Focus on Arts and Ecology

Purpose of the articles posted in the blog is to share knowledge and occurring events for ecology and biodiversity conservation and protection whereas biology will be human’s security. Remember, these are meant to be conversation starters, not mere broadcasts :) so I kindly request and would vastly prefer that you share your comments and thoughts on the blog-version of this Focus on Arts and Ecology (all its past + present + future).

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We can solve the migration crisis and global warming. Here's how.

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ESSAY OF THE WEEK

Under Our Feet

pair of feet standing in the forest on fallen autumn leaves
 
“Regenerative agriculture provides answers to the soil crisis, the food crisis, the health crisis, the climate crisis and the crisis of democracy.” -- Dr. Vandana Shiva
Two of the most serious and intractable crises pressing down on us—in North America, Europe and worldwide—are the immigration crisis and climate change.
Most of the media coverage of these issues until now has focused on the bad news: “Hottest Year Ever,” “CO2 Concentrations in the Atmosphere Rising,” “Trump Determined to Build a Wall,” “Thousands of Immigrant Children Separated from Their Parents and Locked Up,” “Another Boatload of African Refugees Sinks in the Mediterranean,” “Immigration Crisis Polarizes EU."
Unfortunately, there’s been little or no discussion about the interconnected roots of these crises or most importantly, the good news: that there are positive solutions at hand.
Almost nowhere will you find a news story or commentary that connects the dots, as Vandana Shiva puts it, between “the soil crisis, the food crisis, the health crisis, the climate crisis and the crisis of democracy.”
Yet, not only are these contemporary crises—forced migration, the climate crisis, and others—interconnected, but in fact there are shovel-ready, tried-and-tested solutions to these mega-problems right under our feet, at the end of our forks and knives and ultimately in the way that we vote, not only at the ballot box, but with our consumer dollars.
 
 

 

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MILLIONS AGAINST MONSANTO

Who's Killing Whom?

silhouette of a scientist with a microscope and slide
 
In her latest exposé on Monsanto’s attack on scientists, Stacy Malkan, co-director of U.S. Right to Know, quotes from an email sent by a former Kraft Foods scientist to a former Syngenta scientist who said he’d “been fighting IARC forever!!! :)” The Kraft “scientist” then goes on to say:
“Foods and ag are under siege since Glyphosate in March 2015. We all need to gather somehow and expose IARC, as you guys did in the paper. Next priorities are all food ingredients: aspartame, sucralose, dietary iron, B-carotene, BPA, etc. IARC is killing us!”
Oh, the Irony. Scientists, not toxic weedkillers, are “killing us?”
IARC refers to the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer. The agency published a report, in 2015, stating that glyphosate, the active ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide, is a probable human carcinogen.
According to Malkan, the IARC expert panel decision to classify glyphosate as “probably carcinogenic to humans” created a rallying point for the panel’s foes to gather forces. A key Monsanto document, uncovered as part of the ongoing trial involving a 49-year-old terminally ill man suing Monsanto for knowingly exposing him to health risks, reveals Monsanto’s plan of attack:discredit the cancer scientists with the help of allies across the food industry.
Malkan writes:
Monsanto’s public relations plan assigned 20 corporate staffers to prepare for the IARC carcinogenicity report on glyphosate, with objectives including “neutralize impact,” “establish public perspective on IARC,” “regulator outreach,” “ensure MON POV” and “engage industry associations” in “outrage.”
Industry associations would have a hard time manufacturing “outrage” that could come even close to the outrage Monsanto’s victims—and all of us—experience with each new revelation to come out ofthis trial.
 
 

 

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ACTION ALERT

Cool It!

toy polar bear on melting chunk of snow in the grass
 
Last year, Trump pulled the U.S. out of the Paris Climate Agreement, claiming the international deal, signed by 195 nations, imposed “wildly unfair environmental standards on American businesses and workers.” Since then, many city and state government officials have vowed to meet the Paris climate goals, despite lack of support from the federal government.
In September, many of these leaders will join business leaders, investors and civil society leaders in San Francisco for the Global Climate Action Summit, to discuss how bold action on climate can go hand-in-hand with “job generation and resilient economic growth.”
With the federal government asleep at the wheel, we need state lawmakers to recognize the role agriculture plays in the climate crisis—and the potential role it could play in the climate solution. That's why we're asking you to ask your state officials to join two important policy initiatives aimed at addressing both food and climate security.
Last year, the level of carbon dioxide in the earth’s atmosphere passed the threshold of 410 parts per million, far surpassing the 350 ppm tipping point scientists warned us about a decade ago.
We absolutely have to reduce fossil fuel emissions if we want to avert a climate disaster. To that end, many local governments have wisely joined the GoFossilFree.org initiative.
But transitioning to alternative renewable energy sources alone won’t get us where we need to be, fast enough. We have to go fossil free and draw down the carbon already in the atmosphere.
How? By transitioning to regenerative food, farming and land-use practices. And that will require big policy changes.
 
 

 

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SUPPORT OCA & CRL

Brains & Guts

two hands holding a representation of nature with trees animals and water
 
We included two videos in Bytes this week. We hope you’ll watch them both.
The first is an interview with our director, Ronnie Cummins, who talks about migration, and what it has to do with global food, farming and land-use policies.
The second is the trailer for “Genetically Modified Children,” a documentary on the horrific consequences, especially for children, of government policies that prioritize the profits of Monsanto and Philip Morris over public health.
One video focuses on solutions. The other focuses on a big problem (though it also talks about the valiant efforts of mothers to overcome that problem).
This two-sided approach to consumer and public education pretty much sums up who OCA is, and what we aspire to accomplish in the education realm: expose the bad (and engage our networks in holding the wrongdoers accountable), and illuminate the solutions.
It’s critical that we all understand the dire, and multiple, consequences of allowing transnational corporations to take over our global food system.
But if we talked only about problems and never the solutions, we’d all be depressed. Likewise, if we focused exclusively on the solutions without exposing why we need those solutions, we’d have a hard time convincing a critical mass of the global population of the urgency of needing to work together to implement those solutions.
Ronnie’s discussion of the forced migration crisis couldn’t come at a more opportune time. This is a crisis that will grow exponentially, as global warming and land degradation drive more and more people from their homes.
Much is being written these days about the immigration crisis. But the solutions being proposed so far have been largely shortsighted and cruel.
What we need are long-term solutions. And political leaders with the brains to recognize those solutions, and the guts to implement them.
With your help, we'll keep pushing local, state and federal lawmakers in that direction. Let's hope we get there in time.
Support Citizens Regeneration Lobby (CRL), OCA’s sister lobbying organization. Donations to CRL, a 501(c) (4) nonprofit, are not tax-deductible
 
 

 

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VIDEO OF THE WEEK

GMO Kids?

boy in the film Genetically Modified Children
 
Seventeen-year-old William Nuñez can’t walk or talk, and has to be fed through a tube in his stomach.
Five-year-old Lucas Texeira suffers from a severe and incurable skin condition.
Lucas Krauss has congenital microcephaly, epilepsy, delayed motor and mental development, multiple muscular atrophy and numerous related pathologies.
What do these children have in common? Their fathers, all farmers working in Latin America, were exposed to agricultural pesticides that likely damaged their DNA, increasing the risk of cancer, birth defects and neurological disorders in the children they later fathered.
They also have this in common: Their mothers are fighting for justice for their kids.
“Genetically Modified Children,” a new one-hour documentary, exposes how Philip Morris and Monsanto have exploited generations of impoverished Argentinian farmers since 1996, when the Argentinian government authorized the use of genetically engineered crops to withstand the use of Monsanto’s Roundup weedkiller.
 
 

 

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ORGANIC STOREFRONT

Count the Ways


 
So many oils, so many uses.
For a growing number of health-conscious consumers,essential oils have become, well, essential.
Epoch Times provides a list of 25 ways to use essential oils. But for starters, you can:
• Massage them (blended with a carrier oil) into your skin
• Add them to bathwater
• Use them in a hot compress
• Heat them in a diffuser
• Rub a drop onto pulse points in lieu of perfume
Not familiar with what a carrier oil is? They’re oils that you mix with essential oils that are often highly concentrated. When applied topically, they help “carry” the essential oil.
Carrier oils benefits include:
• Organic Argan Oil: contains skin-moisturizing properties and healthy fatty acids
• Organic Rose Hip Seed Oil: improves sun-damaged skin
• Organic Jojoba: is non-allergenic, non-comedogenic
From now until midnight July 31, get 20% off your purchase of essential and carrier oils with this promo code: ORGANIC718. Plus, Mercola will donate 20% of your purchase price to OCA.
Shop now and get 20% off your purchase of organic essential and carrier oils.
 
 

 

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LITTLE BYTES

Essential Reading for the Week

Little Bytes
 
 
 
 
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