MAY LOVE PREVAIL ON EARTH
January 30, 2004
The Green Holocaust Files #13: The Death Throes of a Dying Civilization
Hello everyone
Here is my last compilation for this week, again about the mounting evidence that our planet is in dire environmental straits, a situation that can no longer be ignored, even by the Pentagon (see the excerpt from "The Pentagon's Weather Nightmare" below), but which is no longer warranting attention from most media and thus from most people and thus from most politicians - and thus hardly anything is being done to start implementing corrective measures that could prevent the loss of billions of lives both in the human and in the animal realms.
I always prefer to believe, as I wrote in my last Green Holocaust compilation, that there is a Golden Path ahead, which if chosen by a majority of people, one by one by one, will lead us to a brilliant as yet unimaginably Light-filled future. So if these warning signs posted on the roadside of our civilization's rush ahead are to be of any value, we cannot ignore them but must go within the deepest recess of our hearts to listen to the resonance they may trigger and changes they may foster if we actually accept to take in the full spectrum emerging reality they evoke...
Jean Hudon
Earth Rainbow Network Coordinator
This compilation is archived at http://www.EarthRainbowNetwork.com/Archives2004/GreenHolocaust13.htm
"Ominously, the trend has accelerated since 1990, during which time the 10 hottest years on record have occurred. Many studies have shown that similar changes in the waters of the North Atlantic in geological time have often plunged Europe into an ice age, sometimes bringing the change in as little as a decade."
- Taken from "Global warming will plunge Britain into new ice age 'within decades'" below.
"We're losing the planet. The only resolution is an awakening of gratitude and reverence for the planet and falling in love in more than an anthropocentric fashion. We have a cultural DNA. We have to stir things up and demand things from it.
- Matthew Fox, theologian, writer.
Worthy of Your Attention
New Shockwave animation
http://www.astraldelta.com/MatthewBooks5.htm
A heart-stirring first contact experience with the Matthew Books. Be advised that it is a 2.5 Meg download (30 seconds on broadband, up to 15 minutes with a 56K modem) and you may need to also download a Shockwave plug-in to run this animation on your computer. But it is really worth seeing and recommending to all.
CONTENTS
1. History's Greatest Disaster Has Begun
2. Global warming will plunge Britain into new ice age 'within decades'
3. Glaciers and Sea Ice Endangered by Rising Temperatures
4. Kerry Forward - Veteran environmental leader gives Kerry the green light
5. As avian flu spreads, deaths of migratory birds worry health officials
6. Bush Giving Oil Industry the Largest Remaining Wilderness Areas
7. Why Aren't We Afraid of Our Food?
8. Review of John Kaminski radio talk & What Matters to Me is Love's Revolution
See also:
Brazil's president to seek French, UN backing for global hunger fund (Jan 30)
http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp_world/view/68703/1/.html
GENEVA: Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva was due to meet UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan and President Jacques Chirac of France in Geneva to rally support for a global fund against hunger. Chile's President Ricardo Lagos was also due to join the trio for the meeting, which is aimed at pressing forward with a proposal put forward by Lula to the summit of G8 industrialised countries in Evian, France, last year, diplomats said. At the time Lula suggested a fund which might be financed by a tax on arms deals, or a levy on poor countries' debt repayments which would be paid by industrialised countries. On Thursday, Lula revived the idea of a tax on global business transactions shortly after an investment meeting in Geneva with top corporations, saying there were several options for a levy. "I am not sure we would have the courage to do it," Lula admitted during a press conference. "The fight against poverty is a moral obligation for those who govern all the countries in the world," the Brazilian president and son of a poor farming family said. Lula's drive has gained broader international support in recent months. "What President Lula has done in raising the issue of world hunger to the top of the world's agenda is one of the most important things that happened in the world last year," said James Morris, executive director of the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO). Chirac threw his weight behind Lula's suggestion of a tax at the G8 summit last June saying that he backed the examination of a tax, and recently condemned persistent hunger and the "misery and scourges that go with it". The United Nations secretary general also urged the international community to refocus on development issues during the World Economic Forum last week. Annan urged efforts to "rebuild our system of collective security and thus prevent the world from sliding back into brute competition based on the laws of the jungle."
Behind the mask. The real face of corporate social responsibility (Jan 21)
http://www.christian-aid.org.uk/indepth/0401csr/index.htm
The image of multinational companies working hard to make the world a better place is often just that - an image, says a new report from Christian Aid. What's needed are new laws to make businesses responsible for protecting human rights and the environment wherever they work.
Compassion for a homeless man
http://www.dukenews.duke.edu/news/campaign_compassion.html
Saturday night, I found myself in a parking garage with Dennis Kucinich and a sleeping homeless man. This is our story......
Girl 'sees' broken bones (Jan 29)
http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,5-2004040384,00.html
(...) Natasha is amazing. I was very sceptical at first but after just a few minutes she focused on my major fractures. I was very impressed. It was as though she was looking at X-rays of me. Only my orthopaedic consultant could have known more.
Thousands flee war in Sudan (Jan 30)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,1134613,00.html
Refugees seek shelter in desert across border with Chad as bombing raids and militias target separatist rebels - Up to 18,000 refugees were trying to find shelter in the open desert just inside the border with Chad yesterday after Sudanese government aircraft bombed several targets in a fierce flare-up of an unexpected new war in Sudan's vast western province of Darfur. UN officials and other aid workers have warned of a huge humanitarian emergency with as many as 600,000 people made homeless by fighting inside the territory. Unlike the refugees who escaped into Chad, they remain out of reach of international help. Refugees and aid workers report frequent bombing raids by Sudanese government planes round the town of Tine which straddles the border, as well as mass killings and hut burnings by armed pro-government horsemen in other parts of Darfur.
U.N. Says World Unemployment Reached Record High (January 23)
http://www.thebostonchannel.com/employment/2787741/detail.html
GENEVA -- The United Nations labor agency says a record 186 million people around the world are unemployed, and hundreds of millions more have jobs that pay so little they can barely survive. The International Labor Organization says an extra 500,000 people were added to the unemployment totals in the last year. It cites factors like the SARS outbreak in Asia and Canada, the war in Iraq and a slump in global tourism due to terror fears. In its annual Global Employment Trends report the agency says a slight economic recovery in 2003 had little effect on the number of jobless. The number of people out of work in 2003 reached 6.2 percent of the total global labor force.
Are you suffering from the phenomenon called Electrosmog?
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/emf-omega-news/
We provide you with the latest information about dangers through electropollution with describing of personal experiences, science research, EHS sufferers, protection of environment, actions.
Tricky computer virus causes global epidemic (Jan 27)
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99994606
A computer virus disguised as a text file attached to a technical email has spread to thousands of computer systems worldwide since appearing on Monday. The speed of its spread makes the virus - variously dubbed MyDoom, Novarg and MiMail.R - one of the fastest moving ever seen. UK-based email filtering firm MessageLabs says it saw 1.2 million copies pass through its systems between 1300 GMT Monday and 0900 GMT on Tuesday. The deluge of extra email created by the virus caused disruption to some parts of the internet on Monday evening, according to US internet monitoring firm Keynote Systems. MyDoom arrives in the guise of a text file attached to an email alert. The mail contains one of a number of messages encouraging the user to open the attachment. One says: "The message cannot be represented in 7-bit ASCII encoding and has been sent as a binary attachment." Another warns: "Mail transaction failed. Partial message is available." Experts say even computer users who are wary of opening suspicious attachments may have been duped by the technical packaging of the virus.
Mac Friends: A Visit from the FBI (Jan 28)
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/55/35175.html
(...) More and more, however, the viruses circulating on the Internet are quite purposeful in design. The goal is to install a Trojan on the unsuspecting user's machine that will then allow the bad guy to control the machine from afar, turning it into a Zombie machine under the control of another. All too often, this tactic is successful. Hundreds of thousands if not millions of machines are "owned" by someone other that the user sitting in front of the keyboard and monitor. (...) Dave had some surprises up his sleeve as well. You'll remember that I said he was using a ThinkPad (running Windows!). I asked him about that, and he told us that many of the computer security folks back at FBI HQ use Macs running OS X, since those machines can do just about anything: run software for Mac, Unix, or Windows, using either a GUI or the command line. And they're secure out of the box. CLIP
Recommended by Larry Morningstar mana8@mac.com>
1.
From: http://www.unknowncountry.com/journal/?id=147
History's Greatest Disaster Has Begun
January 27, 2004
The greatest environmental catastrophe in recorded history is now unfolding. The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute has announced that the North Atlantic Oscillation is failing, and, along with it, the Gulf Stream. The Institute has observed "the largest and most dramatic oceanic change ever measured in the era of modern instruments," in an analysis of Atlantic ocean currents from pole to pole. Woods Hole has found that salinity levels are changing in ways that they have changed in the past leading to periods of abrupt climate change. Polar waters are becoming far less saline, meaning that the "heat pump" effect that draws warm water north is failing.
Dr Ruth Curry, the study's lead scientist, says: "This has the potential to change the circulation of the ocean significantly in our lifetime. Northern Europe will likely experience a significant cooling."
The director of Woods Hole, Robert Gagosian, said: "We may be approaching a threshold that would shut down [the Gulf Stream] and cause abrupt climate changes."
Last summer, Unknowncountry.com reported an ominous sign that the North Atlantic Current was weakening, when cold northern water suddenly appeared along US coastlines as far south as Florida. This suggested that the Gulf Stream had moved farther offshore than normal, which would happen if it weakened and was not flowing north normally.
The extremes of heat and cold that the northern hemisphere has experienced over the past twelve months may be further signs of this effect. Extraordinary heat killed at least 20,000 people in Europe last summer, and extreme cold in north America this winter has been responsible for at least 35 deaths. World weather patterns have become extremely bizarre recently, exemplified by blocks of ice falling from the sky in regions as diverse as New Zealand, Spain and the American South and, within the past few months, tornadoes in Wales and, just yesterday, on Oahu in the Hawaiian Islands.
From now on, there is an immediate potential for abrupt climate change. The key factor in the sudden climate change scenario described in the Coming Global Superstorm and many other places is the collapse of the system of currents that equalizes heat and cold over the surface of the earth.
It is likely that climate change will take place over a single season, as the fossil record tells us. It will not be a protracted process, unfolding over hundreds or even tens of years. It will begin with an outburst of violent weather unlike anything recorded in the historical era, and then be followed by years of climactic turmoil. At some point, the climate will either return to the interglacial state it is in now, or we will slip into another ice age, but this is likely to be hundreds of years into the period of turmoil.
Mankind, for the foreseeable future, will experience the full effects of the turmoil and disaster caused by sudden climate change.
This process is going to devastate the northern hemisphere, dramatically altering growing seasons in the United States, Canada and Europe, shortening them, making them entirely unviable in northern areas, and crippling many regions such as the central-western US, with drought so intractable that it will likely result in large scale population movement out of these areas.
This unfortunate situation is in part the result of natural climactic cycling, but it has been sped up by human emissions of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere, and the process could have been controlled by considered worldwide attention to controlling those emissions. Proper leadership in the developed countries could have prevented this catastrophe, and without significant disruption to business activities or the lives of individuals.
Instead, nothing useful has been done, and now we will go through a significant stage of climatic upheaval that will be accompanied by the death and impoverishment of millions of the best educated and most productive people on earth. This will result in a vast diminishment of mankind and the likely collapse of many of the structures of government, business and finance that we depend upon to insure our safety, prosperity and freedom.
Even if a tremendous reduction in greenhouse gas emissions were achieved within a year, the process would still continue. What we will be able to do, if human society remains organized at a high enough level to achieve this, is to make a slide into another ice age somewhat less likely, and hasten the return of a more acceptable climate.
Questions will be asked: why has this happened? Who is responsible? Among Americans, the answer is clear: political leaders and media personalities have, at the behest of corporate sponsors who feel threatened by environmental controls, lied to the public about the problem, promoting the fallacy that the situation was a matter for debate when, in fact, nature had already cast the die.
Worldwide, various governmental and private entities have misused the threat of environmental disaster as a means of imposing a level of planning on all human activities that many found unacceptable.
In fact, government, the corporate world and environmental groups should all have faced the real and imminent problems in a clear-headed and practical manner, instead of viewing them through the crazy lens of ideology, be it left or right. Instead, ideology has been placed above need in virtually every case, with the result that the worst possible situation has become true: human activities in the form of greenhouse gas emissions have been allowed to exacerbate a natural cycle, with results that promise to be devastating beyond imagination.
It is ironic indeed that the Day After Tomorrow, the film related to the Coming Global Superstorm, will be released in May of 2004, which is likely to be the first month in the past ten thousand years at least that the extreme weather conditions described in that book could actually occur.
At present, only a few paleoclimatologists will admit to the actual violence that the fossil record reveals, and there remain questions about the degree to which the debris from these extremely violent weather events of the distant past actually relates to sudden climate change.
For example, there have been questions surrounding the cause of the quick-freezing of mammoths, whose remains have been periodically found in Alaska and Siberia, often with still undigested food in their mouths and stomachs. It has been claimed that no weather-related mechanism could possibly cause this, and therefore that the mammoths must have fallen into sinkholes and frozen there.
Recently, however, the discovery of quick-frozen plants embedded in glaciers in Peru has revealed the fact that very extreme weather changes to take place on this earth, and result in long-term effects. For example, plants that froze in the Peruvian Andes in a matter of minute ten thousand years ago are only just now being disgorged by glaciers. In other words, plants that were living in a moderate climate were plunged, over what appears to have been the course of just a few hours or even minutes, into extreme cold that held them in its grip for ten thousand years.
All mankind is now threatened by such a danger. Where and when it will strike, or if it will unfold with such super-violence at all is unknown. But the greedy and the foolish among our leadership have released the bull from the paddock, and we are not likely to see it returned anytime soon.
Two questions remain: what can we do and what are the warning signs of sudden climate change?
The primary warning sign has always been the failure of ocean currents, and Woods Hole is telling us that this is happening now. On a more detailed, day-to-day basis, any excursion of warm tropical air into far northern latitudes, from now on, is apt to trigger ferocious storms, and the farther that air penetrates, and the warmer and more humid it is, the more violent the consequences will be.
We will be making certain changes to our Quickwa tch on this website to reflect the changing situation. For example, we are going to expand the number of points from which we pick up air temperature measurements and drop the ocean current measures and observations, except for the Gulf Stream, as they have already been triggered and will not change anytime soon. We will be watching for the dissolution of the Gulf Stream. If this should happen between May and October, the immediate weather effects will stun the world. No matter when it takes place, and it is now certain that it will, it will lead in a single season to an entirely new climate of a kind that is far less viable for us than the one we have known.
Also on our Quickwatch page is an article that contains a series of simple steps that world leaders should have been aggressively asking individuals to take for the past ten years. Instead, they remained mired down in their various political and ideological issues, either claiming that there was no significant environmental problem or that there was a huge problem that could only be solved by massive government intervention, imposing draconian new levels of planning on society at every level, with special emphasis on corporate enterprise and economic development.
However, the fact remains that a great deal can be done:
To reduce individual emissions dramatically, only a few minor lifestyle changes are needed: Replace the 20-year-old fridge with an energy-saver model. CO2 savings = 3,000 pounds. Send out one fewer 30-gallon bags of garbage per week. CO2 savings = 300 pounds. Leave the car at home two days per week. CO2 savings = 1,590 pounds. Recycle cans, bottles, plastic, cardboard and newspapers. CO2 savings = 850 pounds. Switch from standard light bulbs to fluorescents. CO2 savings = 1,000 pounds. Replace the current shower head with a low-flow model. CO2 savings = 300 pounds. Turn the thermostat down two degrees for one year. CO2 savings = 500 pounds. Cut vehicle fuel use by 10 gallons in 2003. CO2 savings = 200 pounds. Switch from hot to warm or cold water for laundry. CO2 savings = 600 pounds.
If these steps were taken by just 20% of U.S., Japanese, Canadian and European inhabitants, world CO2 emission levels would drop to a point that the human factor would be vastly reduced as a source of global warming, and the upheaval that we now face would be reduced in its duration and effect, perhaps to the point that the world as we know it might be restored, not in our lifetimes, but with luck in those of our children.
---
See also:
CLIMATE COLLAPSE: The Pentagon's Weather Nightmare (Jan 26)
http://www.fortune.com/fortune/print/0,15935,582584,00.html
The climate could change radically, and fast. That would be the mother of all national security issues. Global warming may be bad news for future generations, but let's face it, most of us spend as little time worrying about it as we did about al Qaeda before 9/11. Like the terrorists, though, the seemingly remote climate risk may hit home sooner and harder than we ever imagined. In fact, the prospect has become so real that the Pentagon's strategic planners are grappling with it. The threat that has riveted their attention is this: Global warming, rather than causing gradual, centuries-spanning change, may be pushing the climate to a tipping point. Growing evidence suggests the ocean-atmosphere system that controls the world's climate can lurch from one state to another in less than a decadelike a canoe that's gradually tilted until suddenly it flips over. Scientists don't know how close the system is to a critical threshold. But abrupt climate change may well occur in the not-too-distant future. If it does, the need to rapidly adapt may overwhelm many societiesthereby upsetting the geopolitical balance of power. Though triggered by warming, such change would probably cause cooling in the Northern Hemisphere, leading to longer, harsher winters in much of the U.S. and Europe. Worse, it would cause massive droughts, turning farmland to dust bowls and forests to ashes. Picture last fall's California wildfires as a regular thing. Or imagine similar disasters destabilizing nuclear powers such as Pakistan or Russiait's easy to see why the Pentagon has become interested in abrupt climate change. (...) The result is an unclassified report, completed late last year, that the Pentagon has agreed to share with FORTUNE. It doesn't pretend to be a forecast. Rather, it sketches a dramatic but plausible scenario to help planners think about coping strategies. Here is an abridged version: A total shutdown of the ocean conveyor might lead to a big chill like the Younger Dryas, when icebergs appeared as far south as the coast of Portugal. Or the conveyor might only temporarily slow down, potentially causing an era like the "Little Ice Age," a time of hard winters, violent storms, and droughts between 1300 and 1850. That period's weather extremes caused horrific famines, but it was mild compared with the Younger Dryas. For planning purposes, it makes sense to focus on a midrange case of abrupt change. A century of cold, dry, windy weather across the Northern Hemisphere that suddenly came on 8,200 years ago fits the billits severity fell between that of the Younger Dryas and the Little Ice Age. The event is thought to have been triggered by a conveyor collapse after a time of rising temperatures not unlike today's global warming. Suppose it recurred, beginning in 2010. Here are some of the things that might happen by 2020: CLIP - CERTAINLY WORTH A READ...
Government begins work on CO2 storage project at Teapot Dome (Jan 27)
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/archive/2004/01/27/national0145EST0422.DTL
The government is trying to bury something at its Teapot Dome oil field again. Not secret oil leases, as it did during an infamous scandal of the 1920s, but carbon dioxide -- lots of it. In hopes of developing a process that could slow global warming, the Energy Department wants to inject the greenhouse gas underground into depleted oil reservoirs after converting it into a liquid form. The Teapot Dome project, now in the planning stages, could be one of the world's largest test sites for the method. It would store CO2 from a natural gas processing plant more than 300 miles away beneath the 10,000-acre oil field in central Wyoming.
2.
OMINOUS WARNING TO BE TAKEN VERY, VERY SERIOUSLY! ADD TO THIS THE SPECTER OF GLOBAL FAMINE DUE TO DECREASING GLOBAL OIL PRODUCTION WITHIN 8 YEARS AND YOU HAVE A RECIPE FOR CALAMITIES BEYOND ANYTHING THIS CIVILIZATION HAS EVER EXPERIENCED. I'D SAY IT IS HIGH TIME WE BOOT THE FOSSIL FUELS PROFITEERS OUT OF ALL GOVERNMENTS WORLDWIDE AND BRING IN A NEW LEADERSHIP IN SYNCH WITH THE REAL CHALLENGES OF THIS ERA. TIME ALSO TO DO WHATEVER IT TAKES TO GET READY TO WELCOME THE ASSISTANCE OFFERED BY CIVILIZATIONS FROM OUTER SPACE. UNLESS WE ASK AND MAKE SURE NO ONE SHOOT AT THEM, THEY WON'T COME, AT LEAST NOT IN AN OFFICIAL MANNER. OR THEN PERHAPS ASCENDING TO THE NEXT DIMENSIONAL REALM IS OUR NEXT BEST OPTION...
Forwarded by "Mark Graffis" mgraffis@vitelcom.net>
From: http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/environment/story.jsp?story=484490
Global warming will plunge Britain into new ice age 'within decades'
By Geoffrey Lean, Environment Editor
25 January 2004
Britain is likely to be plunged into an ice age within our lifetime by global warming, new research suggests.
A study, which is being taken seriously by top government scientists, has uncovered a change "of remarkable amplitude" in the circulation of the waters of the North Atlantic.
Similar events in pre-history are known to have caused sudden "flips" of the climate, bringing ice ages to northern Europe within a few decades. The development - described as "the largest and most dramatic oceanic change ever measured in the era of modern instruments", by the US Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, which led the research - threatens to turn off the Gulf Stream, which keeps Europe's weather mild.
If that happens, Britain and northern Europe are expected to switch abruptly to the climate of Labrador - which is on the same latitude - bringing a nightmare scenario where farmland turns to tundra and winter temperatures drop below -20C. The much-heralded cold snap predicted for the coming week would seem balmy by comparison.
A report by the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme in Sweden - launched by Nobel prize-winner Professor Paul Crutzen and other top scientists - warned last week that pollution threatened to "trigger changes with catastrophic consequences" like these.
Scientists have long expected that global warming could, paradoxically, cause a devastating cooling in Europe by disrupting the Gulf Stream, which brings as much heat to Britain in winter as the sun does: the US National Academy of Sciences has even described such abrupt, dramatic changes as "likely". But until now it has been thought that this would be at least a century away.
The new research, by scientists at the Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Acquaculture Science at Lowestoft and Canada's Bedford Institute of Oceanography, as well as Woods Hole, indicates that this may already be beginning to happen.
Dr Ruth Curry, the study's lead scientist, says: "This has the potential to change the circulation of the ocean significantly in our lifetime. Northern Europe will likely experience a significant cooling."
Robert Gagosian, the director of Woods Hole, considered one of the world's leading oceanographic institutes, said: "We may be approaching a threshold that would shut down [the Gulf Stream] and cause abrupt climate changes. "Even as the earth as a whole continues to warm gradually, large regions may experience a precipitous and disruptive shift into colder climates." The scientists, who studied the composition of the waters of the Atlantic from Greenland to Tierra del Fuego, found that they have become "very much" saltier in the tropics and subtropics and "very much" fresher towards the poles over the past 50 years.
This is alarming because the Gulf Stream is driven by cold, very salty water sinking in the North Atlantic. This pulls warm surface waters northwards, forming the current.
The change is described as the "fingerprint" of global warming. As the world heats up, more water evaporates from the tropics and falls as rain in temperate and polar regions, making the warm waters saltier and the cold ones fresher. Melting polar ice adds more fresh water.
Ominously, the trend has accelerated since 1990, during which time the 10 hottest years on record have occurred. Many studies have shown that similar changes in the waters of the North Atlantic in geological time have often plunged Europe into an ice age, sometimes bringing the change in as little as a decade.
The National Academy of Sciences says that the jump occurs in the same way as "the slowly increasing pressure of a finger eventually flips a switch and turns on a light". Once the switch has occurred the new, hostile climate, lasts for decades at least, and possibly centuries.
When the Gulf Stream abruptly turned off about 12,700 years ago, it brought about a 1,300-year cold period, known as the Younger Dryas. This froze Britain in continuous permafrost, drove summer temperatures down to 10C and winter ones to -20C, and brought icebergs as far south as Portugal. Europe could not sustain anything like its present population. Droughts struck across the globe, including in Asia, Africa and the American west, as the disruption of the Gulf Stream affected currents worldwide.
Some scientists say that this is the "worst-case scenario" and that the cooling may be less dramatic, with the world's climate "flickering" between colder and warmer states for several decades. But they add that, in practice, this would be almost as catastrophic for agriculture and civilisation.
3.
From: http://www.enn.com/direct/display-release.asp?objid=D1D1366D000000FA447EB18994BDD88F
Also from: http://truthout.org/docs_04/012804G.shtml
Glaciers and Sea Ice Endangered by Rising Temperatures
By Janet Larsen
The Earth Policy Institute
27 January 2004
By 2020, the snows of Kilimanjaro may exist only in old photographs. The glaciers in Montana's Glacier National Park could disappear by 2030. And by mid-century, the Arctic Sea may be completely ice-free during summertime. As the earth's temperature has risen in recent decades, the earth's ice cover has begun to melt. And that melting is accelerating.
In both 2002 and 2003, the Northern Hemisphere registered record-low sea ice cover. New satellite data show the Arctic region warming more during the 1990s than during the 1980s, with Arctic Sea ice now melting by up to 15 percent per decade. The long-sought Northwest Passage, a dream of early explorers, could become our nightmare. The loss of Arctic Sea ice could alter ocean circulation patterns and trigger changes in global climate patterns.
On the opposite end of the globe, Southern Ocean sea ice floating near Antarctica has shrunk by some 20 percent since 1950. This unprecedented melting of sea ice corroborates records showing that the regional air temperature has increased by 2.5 degrees Celsius (4.5 degrees Fahrenheit) since 1950.
Antarctic ice shelves that existed for thousands of years are crumbling. One of the world's largest icebergs, named B-15, that measured near 10,000 square kilometers (4,000 square miles) or half the size of New Jersey, calved off the Ross Ice Shelf in March 2000. In May 2002, the shelf lost another section measuring 31 kilometers (19 miles) wide and 200 kilometers (124 miles) long.
Elsewhere on Antarctica, the Larsen Ice Shelf has largely disintegrated within the last decade, shrinking to 40 percent of its previously stable size. Following the break-off of the Larsen A section in 1995 and the collapse of Larsen B in early 2002, melting of the nearby land-based glaciers that the ice shelves once supported has more than doubled.
Unlike the melting of sea ice or the floating ice shelves along coasts, the melting of ice on land raises sea level. Recent studies showing the worldwide acceleration of glacier melting indicate that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's estimate for sea level rise this century?ranging from 0.1 meters to 0.9 meters?will need to be revised upwards. (See http://www.earth-policy.org/Updates/Update32_data.htm for selected examples of ice melt from around the world.)
On Greenland, an ice-covered island three times the size of Texas, once-stable glaciers are now melting at a quickening rate. The Jakobshavn Glacier on the island's southwest coast, which is one of the major drainage outlets from the interior ice sheet, is now thinning four times faster than during most of the twentieth century. Each year Greenland loses some 51 cubic kilometers of ice, enough to annually raise sea level 0.13 millimeters. Were Greenland's entire ice sheet to melt, global sea level could rise by a startling 7 meters (23 feet), inundating most of the world's coastal cities.
The Himalayas contain the world's third largest ice mass after Antarctica and Greenland. Most Himalayan glaciers have been thinning and retreating over the past 30 years, with losses accelerating to alarming levels in the past decade. On Mount Everest, the glacier that ended at the historic base camp of Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay, the first humans to reach the summit, has retreated 5 kilometers (3 miles) since their 1953 ascent. Glaciers in Bhutan are retreating at an average rate of 30-40 meters a year. A similar situation is found in Nepal.
As the glaciers melt they are rapidly filling glacial lakes, creating a flood risk. An international team of scientists has warned that with current melt rates, at least 44 glacial lakes in the Himalayas could burst their banks in as little as five years.
Glaciers themselves store vast quantities of water. More than half of the world's population relies on water that originates in mountains, coming from rainfall runoff or ice melt. In some areas glaciers help sustain a constant water supply; in others, meltwater from glaciers is a primary water source during the dry season. In the short term, accelerated melting means that more water feeds rivers. Yet as glaciers disappear, dry season river flow declines.
The Himalayan glaciers feed the seven major rivers of Asia?the Ganges, Indus, Brahmaputra, Salween, Mekong, Yangtze, and Huang He (Yellow)?and thus contribute to the year-round water supply of a vast population. In India alone, some 500 million people, including those in New Delhi and Calcutta, depend on glacier meltwater that feeds into the Ganges River system. Glaciers in Central Asia's Tien Shan Mountains have shrunk by nearly 30 percent between 1955 and 1990. In arid western China, shrinking glaciers account for at least 10 percent of freshwater supplies.
The largest aggregation of tropical glaciers is in the northern Andes. The retreat of the Qori Kalis Glacier on the west side of the Quelccaya Ice Cap that stretches across Peru has accelerated to 155 meters a year between 1998 and 2000?three times faster than during the previous three-year period. The entire ice cap could vanish over the next two decades.
The Antizana Glacier, which provides Quito, Ecuador, with almost half its water, has retreated more than 90 meters over the last eight years. The Chacaltaya Glacier near La Paz, Bolivia, melted to 7 percent of its 1940s volume by 1998. It could disappear entirely by the end of this decade, depriving the 1.5 million people in La Paz and the nearby city of Alto of an important source of water and power.
Africa's glaciers are also disappearing. Across the continent, mountain glaciers have shrunk to one third their size over the twentieth century. On Kenya's Kilimanjaro, ice cover has shrunk by more than 33 percent since 1989. By 2020 it could be completely gone.
In Western Europe, glacial area has shrunk by up to 40 percent and glacial volume by more than half since 1850. If temperatures continue to rise at recent rates, major sections of glaciers covering the Alps and the French and Spanish Pyrenees could be gone in the next few decades. During the record-high temperature summer of 2003, some Swiss glaciers retreated by an unprecedented 150 meters. The United Nations Environment Programme is warning that for this region long associated with ice and snow, warming temperatures signify the demise of a popular ski industry, not to mention a cultural identity.
Boundaries around Banff, Yoho, and Jasper National Parks in the Canadian Rockies cannot stop the melting of the glaciers there. Glacier National Park in Montana has lost over two thirds of its glaciers since 1850. If temperatures continue to rise, it may lose the remainder by 2030.
In just the past 30 years, the average temperature in Alaska climbed more than 3 degrees Celsius (5 degrees Fahrenheit)?easily four times the global increase. Glaciers in all of Alaska's 11 glaciated mountain ranges are shrinking. Since the mid-1990s, Alaskan glaciers have been thinning by 1.8 meters a year, more than three times as fast as during the preceding 40 years.
The global average temperature has climbed by 0.6 degrees Celsius (1 degree Fahrenheit) in the past 25 years. Over this time period, melting of sea ice and mountain glaciers has increased dramatically. During this century, global temperature may rise between 1.4 and 5.8 degrees Celsius, and melting will accelerate further. Just how much will depend in part on the energy policy choices made today.
4.
From: http://www.gristmagazine.com/soapbox/hayes012204.asp
Kerry Forward
Veteran environmental leader gives Kerry the green light
by Denis Hayes
22 Jan 2004
A mischievous grin spread across John Kerry's face last week as he was introducing Ted Kennedy, his fellow Massachusetts senator, to an Iowa crowd. It caught my eye because I hadn't seen Kerry smile for quite a while. "I'm now pleased to introduce," he said, "the real leader of the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party -- Ted Kennedy."
Without rancor, Kerry had popped the empty little balloon that had long been Howard Dean's biggest applause line. And I thought to myself, He's back.
As it turns out, Kerry had found his stride, and the results over the next few days were astonishing. Kerry was again inspiring, witty, bold, thoughtful, honest, and smart as hell. He again started connecting with all sorts of people at a gut level. (Kerry has carried the blue-collar vote, and the African-American vote, in every one of his races.) He was, in short, the guy I'd endorsed way back when he first announced his candidacy.
It had been a tough few months. Kerry went from crown prince to yesterday's news as a result of some early missteps. The talking heads were openly dismissive. Fair-weather friends started jumping ship.
Then Kerry made some decisive staff changes. He looked into his soul and started talking bluntly about why he was running. And with a textbook-perfect campaign, he came from far behind to win Iowa.
As I write this, everything is still volatile. Dean has a lot of money and zealous supporters. John Edwards ran a very good campaign in Iowa and showed unexpected cleverness in his vote-trading deal with Dennis Kucinich. Joe Lieberman has a solid block of votes that Kerry needs in places like Connecticut and Florida. Al Sharpton has targeted a vital block of votes on Super Tuesday. And a lot of old Clinton hands are firming up around Wesley Clark.
But that sort of volatility brings out Kerry's strengths. Kerry is always at his best in the closing days of a campaign -- and for the next several weeks, he is going to face the closing days of one campaign after another.
Kerry has been my friend for 35 years, and his wife Teresa a close friend for 15 years. I've campaigned for him. He's organized huge Earth Day events for me. We've dined and drank late, and I've stayed at his home. I've had the chance to assess Kerry's character over the years. What I'm trying to say is that I know this guy, and I trust him.
In 2004, the future of America very much depends upon defeating George W. Bush and electing someone with the capacity for greatness. When historians look back on this period, most of today's political feeding frenzies will have long since been forgotten. A few big issues -- truly presidential issues -- will be remembered.
These will certainly include:
Did America lead the world into a super-efficient, renewable-energy era, ending the oil stranglehold and putting the brake on climate change?
Did America lead a successful effort to guarantee a healthy environment as a fundamental right for everyone?
Did America mount a strong campaign to stop the global epidemic of extinction -- the most tragic collapse of biodiversity since the last time an asteroid hit the planet?
Did America elect a president whose judicial nominees preserved the Bill of Rights, respected the traditional separation of powers, and honored res judicata?
Any Democratic candidate will be better than George Bush on all these issues. But only Kerry can stand up and discuss each in depth without notes -- with a nuanced understanding of science and economics and diplomacy and philosophy -- and explain his decisions to the public in simple words that make sense.
No American public official has a stronger, more consistent record on strategic arms control, free speech, civil liberties, fair taxes, racial justice, strong schools, a sound Social Security system, and guaranteed health care than Kerry. And no one has been a stronger, more consistent champion of peace over the last three decades than this hero who was awarded three Purple Hearts. No one has a more legitimate claim to be the "Democratic wing of the Democratic Party."
And no constituency has more cause to rally to Kerry than environmentalists. With a remarkable 96 percent career environmental voting record (John Muir couldn't have topped that!), Kerry will be -- by far -- the strongest environmental president America has ever had.
Furthermore, Teresa Heinz Kerry -- who is fluent in five languages and won the 2003 Albert Schweitzer Gold Medal for her leadership on the environment, human rights, health care, childhood education, women's empowerment around the world, and the arts -- will be a wonderful first lady.
I have to confess disappointment in the movement to which I've devoted most of my adult years. Environmentalists have not delivered the support that Kerry has earned. Kerry has always been there when we needed him. Today, he needs us.
Kerry -- the only candidate who speaks of the environment in every single speech -- won in Iowa without the endorsement of a single national environmental group. Yet we are his core constituency. This would be like Jesse Jackson winning without the full-throated support of Black churches, or Gene McCarthy unseating Lyndon Johnson without thousands of anti-war activists slogging through the snow of New Hampshire.
Kerry now has momentum. He was closing the gap with Dean in New Hampshire before the Iowa caucuses, and some polls now show him leaping ahead. But he still faces hard battles. A wave of financial support and busloads of volunteers in the other primary states could put him over the top.
You will never have a chance to support a stronger environmentalist than Kerry for president of the United States. So please, go to JohnKerry.com. Organize a MeetUp. Order some yard signs. Check out his blog. Sign up as a volunteer. Give the campaign some money.
We have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to replace the worst environmental president in American history with the best. Seize it!
- - - - - - - - -
Denis Hayes was national coordinator of the first Earth Day in 1970. He now chairs the international Earth Day Network and is president of the Bullitt Foundation. This column reflects his personal views.
This piece reflects the opinion of its author and should not be taken to constitute an official endorsement by Grist Magazine, its staff, its board members, their massage therapists, or their personal trainers.
---
See also:
Kerry lands key environmental endorsement (25 Jan 2004)
http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20040125/NEWS08/40125020
League of Conservation Voters Endorses Kerry - The League of Conservation Voters has officially endorsed John Kerry for president, marking the first time in the organization's history that it has backed a candidate prior to the first primaries. Kerry, four-term Democratic senator from Massachusetts, has the best environmental voting record of the Democratic candidates, with an LCV score of 96 percent (Lieberman, whose supporters are reportedly frustrated with the decision, comes in second at 93 percent). LCV's board of directors has made unseating Bush a priority, and expressed hope that their early endorsement would raise the profile of environmental issues in the coming race. Kerry seems amenable to their plans: "I intend to put the environment front and center in this race because it is squarely in the center of our lives," he said at an LCV event in New Hampshire.
Skull & Bones: The Secret Society That Unites John Kerry and President Bush (Jan 22)
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/01/23/0445212
5.
From: http://www.iht.com/articles/126685.htm
As avian flu spreads, deaths of migratory birds worry health officials
Keith Bradsher NYT
January 27, 2004
THA SADET, Thailand Tucked among broad-leafed banana tree groves and emerald-green rice paddies in west-central Thailand, the bird sanctuary here is a jungle oasis where migratory ducks, cranes and other wildfowl can spend winters in safety after flying from as far as India and Siberia.
As the sun began to set on Monday, dozens of white cranes with black-bordered wings roosted in the palm trees at one edge of the park. But the park is a quieter place these days, as many birds have been dying of what Thai scientists suspect is the bird flu epidemic now racing across Asia.
World Health Organization officials say that migratory birds like the ones here have probably played a central role in spreading the disease, by producing infected droppings that dry up, turn to dust and are inhaled by other birds.
While chickens and other domesticated fowl succumb easily to avian influenza, migratory birds are hardier and can be infected with the disease for long periods and travel great distances while showing few ill effects. The wildfowl deaths here appear to be another ominous sign of the virulence of the epidemic that scientists face.
"Migratory birds are what carry the disease," said Bob Dietz, a WHO spokesman. "If they're dying, it's an awfully strong disease."
Pakistan announced on Monday that millions of chickens there had been infected with what Pakistani officials described as a mild strain of the influenza virus. Additional reports of large-scale chicken deaths from a mysterious illness have come from Laos, Myanmar, Bangladesh and Saudi Arabia.
South Korea, Japan, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand and Indonesia have previously confirmed cases of the deadly A (H5N1) influenza virus, while Taiwan and Pakistan have reported different, milder strains that do not appear to pose a threat to people.
Thailand announced on Monday that it had a third confirmed human case of avian influenza and that the illnesses of 10 more people, five of whom have died, were also suspected to be avian influenza. Cambodia said that two children were suspected to have the disease, while Vietnam is investigating more than a dozen human cases, and there have been reports of a mysterious viral outbreak in Bangladesh.
The medically documented cases so far appear to have resulted from birds' infecting people, but the real fear is that the disease might evolve into a form that can pass easily from person to person, said Dr. Bjorn Melgaard, the WHO's chief representative here.
Workers in most of the countries with confirmed outbreaks are culling millions of chickens in the hope of stopping the outbreak. But with so many countries reporting cases, and with migratory birds and possibly chicken traders carrying the disease ever farther, UN officials have warned that it will not be easy to curb the epidemic.
Just wiping out the disease in Thailand "will take some time," said Hans Wagner, a United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization official. "We know that the wild birds, and particularly the waterfowl, ducks, are the natural reservoir for the virus," he added.
Dr. Yeoh Eng-kiong, Hong Kong's secretary of health, welfare and food, said on Monday that he had asked officials there to step up the testing of migratory birds after evidence that they were responsible for the outbreak. A government agricultural worker there discovered last week a dead peregrine falcon that had been carrying the virus.
The outbreak scares health officials because if a person with human influenza becomes infected with the avian version, the viruses may swap genetic material. That could produce a virus that is easily transmitted from person to person..
Previous flu pandemics are believed to have started in birds.
Dick Thompson, a WHO spokesman in Geneva, said that the organization was investigating reports that the avian influenza outbreak started last April, which could be an encouraging sign that it has not yet adapted to infect people readily. He declined to say what country produced the earliest reports.
The big mystery remains where the migratory birds became infected. Although China denies having had any bird flu cases, many signs point to southern China, where there have been periodic reports in recent weeks of large-scale deaths among ducks.
Seven of the 12 countries bordering China or just off its shores have reported bird flu. Two Hong Kong residents who visited their ancestral hometown in southern China early last year fell ill with avian influenza upon their return.
The dead peregrine falcon was found last week near the mainland Chinese border, and there have been a half dozen discoveries of A (H5N1) virus in one or more wild or domesticated birds in Hong Kong in the last seven years.
---
See also:
Asia Races To Ward Off Human Outbreak Of Bird Flu (Jan 30)
http://www.quicken.com/investments/news_center/story/?story=NewsStory/dowJones/20040130/ON200401300037000023.var&column=P0DFP
BANGKOK [AP]--China has ordered its officials to act quickly and honestly in telling people about the outbreak of bird flu, while Taiwan has instructed schools to send home any students with fevers as Asian countries scramble Friday to fend off a human outbreak of the disease. But as nations culled tens of millions of chickens to curb the illness's spread, the World Health Organization warned that the disease could infect workers killing the birds unless they use masks, gloves and other protection. Indonesia, which has for days insisted a large-scale slaughter was not necessary, has reversed that decision and ordered a mandatory mass cull of chickens in infected areas. It warned the outbreak could cost nearly US$1 billion in losses and leave over a million people unemployed. A senior official in Vietnam - where authorities have reported 8 deaths from the illness - said a nationwide cull of all poultry may be needed to curb the disease's spread. CLIP
Asia's bird flu cull questioned as unsafe, unfair (Jan 30)
http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp_asiapacific/view/68704/1/.html
BANGKOK: Asia's main weapon against the bird flu epidemic, a cull of more than 25 million chickens in 10 affected nations, is facing questions over whether it was being carried out safely and fairly.
6.
From: http://www.nrdc.org/media/default.asp#0122arctic
Bush Administration Plan to Give Western Arctic to Oil Industry Will Industrialize Largest Remaining Wilderness Area in Nation
Natural Resources Defense Council
Press Release
22 January 2004
NRDC Says America Cannot Drill its Way to Oil Independence; Calls for Increasing Auto Fuel Efficiency Instead of Destroying Wilderness
WASHINGTON (January 22, 2004) -- The Bureau of Land Management's plan announced today to open the 9-million acre Northwest Planning Area of the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska (NPR-A) to oil development will produce only a modest amount of oil and ruin an area with unique cultural and wilderness values, according to NRDC (the Natural Resources Defense Council).
"It makes no sense to industrialize this incomparable wilderness area when there's only about six month's worth of economically recoverable oil in the entire NPR-A, and it would take at least 10 years to get it to market," said Charles Clusen, Alaska Project director at NRDC. "The United States has only 3 percent of the world's proven oil reserves and we use 25 percent of the world's produced oil. We can't drill our way to oil independence. We have to wean ourselves off oil."
The U.S. Geological Survey estimates that at $25 a barrel, there is likely only 3.7 billion barrels of economically recoverable oil in the entire 23.5-million-acre NPR-A. Americans currently use 7.2 billion barrels a year. U.S. crude oil prices have averaged $24 a barrel over the last five years.
Increasing the fuel efficiency of cars and trucks to 40 miles per gallon by 2012 and to 55 mph by 2020 would, by 2030, save 10 times the amount of oil that could be pumped from the entire National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska.
The NPR-A's Northwest Planning Area contains some of the most superlative natural resources in the entire circumpolar Arctic region, including:
Wetlands with high-density waterbird nesting and molting habitat for threatened Steller's, spectacled eiders, rare yellow-billed loons, and much of the world's population of the prized pacific black brant; Habitat for the 430,000-strong Western Arctic caribou herd, Alaska's largest; Polar bear denning habitat and grizzly bear feeding areas; Marine mammal habitat for beluga and bowhead whales and spotted seals; Invaluable habitat for anadromous fish and nesting peregrine falcons in the interior coastal plain; and Subsistence resources for the Inupiat and other Alaskan natives.
CLIP - Read the rest at http://www.nrdc.org/media/default.asp#0122arctic
7.
AH... IF EVERYONE HAD A "wide-awake and engaged" CONSCIENCE AS JACKIE, THE WORLD WOULD BE SO MUCH BETTER...
From: "Jackie Alan Giuliano, Ph.D." jackie@deepteaching.com>
Subject: Why Aren't We Afraid of Our Food?
Date: 23 Jan 2004
Healing Our World: Weekly Comment
By Jackie Alan Giuliano, Ph.D.
Why Aren't We Afraid of Our Food?
"The terrible tyranny of the majority..."
-- Ray Bradbury, "Fahrenheit 451"
It is sad, really sad. When it comes right down to it, our leaders are not solely responsible for taking us down the path towards destruction. It is actually just everyday people. People who are afraid to speak their minds, unwilling to hold each other accountable for their actions, resistant to saying when something is right and something is wrong, and who are so willing to rationalize their every poor choice.
And yet, there is such a thing as right and wrong. The majority of people are just so cut off from their hearts, their spirits, and their guts that they don't know how to recognize right and truth any longer.
Every time people succumb to the mindless tyranny of the Saturday morning cartoon that demands they buy the action figure set for their child; every time we stand in line at 5 am to get that item; every time we drive by a homeless person sleeping in a doorway; every time parents let a baby cry itself to sleep, eventually passing out from fear and exhaustion, so they can get it to sleep through the night faster - we diminish ourselves as human beings.
The latest crises in our food supply are revealing much about the problems with the majority in America. A new Gallup survey concluded that most Americans are not concerned about the recent mad cow scare. Conducted during the first week of January 2004 after the first U.S. case of mad cow disease was discovered in a cow in Washington State, the nationwide survey of 1,000 adults showed that only one in three Americans thought the mad cow situation was a "major problem" or "crisis."
In the same survey, only one in six people expressed worry that they or their families might become victims of the disease caused by mad cow infected animals. An incredible two-thirds of the Americans polled - sixty-five percent - said the situation isn't worrisome. Fifty-three percent said it was a "minor problem" and 12 percent said it was "not a problem at all." Only six percent said the situation was a "crisis" in the U.S.
While the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) claims that all is well, many organizations and scientists say that the problem is much more serious. Most cattle slaughtered for food are killed when they are young. It is unknown how many of them could have the brain-destroying disease, since it has a long incubation period, and they are slaughtered long before any symptoms show.
Mad cow disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy, eats holes in the brains of cattle and is incurable. Humans have been known to develop a related brain-wasting illness, variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, from consuming contaminated beef products. Over 300 people have died from this disease, most in Great Britain, which had a mad cow epidemic in the 1980s and 1990s.
The Hilltop Inn in Evansville, Indiana, is still serving their deep-fried, egg-battered, cow brain sandwich.
It is ridiculous to believe that only one cow out of the millions processed every year in the United States has the disease. Since only a fraction of one percent of all cows slaughtered are ever tested, the fact that one turned up suggests that there are many more out there.
It is also a fact that the slaughterhouse system has been broken since its creation, resulting in the deaths of at least 7,000 people a year from bacteria-tainted meat from the filthy conditions.
Land animals are not the only ones that are a cause for concern. Around the same time the Gallup survey was taken, a major study was released saying that farm-raised salmon shouldn't be eaten more than once a month because the fish contain long-lived industrial chemicals that increase the risk of cancer. Among the chemicals present in the fish are PCBs, dioxins, and a number of banned pesticides.
The pelleted food used to feed the farmed salmon is suspected as a source of these contaminants.
The study, "Global Assessment of Organic Contaminants in Farmed Salmon," published in the journal "Science," also said that the risk of eating the contaminated fish detracts from the benefits that some claim accompany the eating of fish.
Of course, the government agencies responsible for promoting the health benefits to the heart of the omega-3 fatty acids in fish are the same agencies involved in promoting the sale of fish. Otherwise, they might reveal to the general public what those of us who don't eat any animal flesh have known for years: that simple flax seeds contain plenty of the beneficial omega-3 fatty acids. Flax seed oil has been available for years and is taken by millions of vegetarians and vegans every day.
The only rational explanation I can think of for this mass ignorance must be that we are profoundly disconnected from the natural world, the cycles of life, and the rhythms of nature. Abusing our environment, ignoring real dangers, and ignoring the cries of pain of our neighbors is easy if you don't feel a connection to the world.
There is a recklessness in the way so many people, whether they be politicians, industry leaders, or just everyday citizens, ignore the connections between our individual actions and the destruction of Earth's life support systems, and therefore their own health.
How can such a profound disconnection be healed? Is it even possible?
I think that people are more afraid than they are willing or able to admit. They think that the only way to live with such bad news from so many parts of their lives is to deny it all.
But Gabrielle Roth, author of "Maps to Ecstasy," says that when the immobilizing energy of unexpressed fear is released, fear can be transformed into what Roth calls its "natural dynamic partner," excitement. When we give appropriate attention and expression to our fears as they arise, then the pent up energy and the paralysis can be released. Roth says, "Fear properly channeled yields wide-awake engagement."
Psychologists have known this for years. And business leaders and politicians know this as well. And the last thing that business and political leaders want is a wide-awake and engaged population.
What if everyone was wide-awake and engaged? If this happened, the face of the world would change overnight. If we were wide-awake and engaged, it would be impossible to tolerate the destruction of our ecosystems and the life support systems of our precious Earth.
If we were wide-awake and engaged, it would be impossible to tolerate the fact that four million children under the age of five die each year from diseases resulting just from unsanitary drinking water. That number increases dramatically if you include those poisoned by industrial wastes contaminating water worldwide.
If we were wide-awake and engaged, it would be impossible to tolerate the World Health Organization's estimate that more than 200,000 people are killed by pesticide poisons, worldwide every year. That means 547 men, women and children die every day from pesticide poisoning.
If we were wide-awake and engaged, it would be impossible to tolerate the hundreds of millions of dollars spent on advertising every day, encouraging our children to smoke, drink, and fill their bodies with mind numbing sweets that create learning disabilities for thousands of children in our nation's schools.
But if we were wide-awake and engaged, it would be impossible to shop, now, wouldn't it? We would see the connections between rampant consumerism and environmental and social degradation. We would see that allowing businesses to dump any chemicals down the drain or in the trash would be folly. We would see that the killing of even one innocent woman, man or child in war makes no sense.
By telling us to suppress our natural fears, we are kept in a constant state of low level panic and discomfort. We are then presented with advertising images that assure us that we will feel better if we shop.
Franz Kafka told us, "You can hold yourself back from the suffering of the world: this is something you are free to do ... but perhaps precisely this holding back is the only suffering you might be able to avoid."
Acknowledge and express your fears. They won't consume you. It is totally reasonable to want to eat less meat and fish. It is not a sign of bravery to continue to eat meat and fish in the face of such obvious threats. It is a sign of denial and an intellectual decay that will be the defeat of us all.
The abuse of any industry is fueled by consumer demand. As long as people demand cheap meat, these issues will haunt us. There is overwhelming evidence today that reducing the intake of animal protein in one's diet will greatly reduce the risk of many forms of cancer and heart disease that simply do not show up in cultures whose diet has little meat.
Also, the myth that we need huge amounts of protein in our diets has been shattered. It is virtually impossible to have a protein deficient diet if one eats a variety of plant foods, rice, and potatoes.
Many people misunderstand the reason why they should care about toxic health issues, thinking that prolonging life a few years is all that is at stake. But there is much more at stake. We must act on toxic food crises because they reveal a deep and profound abuse of ecosystems, animals, and the delicate connections that make the Earth work.
With the vast non-meat, nutrition rich food choices we have in today's world, it makes little sense to base one's diet on meat any longer. And in light of the serious contamination issues, eating meat is becoming more and more like a game of roulette - with deadly consequences for the losers.
Once you acknowledge your fears, take advantage of the wide-awake engagement that can follow. You may find that the hollow assurances of our leaders make no sense whatsoever. Take back your life and do what you know in your heart is right.
RESOURCES
1. Find out who your Congressional representatives are and e-mail them. Demand that they fund the USDA to levels that will allow thorough meat inspection and that they halt the criminal abuses going on in slaughterhouses. If you know your Zip code, you can find them at: http://www.visi.com/juan/congress/ziptoit.html
2. Check out some of the information by those against eating meat at: http://www.meatstinks.com/
3. Keep track of these issues with the Organic Consumers Association at: http://www.purefood.org/
4. Read about protein from the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine at: http://www.pcrm.org/health/Info_on_Veg_Diets/protein.html
5. See a report from the investigative arm of Congress, the General Accounting Office, on the use of hormones and antibiotics in food at: http://www.gao.gov/docdblite/summary.php?rptno=RCED-99-74
6. Get info on reducing and eliminating meat from your diet from: http://www.vegan.com/
and at: http://www.vegan.org/
7. Get foods and products that were made without animal ingredients from: http://www.pangeaveg.com/
8. For meatless recipes, check out the Vegan Chef at: http://www.veganchef.com/archive.htm
{Jackie Alan Giuliano, Ph.D. is a writer and teacher in Seattle and the author of "Healing Our World", A Journey from the Darkness Into the Light," available at: http://www.xlibris.com/HealingOurWorld.html or your local bookstore. His new book of photographs and thoughts on interconnectedness, "Of This Earth, Reflections on Connections," is now available. Learn about it at: http://ofthisearth.org. Please send your thoughts, comments, and visions to him at: jackie@healingourworld.com and visit his website at: http://www.healingourworld.com
8.
From: "Boudewijn Wegerif" wegerif@telia.com>
Subject: Review of John Kaminski radio talk
Date: 24 Jan 2004
Dear list members,
I was delighted to read dissident author John Kaminski's latest article, 'The Race to the Rainbow Bridge', and to then hear him speak in a recording of a talk with host Alex Merklinger on the daily Mysteries of the Mind radio show.
To hear the talk, click on 'Tuesday, January 20' at http://www.mysteriesofthemind.com/Archives/2004/archives200401.htm
I suggest you skip over the first half hour of the archived recording by pushing the time button through about one-sixth of the way, to 34 minutes. This is when John Kaminski comes on as guest speaker, after a music break, and a commentary from a Mysteries of the Mind regular listener.
John speaks of revolution, but does not use the term, 'Love's Revolution'. However, what came across to me, particularly from 2 hours 28 minutes into the talk, is that the revolution John is talking about as he reaches through to the heart of what matters to us today is indeed Love's Revolution.
"This is the most important time for us to speak our truth," he says. "What is happening to people in the world is what is going to happen to us. What is happening to the people of Iraq in the worst-case scenario, is what is going to happen in the U.S."
Alex Merklinger then asks, "What can listeners do. Is there anything they can do to protect their families; to protect their loved ones?"
John responds, "That is the most common question I get. I have hundreds of E-mails a day and I talk to thousands of people round the world, and they ask, 'What are we going to do?' (laugh) and, I sit in my little trailer in Florida (laugh) - but, I think, we have to be who we are.
CLIP - Read the rest at
http://www.whatmatters.nu/wmeletters/wmeletters38.htmlWM-160
---
See also:
From: http://www.whatmatters.nu/index2.html
What Matters to Me is Love's Revolution
by Boudewijn Wegerif
I want to see an end to all forms of usury - all systems, banks, factories and farms that exist primarily for money-measured gain. I want to see an army of economic liberation take shape, of disarmed lovers of life who are ready to be persecuted, lose their right to bank accounts and mortgages, go to prison, be killed even as they destructure the world and restructure it into an interlocking, global hive of small-scale economies of love.
As I now envisage the economies of love of the future, social merits - not money - will be earned by those who apply themselves to the most efficient, technologically appropriate way of providing everyone in the community with their food, shelter and other material needs. Where there are surpluses they will be traded, without profit in mind, for other forms of surplus from other communities. Or the surpluses may be gifted to communities not so well endowed with resources - gifted not out of charity so much as from sound common sense, to maintain the peace, and to encourage return gifts of immeasurable cultural worth.
The subsistence base to the economies of love of the future should not require more than an average 20 hours a week of disciplined, measured for merit work by all able-bodied men and women from the age of 15 to 50. The discipline of duty here - of giving what is due for subsistence - will only be embraced by the new, emerging humanity, not as an end in itself, but as the needed support base for treasured free play, schooling, creativity and love making. And when it comes to the sharing of gifts, those that have earned the merits for it, as providers, will quite naturally be favoured.
As a final observation: The economies of love of the future will flounder through indulgence if the measured discipline of work and the immeasurable worth of play, schooling, creativity and love making are not appreciated as the means to more and more exquisite, transcendental experiences, leading into a final victory over material necessity, in bodies that no longer know the call of disease or death.
We are at a turning point in human consciousness. Our break through into an astounding global love story beyond the neurosis of history is assured! How it will come about is impossible to tell. More than likely there will be a cosmic event involved, that might be called divine intervention. But I believe, along the line of the hundredth monkey principle, that this will only happen as enough people say Yes to Love's nonviolent Revolution, for an end to global money madness and the beginning of a genuinely good life in discipline and freedom."
CLIP
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