Category Archives: planetkillers

I Don’t Eat Animals – Melanie Safka – YouTube

I Don’t Eat Animals – Melanie Safka – YouTube.

Asian Heatwave Precedes Monsoon : Image of the Day

In the first half of June 2014, news accounts described an extreme heatwave in India, as well as the late and somewhat weak arrival of the seasonal monsoon. Air temperatures in New Delhi climbed as high as 48° Celsius (118° Fahrenheit) and stayed above 43°C (110°F) for seven days. Satellite data offer some insights on what was happening on the ground.

via Asian Heatwave Precedes Monsoon : Image of the Day.

Pesticide Stricken Honeybee Hives On a Sustainable Family Farm | The Women’s International Perspective

Dead bees

You see, I only became a beekeeper this summer. I decided to do so in response to the Wilsonville, Oregon bumblebee die-off one year ago today: June 19, 2013. On that day, over 50,000 bumblebees rained on the parking lot outside a Target store. The culprit: neonicotinoids, a class of pesticide.

via Pesticide Stricken Honeybee Hives On a Sustainable Family Farm | The Women’s International Perspective.

“Plastic-eating” microbes help reduce marine debris: researchers – Channel NewsAsia

Coming soon: The Dixie Cup that Ate Cleveland!

Microscopic creatures could be helping reduce marine garbage on the ocean surface, not only by “eating” plastics but by causing tiny pieces to sink to the seafloor, Australian researchers said on Thursday.

The plastic-dwellers appear to be biodegrading the millions of tonnes of debris floating on waters worldwide, according to oceanographers at the University of Western Australia.

via “Plastic-eating” microbes help reduce marine debris: researchers – Channel NewsAsia.

Oil/gas/fracking b4 land/people/animals – Text of H.R. 4866: To reverse the Department of the Interior’s listing of the lesser prairie chicken as

Totally weird – area covered is one that gas and oil developers hope to frack – guess they must think they will be done ruining the land and water by 2020?

Notwithstanding any prior action by the Secretary of the Interior, the lesser prairie chicken shall not be treated as a threatened species or endangered species under the Endangered Species Act of 1973 (16 U.S.C. 1531 et seq.) before January 31, 2020.

via Text of H.R. 4866: To reverse the Department of the Interior’s listing of the lesser prairie chicken as … (Introduced version) – GovTrack.us.

Both sides cry foul over prairie chicken decision – Albuquerque Business First

(

Rep. Pierce has filed a House Bill to take authority over Lesser Prairie Chickens away for USFWS. It’s all about fracking, campaign donations, and trashing the ground water needed for drinking and for crops!)

“I support Chaves County in its decision to stand up to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service against its destructive decision to list the prairie chicken,” Pearce said. “The FWS’s decision to cater to environmental groups and disregard science will devastate New Mexico’s way of life. New Mexicans will pay the price in lost jobs, industry, ranching and oil and gas production. This is a federal government that is out of control. The only way change can occur is when local citizens and their leaders, like those in Chaves County, start standing up and demanding it.”

via Both sides cry foul over prairie chicken decision – Albuquerque Business First.

South Sudan’s Wildlife Become Casualties Of War and Are Killed to Feed Soldiers and Rebels – Inter Press Service | Inter Press Service

War kills everything in its path!

“Since the start of this conflict we have noticed that poaching has become terrible. Rebels are poaching and the government forces are also poaching because they are all fighting in rural areas and the only available food they can get is wild meat,” Lieutenant General Alfred Akuch Omoli, an advisor to South Sudan’s Ministry of Wildlife Conservation and Tourism, told IPS.

Officials say elephants are being killed for their meat and tusks while migratory animals that move in large numbers, especially the white-eared kob, the tiang (also known as the Senegal hartebeest) and reedbuck, are being killed specifically to provide bush meat.

via South Sudan’s Wildlife Become Casualties Of War and Are Killed to Feed Soldiers and Rebels – Inter Press Service | Inter Press Service.

Miracle Crop: Can a New Revolution Take Root? – SPIEGEL ONLINE

Shiva, dressed in a flowing robe and with a large bindi on her forehead, is an impressive figure, steeled by her tough, decades-long battle with the establishment. The civil rights activist never tires of castigating seed companies. “A globally operating industry is pushing hard to make the world dependent on their products,” she says. Farmers who have made the switch, she explains, give up their traditional seed and are then forced to buy the commercial varieties, which often come with license fees, in perpetuity.

“This type of agriculture has taken the lives of 25,000 farmers in India, who committed suicide because they couldn’t pay back their debts,” says Shiva. She doesn’t think much of biofortified varieties, either. “Harvest Plus is focused on one nutrient,” she says critically. “But a single nutrient is not a solution to multidimensional malnutrition crisis; the body needs all the micronutrients.”

Instead of these “monocultures,” Shiva is calling for a return to diversity in fields. “Most of our traditional crops are full of nutrients,” she explains. Why create Golden Rice with lots of vitamin A when carrots and pumpkins contain plenty of it already? Why develop genetically modified bananas with high iron content when horseradish and amaranth contain so much iron?

Shiva recommends field crop-rotation, and the fostering of vegetable and fruit gardens and small family farms primarily geared toward nutrition instead of maximized profit. Because Shiva believes organic farming is the only viable approach to defeating hunger, her organization has trained 75,000 farmers in organic farming methods since the late 1980s.

‘There Isn’t Enough Arable Land’

Harvest Plus Director Bouis believes that Shiva’s approach is naïve. “We have the fundamental problem that there isn’t enough arable land for a constantly growing population,” he says. {Bogus argument – raised bed gardens, alone, can double output – Harvest Plus is biased for industrialized agriculture – period.}

A UN Environment Programme report predicts that by 2050, agriculture will have to produce 70 percent more calories than today to feed an expected global population of 9.6 billion people. This “food gap” can only be closed, says Bouis, if we “make agriculture even more productive.”

But in Maharashtra, it’s clear that new varieties of super grains are not always the entire answer. A third farmer from the town of Vadgaon Kashimbe, Santosh Pingle, 38, and his family are visibly better off than their neighbors. They live in a plastered house, they have cows and goats for milk, and they enjoy the occasional luxury of a chicken from the market. Pingle’s recipe for success is that he has done more with his land than other farmers.

The farmer grows iron-rich Dhanshakti millet to satisfy the iron needs of his family of five. On the other half of their field, the Pingles grow tomatoes and high-yield hybrid millet, which they sell in the market. They also grow protein-rich pulses and other vegetables in their house garden, and his wife Jayashree and her daughters harvest lemons, coconuts and mangoes several times

via Miracle Crop: Can a New Revolution Take Root? – SPIEGEL ONLINE.

Dip of the week! Hates Prairie Chickens and loves campaign payoffs! To reverse the Department of the Interior’s listing of the lesser prairie chicken as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act of 1973, to prevent further consideration of listing of such species as a threatened species or endangered species under that Act pending implementation of the Western Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies’ Lesser Prairie-Chicken Range-Wide Conservation Plan and other conservation measures, and for other purposes. (H.R. 4866) – GovTrack.us

H.R. 4866: To reverse the Department of the Interior’s listing of the lesser prairie chicken as a threatened species under the …

… Endangered Species Act of 1973, to prevent further consideration of listing of such species as a threatened species or endangered species under that Act pending implementation of the Western Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies’ Lesser Prairie-Chicken Range-Wide Conservation Plan and other conservation measures, and for other purposes.

via To reverse the Department of the Interior’s listing of the lesser prairie chicken as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act of 1973, to prevent further consideration of listing of such species as a threatened species or endangered species under that Act pending implementation of the Western Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies’ Lesser Prairie-Chicken Range-Wide Conservation Plan and other conservation measures, and for other purposes. (H.R. 4866) – GovTrack.us.

Chile rejects Patagonia wilderness dam project | News | DW.DE | 11.06.2014

There were scenes of jubilation in the capital city Santiago’s Plaza Italia as opponents of the dam heard the news.

“This is a historic day,” Juan Pablo Orrego, international coordinator of the Patagonia Without Dams campaign, told IPS news agency after the decision was announced.

“I am moved that the citizens… managed to finally inspire a government to do the right thing in the face of a mega-project,” he added.

“We did it. We won. Viva Chile!” and “Goodbye HidroAysen!” were among the messages tweeted on the group’s Twitter account.

The company may still appeal the project. The dam project, one of numerous schemes around the world that have sparked protests, would generate a about a third of Chile’s current energy needs. Experts say that Chile, which has a heavy reliance on a energy-intensive mining industry, will have to triple its current 18,000-megawatt power generation capacity within 15 years.

However, since being elected last year, Chilean President Michelle Bachelet had said the plan was not viable.

via Chile rejects Patagonia wilderness dam project | News | DW.DE | 11.06.2014.