Environmental Videos: Environmental Issues & Videos // Current

added
12 hours ago

Combat Monsanto

Click anywhere on this interactive map to see the resisitance to this global takeover of our food and the abrogation of our food... more

JanforGore
added this

Paraguay: Soy monocultures and spraying spreading

Just before an international conference will decide on setting 'responsible soy standards, a new report is published by... more

JanforGore
added this

DOW GM soya: a step back into the Dark Ages

Dow AgroSciences’ recent request [1] to the regulatory authorities in Brazil to field test a new GM soya bean tolerant to... more

JanforGore
added this

From The Heart Of The World - The Elder Brothers' Warning

This documentary from 1991 explores the culture and spiritual beliefs of the Kogi tribe -- a pre-Colombian American tribe once... more

Vierotchka
added this

Federal court upholds ban on genetically modified alfalfa: Monsanto petition denied in full

In a decision handed down here today, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has re-affirmed its previous... more

JanforGore
added this

The White House Organic Garden Contaminated With High Levels of Lead and Other Sludge Wastes

Oh my! Apparently, and a suspected cause, the garden was treated with ComPRO, a commercially available "compost made from a nearby wastewater plant's solid effluent, a.k.a. sewage sludge." Read on.....

Ironically, I understand hemp can absorb some of these toxic elements.

From Huffington Post, July 1

"When Michelle Obama created an organic vegetable garden on the White House lawn earlier this year, the move was greeted with positive headlines and excitement among the food advocacy community. Here, we thought, was a First Lady who understood the importance of locally grown, whole and organic foods in her family's diet.

Unfortunately, something happened on the way to the realization of the First Lady's good intentions. Recently the National Park Service discovered that the White House lawn, where the garden was planted, contains highly elevated levels of lead -- 93 parts per million. It's enough lead for anyone planning to have children pick vegetables in that garden or eat produce from it to reconsider their plans: lead is highly toxic to children's developing organs and brain functions -- however, it's below the 400 ppm the EPA suggests is a threat to human health.

What caused this alarming contamination of the White House lawn? Some news outlets speculated that residue from lead paint might have caused the toxicity. However an article running on Mother Jones online has a more probable explanation. During the 1990s, the Clintons agreed to have the South Lawn of the White House "fertilized" with ComPRO, a commercially available "compost made from a nearby wastewater plant's solid effluent, a.k.a. sewage sludge."

So, the White House lawn became a highly visible example of a little-known, widely conducted practice, "land application." This means disposing of sewage sludge by spraying it over public lands, including parks, and also on an untold number of acres of farmland where our food is grown. Sadly, it's completely legal under current, grossly inadequate EPA rules.

Apparently, the spreading of sewage sludge at the White House was a public relations ploy by the Environmental Protection Agency and, no doubt, the sludge industry to convince the public that using sludge in gardens and farms is as safe as using normal compost. The promotion didn't stop there; as part of its PR effort, EPA offered a $150,000 prize to the winner of a contest to re-brand sludge with a more benign sounding name. The chosen euphemism?: "biosolid". It's a term the agency and the industry consistently use to hide the reality of what sludge is.

So what is sludge, really? A stinking, sticky, dark-grey to black paste, it's everything homeowners, hospitals and industries put down their toilets and drains. Every material-turned-waste that our society produces (including prescription drugs and the sweepings of slaughterhouses), and that wastewater treatment plants are capable of removing from sewage, becomes sludge. The end product is a concentrated mass of heavy metals and carcinogenic, teratogenic, and hormone-disrupting chemicals, replete with antibiotic-resistant bacteria. There are some 80,000 to 90,000 industrial chemicals, including a host of dioxin-like deadly substances, which are allowed to be present in sludge under current EPA rules. What's worse, there's no way of knowing which toxic chemicals and heavy metals are entering the wastewater stream at any given time or in what concentrations. Sludge is always an unknown quantity, and therefore, assessing whether sludge is safe to use for growing food, is -- in practice -- impossible."
continued...Oh my! Apparently, and a suspected cause, the garden was treated with ComPRO, a commercially available "compost made... more

SeaJade
added this

14 responses

added
16 hours ago

Moon probe returns first images

The US space agency's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) spacecraft has returned its first images since reaching the Moon on... more

Healthylivinggal
added this

5 responses

added
16 hours ago

Climate Change Is Shrinking Sheep

Climate change is causing a breed of wild sheep in Scotland to shrink, according to research. Scientists say milder winters... more

Vierotchka
added this

0 responses

added
17 hours ago

Founding Father Farmers: John Adams

John Adams was a man of conviction, principles and a staunch advocate of freedom. Though he did not get the accolades the other... more

JanforGore
added this

5 responses

added
18 hours ago

Even cockroaches get fat on bad food

Cockroaches may be tiny enough to slip through the smallest of cracks, but just like humans, these eternal pests can get fat on an... more

JanforGore
added this

0 responses

added
20 hours ago

Greening Your Office Space

Back from maternity leave or starting a new job – why not take a step in an earth-friendly direction by greening your office... more

thegreenconnoisseur
added this

0 responses

added
24 hours ago

NIMBY Attitude Stalling U.S. Growth -AEP Chairman, Michael Morris

Electricity growth has increased over the last decade. Coal in particular accounts for over 50 percent of U.S. electricity and... more

JFunnell
added this

0 responses

added
1 day ago

Free HD Fireworks Desktop Photos from CTNGREEN

Have a happy and safe 4th of July Here are 5 desktops you may download ( 1920 x 1080 pixels ) Photos from last year by Jeff... more

HD1080i
added this

1 response

added
1 day ago

First 100,000 miles in our Prius - detailed emissions comparisons

My wife and I love our Prius very much. In 2003, we bought a 2nd generation Toyota Prius. Now that we have driven our first... more

brian_gillingham
added this

0 responses

added
1 day ago

Environmenal groups protest Alberta tar sands pipeline to US

Why haven't we heard about THIS in conjunction with the bogus emissions targets in this climate bill? Renewable energy? Is... more

JanforGore
added this

1 response

added
1 day ago

new .eco domain in the making - bid and proposals to be made to manage the new gTLD

“By using the Internet as a global online database, Big Room’s Dot Eco will allow individuals to make informed... more

spiritquest
added this

0 responses

added
1 day ago

What's in store for Cap and Trade "Yes" Votes?

shellyelliot
added this

0 responses

added
1 day ago

Have you installed any renewable energy gadgets, share your findings with Yougen

YouGen brings together people interested in renewable energy to provide the answers you need. We’re creating a community... more

spiritquest
added this

1 response

added
1 day ago

Sea level rise: it's worse than we thought

FOR a few minutes David Holland forgets about his work and screams like a kid on a roller coaster. The small helicopter he's riding in is slaloming between towering cliffs of ice - the sheer sides of gigantic icebergs that had calved off Greenland's Jakobshavn glacier. "It was like in a James Bond movie," Holland says afterwards. "It's the most exciting thing I have ever done."

Jakobshavn has doubled its speed in the past 15 years, draining increasing amounts of ice from the Greenland ice sheet into the ocean, and Holland, an oceanographer at New York University, has been trying to find out why. Scientists like him are more than a little astonished at the rate at which our planet's frozen frontiers seem to be responding to global warming. The crucial question, though, is what will happen over the next few decades and centuries.

That's because the fate of the planet's ice, from relatively small ice caps in places like the Canadian Arctic, the Andes and the Himalayas, to the immense ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica, will largely determine the speed and extent of sea level rise. At stake are the lives and livelihoods of hundreds of millions of people, not to mention millions of square kilometres of cities and coastal land, and trillions of dollars in economic terms.

In its 2007 report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) forecast a sea level rise of between 19 and 59 centimetres by 2100, but this excluded "future rapid dynamical changes in ice flow". Crudely speaking, these estimates assume ice sheets are a bit like vast ice cubes sitting on a flat surface, which will stay in place as they slowly melt. But what if some ice sheets are more like ice cubes sitting on an upside-down bowl, which could suddenly slide off into the sea as conditions get slippery? "Larger rises cannot be excluded but understanding of these effects is too limited to assess their likelihood," the IPCC report stated.

Even before it was released, the report was outdated. Researchers now know far more. And while we still don't understand the dynamics of ice sheets and glaciers well enough to make precise predictions, we are narrowing down the possibilities. The good news is that some of the scarier scenarios, such as a sudden collapse of the Greenland ice sheet, now appear less likely. The bad news is that there is a growing consensus that the IPCC estimates are wildly optimistic.

The oceans are already rising. Global average sea level rose about 17 centimetres in the 20th century, and the rate of rise is increasing. The biggest uncertainty for those trying to predict future changes is how humanity will behave. Will we start to curb our emissions of greenhouse gases sometime soon, or will we continue to pump ever more into the atmosphere?

Even if all emissions stopped today, sea level would continue to rise. "The current rate of rise would continue for centuries if temperatures are constant, and that would add about 30 centimetres per century to global sea level," says Stefan Rahmstorf of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany. "If we burn all fossil fuels, we are likely to end up with many metres of sea level rise in the long run, very likely more than 10 metres in my view."

This might sound dramatic, but we know sea level has swung from 120 metres lower than today during ice ages to more than 70 metres higher during hot periods. There is no doubt at all that if the planet warms, the sea will rise. The key questions are, by how much and how soon?

end of excerptFOR a few minutes David Holland forgets about his work and screams like a kid on a roller coaster. The small helicopter he's... more

JanforGore
added this

5 responses

added
1 day ago

U.S. Senate Committee Scraps Florida Drilling Protections

-- 2006 Compromise Betrayed as Oil Rigs Allowed as Close as 45 Miles --

WASHINGTON – The U.S. Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee voted today to remove Florida’s unique and critical protections against offshore oil and gas drilling. The amendment, offered by Senator Byron Dorgan (D-ND), revokes long-term protections against Eastern Gulf drilling within 125 miles of Pensacola and 250 miles from Tampa Bay and replaces it with a buffer just 45 miles from Florida’s coastline, effective immediately.

“We’re deeply disappointed that the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee broke its promise to Florida,” said Environment Florida Advocate Adam Rivera. “This is a cautionary tale not to compromise with oil companies and their allies in Congress, since such compromises will not be upheld for long.”

The 2006 Gulf of Mexico Energy Security Act put in place current protections for Florida’s federal waters, which last until 2022. The Dorgan Amendment, which was adopted by a margin of 13-10, also opens the “Destin Dome,” long sought after by oil and gas interests, a mere 25 miles from the coast of Pensacola.

Florida would bear huge risk from increased drilling, while receiving a negligible reward. Based on the experience of other Gulf drilling operations, small spills—like the 500 gallon spill off a Louisiana rig in June 2006 that killed hundreds of endangered pelicans in a National Wildlife Refuge—would be common if Florida’s coastal and marine waters were opened to drilling. A catastrophic spill, one that could spoil the ecology and economic value of Florida beaches for generations, would be a real possibility.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration found that the impact on gasoline prices in both the near and long terms from offshore drilling in the Eastern Gulf is “insignificant”—a mere fraction of the savings America could achieve from a slight increase in automobile fuel economy standards or smart investments in urban planning and better public transit.

“Environment Florida thanks Senator Bill Nelson for fighting for our coastal environment and economy. We urge all U.S. Senators to join him in focusing on creating a clean energy economy and stopping global warming, rather than pursuing false solutions that jeopardize our natural heritage,” said Rivera.-- 2006 Compromise Betrayed as Oil Rigs Allowed as Close as 45 Miles -- WASHINGTON – The U.S. Senate Energy and Natural... more