Sustainability

Monthly Archives: January 2018

Animal welfare groups call for higher standards for farmed chickens

Retailers and restaurants urged to sign up to new cross-European guidelines amid growing concerns over cruelty in intensive meat production.

New welfare standards for farmed chickens have been demanded by a large coalition of European animal protection groups, including the RSPCA, in a bid to address growing concerns about inhumane conditions in the intensive and large-scale production of meat.

Supermarkets and restaurants are being urged to sign up to the new blueprint, which represents the first time a single set of requirements has been agreed on across the continent.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/jan/13/animal-welfare-groups-call-for-higher-standards-for-farmed-chickens

UK retailers see rise in sales of reusable coffee cups

Home and kitchenware shops report growth in sales of portable mugs as government hints at a tax on disposable cups

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/jan/11/uk-retailers-see-rise-in-sales-of-reusable-coffee-cups

Atmospheric CO2 Reaches Highest Level in Nearly a Million Years

According to the World Meteorological Organization, atmospheric CO2 levels have reached the highest level in 800,000 years – a gain that took just a few decades. The agency warns that urgent action is needed to reverse this worrying trend — and notes that we have the technology, but perhaps not the political will.

This announcement is especially alarming, given that the Trump administration has adopted aggressively anti-environmental policies, including placing climate change deniers in key policymaking positions.

https://www.care2.com/causes/atmospheric-co2-reaches-highest-level-in-nearly-a-million-years.html

 

Costs of 2017 US Weather Disasters Demolish Previous Record

2017 saw the US scorched by record-breaking wildfires in California, record-breaking rainfall events like Hurricane Harvey in Houston (just one of the three most expensive hurricanes to ever hit the US, which all occurred in 2017), damaging hail events, tornadoes, and extreme droughts that wiped out crops.

These extreme weather events, most of which were fueled at least in part by anthropogenic climate disruption (ACD), cost the US nearly a third of a trillion dollars ($306 billion) over the past year.

That is more money than the US government spent on transportation, housing and community, international affairs, energy and the environment, and science, combined, in 2015.

The total cost of these extreme weather events was, by nearly $100 billion, a US record.

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/43178-costs-of-2017-us-weather-disasters-demolish-previous-record

California is preparing to defend its waters from Trump order

In its first act to shield California from the Trump administration’s repeal of regulations, the state’s water board has prepared its own rulesprotecting wetlands and other waters.

The proposed new rules, scheduled for a vote by the board this summer, could insulate the state from President Donald Trump’s executive order toroll back the reach of the Clean Water Act. That rollback would strip federal protection from seasonal streambeds, isolated pools and other transitory wetlands, exposing them to damage, pollution or destruction from housing developments, energy companies and farms.

California is preparing to defend its waters from Trump order

Sally and Mike Gale raise grass-fed beef and lambs and grow apple trees on un-irrigated pastureland dependent on rain at Chileno Valley Ranch in Petaluma, CA.

Farming for a Small Planet

How we grow food determines who can eat and who cannot—no matter how much we produce.

People yearn for alternatives to industrial agriculture, but they are worried. They see large-scale operations relying on corporate-supplied chemical inputs as the only high-productivity farming model. Another approach might be kinder to the environment and less risky for consumers, but, they assume, it would not be up to the task of providing all the food needed by our still-growing global population.

Contrary to such assumptions, there is ample evidence that an alternative approach—organic agriculture, or more broadly “agroecology”—is actually the only way to ensure that all people have access to sufficient, healthful food. Inefficiency and ecological destruction are built into the industrial model.

https://www.commondreams.org/views/2018/01/12/farming-small-planet

 

New Report on Radioactive Tap Water Renews Concerns About Trump Nominee

New Report on Radioactive Tap Water Renews Concerns

About Trump Nominee for Top Environmental Role

Critics are challenging Trump’s “outrageous” and “alarming” move to renominate the former head of a Texas environmental agency who has admitted to falsifying reports of radiation levels in drinking water

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2018/01/12/new-report-radioactive-tap-water-renews-concerns-about-trump-nominee-top

AND

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/43195-embattled-trump-nominee-inadvertently-draws-attention-to-radiation-in-drinking-water

Cheap renewables undercut nuclear power

Cheap renewables are mounting a serious challenge to nuclear power, which in 2017 has had a difficult year.

Key projects have been abandoned, costs are rising, and politicians in countries which previously championed the industry are withdrawing their support.

Renewables, on the other hand, especially wind and solar power, have continued to expand at an enormous rate. Most importantly, they have got significantly cheaper.

And newer technologies like large-scale battery storage and production of hydrogenare becoming economic, because they harness cheap power from excess renewable capacity.

Cheap renewables undercut nuclear power

GMOs, Global Agribusiness and the Destruction of Choice

One of the myths perpetuated by the pro-GMO (genetically modified organisms) lobby is that critics of GMOs in agriculture are denying choice to farmers and have an ideological agenda. The narrative is that farmers should have access to a range of tools and technologies, including GM crops. 

Before addressing this issue, we should remind ourselves that GMOs have been illegitimately placed on the commercial market due to the bypassing of regulations. Steven Druker’s book Altered Genes, Twisted Truths (2015) indicates that the commercialisation of GM food in the US was based on a massive fraud. The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) files revealed that GM foods first achieved commercialisation in 1992 but only because the FDA covered up the extensive warnings of its own scientists about their dangers, lied about the facts and then violated federal food safety law by permitting GM food to be marketed without having been proven safe through standard testing.

GMOs, Global Agribusiness and the Destruction of Choice

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