Category Archives: environment

Ohio jobs and opportunities for social good

In 2013, Idealist is reaching out state-by-state to nonprofit communities around the country. This month is Ohio Month! So what does that mean for you?

FOR ORGANIZATIONS NEW TO IDEALIST

A free job posting for Ohio organizations that join this month!

Idealist is the web’s largest nonprofit job board—and we list government and social enterprise jobs, too. Over 100,000 people visit the site every day, and new jobs are emailed nightly to hundreds of thousands of people.

Posting jobs with us is always a great value, at $70 per listing. But this month, new organizations in Ohio will be given a free job posting credit just for joining. Job credits are good for six months.

You can post volunteer opportunities, internships, events, and programs, too. These are always free, so join today!

via Ohio jobs and opportunities for social good.

Monsanto akin to Assad – Denver Holistic Health | Examiner.com

Glyphosate commonly marketed as Roundup and manufactured by Monsanto is the most frequently used herbicide on both cropland and common-use areas of the world since its introduction in the 1970s. For years the chemical industry claimed there were no adverse side effects to the widespread use of glyphosate but more recent studies have found, “[Glyphosate] residues are found in the main foods of the Western diet, comprised primarily of sugar, corn, soy and wheat. Glyphosate inhibition of cytochrome P450 (CYP) enzymes is an overlooked component of its toxicity to mammals. CYP enzymes play crucial roles in biology, one of which is to detoxify xenobiotics. Thus, glyphosate enhances the damaging effects of other food borne chemical residues and environmental toxins. Negative impact on the body is insidious and manifests slowly over time as inflammation damages cellular systems throughout the body.” Is the slow, gradual poisoning of a people worse than immediate death?

Perhaps the United States needs reminded of the use of Agent Orange in Vietnam and the horrible effects still being felt by generations of Americans and their offspring.

via Monsanto akin to Assad – Denver Holistic Health | Examiner.com.

China’s Food Supply Dilemma – Not!

According to Deere & Company CEO, Sam Allen, China’s population is outpacing its food supply. Allen suggests that a strategic combination of increased food imports and increased food production in the country is needed to feed 1.35 billion mouths.

via China’s Food Supply Dilemma.

(People, it seems, will say nearly anything to get in print. If China needs food for its people, all it need do is export less of it outside of the country – or do what we will all be doing in the future – grow more of everything in green houses, organically – using less water and polluting less and using less space. Field farming will give way to replanting forests and letting natural ecology recover where it can to better support itself and us!)

Eat Drink Better | Cooking, healthy food, and sustainable eating!

Even so, U.S. shrimpers look like Boy Scouts compared to Asian and South American “shrimp barons,” who are clearing huge swaths of ecologically sensitive mangrove habitat to create shrimp factory farms. It’s estimated that one-fifth of mangroves worldwide have been lost since 1980, mostly because they have been razed to make way for shrimp farms. Shrimp that comes from cleared mangroves is estimated to have a carbon footprint 10 times higher than beef from cows raised on cleared Amazon rain forest.

What about farmed shrimp?

Overseas shrimp farms are commonly cesspools of antibiotics, fertilizers, banned pesticides, contaminated water, and other waste. According to Canadian journalist Taras Grescoe, “The simple fact is, if you’re eating cheap shrimp today, it almost certainly comes from a turbid, pesticide- and antibiotic-filled, virus-laden pond in the tropical climes of one of the world’s poorest nations.”

If local villagers object to the farms, which have been blamed for polluting or siphoning the water supply and contaminating agricultural land with salt water and waste, their concerns are often ruthlessly quashed—sometimes with violence, including beatings, rapes, arson, shootings, and even murder. In Thailand, Burmese migrants are press-ganged into working on fishing boats that supply feed to shrimp farms, and workers report appalling conditions—and even executions at sea.

Considering the devastating ecological impact of cheap shrimp—in addition to the accompanying human rights abuses—isn’t it time to put an end to “endless shrimp”?

via Eat Drink Better | Cooking, healthy food, and sustainable eating!.

Engaging the normative question in the H5N1 avian influenza mutation experiments – exercise in self-delusion

More proof that humans can convince/delude themselves into justifying anything they want to do or might make a profit or career for someone – even if inordinately dumb and dangerous!

 

The question here is whether there was reasonable moral warrant for genetic alteration of the H5N1 influenza virus.

Conclusion: The paper concludes with philosophical (ethical) justification for continuation of this research.

via Engaging the normative question in the H5N1 avian influenza mutation experiments.

Farming and knowledge monocultures are misconceived | Food First/Institute for Food and Development Policy

The Vision 2020 programme of the Andhra Pradesh state government in India is another example of promoting agroindustrial models. Supported by the Indian and UK governments, together with Monsanto, the world’s largest GM seed and agrochemical company, the programme’s stated aim was to reduce the state’s rural population by 30 per cent as part of efforts to ‘modernise’ agriculture by minimising labour and eradicating so-called inefficient peasant agriculture.

The more than 25 million people designated for removal from the land were not included in any social impact assessment of this plan.

via Farming and knowledge monocultures are misconceived | Food First/Institute for Food and Development Policy.

AI Could Help Predict Which Flu Virus Will Cause the Next Deadly Human Outbreak – Wired Science – Hubris to the 10th power?

Icarus flew too close to the sun and crashed. These guys make me think about an old cartoon about someone creating a model of reality that was so complex that it suddenly disappeared because…  The notion that we can outsmart nature and be above it, or outside of it constantly lures us to figure that we can think ourselves out of any problem we stumble into because we think we are above or outside of nature. Grow up folks – industrialized and globalized agriculture is dangerous and needs rethinking not tinkering or engineering!

 

Beyond influenza, Rabadan and Chris Wiggins, a mathematician at Columbia, have developed a method for identifying a virus’s original animal host, which is sometimes difficult to determine from the virus itself.  The coronavirus behind the recent outbreak of Middle Eastern respiratory syndrome, for example, has killed about half of the nearly 100 confirmed cases. Last week, an exhaustive, 15-month search pointed to bats as the source. But machine learning approaches paired with large databases housing information on viruses from many different animal hosts might speed up this type of search.

The machine learning approach is likely to expand as even more genomic information becomes available.  “Databases will get much richer, and computational approaches will get much more powerful,” Webby said. That in turn will help scientists better monitor emerging flu strains and predict their impact, ideally forecasting when a virus is likely to jump to people and how dangerous it is likely to become.

via AI Could Help Predict Which Flu Virus Will Cause the Next Deadly Human Outbreak – Wired Science.

Subway Kittens Finally Rescued, Will Be Put Up For Adoption: Gothamist

Yesterday, two adorable kittens frolicking on the train tracks briefly brought subway service to standstill in Brooklyn. The kitties were spotted running up and down the tracks near the third rail at the B/Q Church Avenue station in Prospect Lefferts Gardens around 11 a.m. Thursday. The kittens were briefly caught, but they escaped immediately afterwards—it took until after 6 p.m. for officials to finally wrangle them into cages.

MTA officials initially cut off power to large portions of the B/Q line around lunchtime—the B was down for 90 minutes, and the Q was down for nearly two hours! Some people were angry: “My boss is gonna be mad at me for being late. He’s not gonna believe this one!” said one rider, according to the Post. “Can you believe this? All for goddamned cats! I hate cats!” another straphanger exclaimed. It even led some bloggers to consider philosophical debates about kitten murder.

Not everyone was so put off: “The announcer said it had to stop to rescue some cats,” straphanger Sandra Polel told the News. “I didn’t mind. I wanted to get home, but I also wanted the kittens to be safe.”

via Subway Kittens Finally Rescued, Will Be Put Up For Adoption: Gothamist.

Taylor Farms, Big Food Supplier, Grapples With Frequent Recalls – NYTimes.com

Taylor Farms, the large vegetable producer whose salad mix has been linked to hundreds of sickened people in 22 states, has had an unusual number of voluntary recalls for potentially tainted products in the last three years.

via Taylor Farms, Big Food Supplier, Grapples With Frequent Recalls – NYTimes.com.