran Nayeri