Banning a Prehistoric Blood Sport

Bullfighting once brought Spaniards together. Today, it is splitting them apart

On Sunday, twenty thousand people marched through the streets of Madrid calling for an end to bullfighting.

Though also practiced in Mexico, Ecuador, Peru and Portugal, Spain is ground zero for this cruel tradition: An ancient tombstone discovered in Clunia in the Spanish province Burgos features an engraving of a bull facing an armed man.

With origins in prehistoric bull worship and sacrifice, bullfighting is one of the world's oldest blood sports.

Between the 1st and 4th centuries A.D., the Roman military practiced Mithraism, a mystery religion whose defining act was the killing of the sacrificial bull.

Today, bullfighting takes the lives of an estimated 30,000 bulls every year.

Speaking about the Sunday march, spokeswoman for the small anti-bullfighting political party PACMA Mireya Barbeto said, "In Madrid over 70 percent of the population rejects these acts of barbarism and torture, a national shame."

A 2006 Gallup poll showed that 72.1 percent of Spaniards were not interested in bullfights, a number which spiked to 81.7 percent for the 15-24 age group.

Esperanza Aguirre, Countess of Murillo, the president of Madrid's regional government holds the minority viewpoint.

On March 5, she announced plans to give legal protections to bullfighting by declaring it a part of the region's cultural heritage. Posing with a matador's cape, Aguirre said, "It's an art that has been in our culture as long as we can remember."

Last week, animal rights group El Refugio (The Shelter) launched a campaign to gather 50,000 signatures supporting a ban in the Madrid region.

The movement is gathering steam throughout the country. Earlier this month in the northeastern region of Catalonia, a petition armed with 180,000 signatures led to parliamentary hearings on a motion to outlaw bullfighting. If it passes, Catalonia will be the first region in Spain outside the Canary Islands to make bullfighting a crime.

Perhaps the pen really is mightier than the sword...or in the case of the Spanish matador, the estocada.

GET INVOLVED

• Sign a Care2 petition urging Spanish president Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero to ban bullfighting in Spain
  
• Sign the World Society for Protection of Animals petition to ban bullfighting in Catalonia
  
• Sign the Universal Declaration of Animal Welfare

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image: WSPA

Ice Mission

The world's most sophisticated ice monitor will keep a close eye on the Earth's shrinking polar caps

"The biggest environmental issue we currently face," according to the European Space Agency (ESA), "is global change which encompasses not only climate change but also the large-scale impact that a growing global population and continued economic growth are having on the Earth and its environment."

One of those big changes is happening at the poles: The sea ice that normally covers the polar regions has been at record lows. Melting ice means rising sea levels, less of the sun's heat reflected back into space and the loss of critical wildlife habitat.

According to the Fairbanks, Alaska-based nonprofit Arctic Research Consortium of the United States (ARCUS), the arctic summer sea ice extent minimum averaged 7.1 million square kilometers for the 20-year period beginning in 1979. In September of last year, that number was down to 5.36 million square kilometers.

On April 8, scientists will have a powerful new tool to monitor changes in the vast ice sheets that cover Greenland and Antarctica when the ESA launches CryoSat-2, a satellite that will be placed in orbit 700 kilometers above the Earth's surface. Taking its name from kryos, the Greek word for cold or ice, CryoSat is the most sophisticated instrument ever built to study the Earth's ice fields.

CryoSat (a.k.a. "The Ice Mission") is the third of seven spacecraft that will obtain data on critical environmental issues, all part of ESA's Earth Explorer program. The first in the series, a gravity mapper called Goce (a.k.a. "The Gravity Mission"), was launched in March 2009. The second, Smos (a.k.a. "The Water Mission") was launched in November and is measuring soil moisture and ocean salinity.

GET INVOLVED

• Analyze and reduce your impact on the environment with the National Grid Floe
• Find out how you can help keep Antarctica cool and prevent global warming
• Sign a Nature Canada petition telling the Canadian government to protect the polar bear's habitat and slow the effects of global warming in Canada's treasured Far North
• Sign a Defenders of Wildlife letter urging Congress to permanently protect the Arctic refuge (US citizens)
  

RELATED POSTS

• Low Country (October 22, 2009)
• Four Degrees (September 29, 2009)
• The Arctic Has a Hotseat, and Man Is Behind the Wheel (September 17, 2009)
• Closing Off the Arctic (July 23, 2009)
• The Island Mouse That Roared (July 22, 2009)
• The Pot Is Boiling (July 2, 2009)
• Keeping An Eye on the Home Planet (July 1, 2009)
• Gone in 75 Years: Polar Bears (June 29, 2009)
• Note to Obama: Protect Endangered Seals (June 15, 2009)
• Location, Location, Relocation (May 27, 2009)
• Polar Transcendentalism (May 11, 2009)
• Islands in the Sea (April 4, 2009)
• Selling the Arctic's Future to the Oil Industry (March 6, 2009)
• The Albatross and the Rising Sea (February 12, 2009)
• Lilypad: Future Ecopolis for Global Warming Refugees (January 19, 2009)
• Pack Your Bags, We're Moving to New Zealand (October, 26, 2008)
• North Pole May Be Ice-Free in Five Years (August 12, 2008)
• Huge Antarctica Ice Shelf Crumbles (April 1, 2008)
• Record Glacier Melt from Climate Change (March 16, 2008)

image: CryoSat's "roof"' is formed from solar panels rigidly fixed to the satellite body, designed to provide adequate power under all orbital conditions for this non-Sun synchronous satellite (credit: ESA - AOES Medialab)

Clean Bodies, Dirty Water

Your morning shower could be polluting the environment

Cortisone. Testosterone. Benzoyl peroxide. Triclosan.

These are just some of the Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients (APIs) contained in a wide variety of biologically-altering ingredients in products that fill households around the world.

According to the Compliance Program Guidance Manual of the United States Food & Drug Administration (FDA), APIs are "intended to furnish pharmacological activity or other direct effect in the diagnosis, cure, mitigation, treatment or prevention of disease or to affect the structure and function of the body."

Now, a new study has found that showering, bathing and laundering provide a portal for APIs -- many of which easily pass through civic filtration systems -- to enter lakes, rivers and oceans, according to a press release issued by the American Chemical Society.

The study, led by Ilene Ruhoy, the director of the Institute for Environmental Medicine at Touro University in Henderson, Nevada, and Christian Daughton of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s National Exposure Research Laboratory in Las Vegas, focused on APIs in medications that are applied topically or excreted in sweat. These products leave chemical residues that are rinsed off the body and down bathroom drains.

Mike Adams, the editor of NaturalNews.com, says that the average household is a "toxic chemical dump."

"People have antimicrobial soaps, dryer sheets with toxic chemicals, and then there are people using all sorts of personal perfumes and fragrance products that are also loaded with cancer-causing chemicals," says Adams.

"You've got people putting deodorant in their armpits, and that deodorant contains aluminum which promotes dementia and Alzheimer's disease. And if that's not enough toxicity, you can buy air fresheners that will release a mist of toxic chemicals into the very air that you breathe so that you can inhale carcinogenic chemicals directly into your lungs. Beyond all that, we have the shampoos which are also loaded with all sorts of toxic chemicals, and we have the cleaning products that contain solvents which directly promote cancer as well as birth defects."

Triclosan, an ingredient found in many antimicrobial soaps, has even been found in the blood of wild dolphins.

It doesn't have to be that way, argues Adams. His solution is pretty straightforward: Start reading ingredient labels -- and stop buying toxic products.

Instead of a chemical face scrub, try using salt mixed with honey. Need a great astrigent? Cider vinegar is the safe answer.

In the end, it seems that whatever we put on our skin and into our bodies might literally be going down the drain.

GET INVOLVED

• Visit the Organic Consumers Association Action Center
• Use these 20 simple and non-toxic beauty product substitutes
  
• Find out how to avoid toxic chemicals in beauty products
• Find out more about the toxic chemicals in bathroom cleaners
  
• Download a BeyondPesticides.org factsheet listing products containing triclosan to stop buying products that contain this chemical harmful to dolphins

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• From Dirty Hands to Dolphin Blood (July 28, 2009)
• Killing Weeds, Poisoning Ourselves (February 18, 2010)
  
• From Syrup to Seals in Canada (February 15, 2010)
• Twenty-Six Ounces of Oil (And the Flesh from Several Cows) (November 9, 2009)
• How Green Is Your Meal? (June 28, 2009)
• Rogue Honey (June 22, 2009)
• Dying for a Diet Drink (May 29, 2009)
• If We Really Are What We Eat, Most of Us Are A Bit Disturbing (October 17, 2008)
• Twice As Nice: Organic Wine (August 31, 2008)
• Understanding A Powerful Crop Virus (August 22, 2008)
• EPA Sued Over Pesticide That May Kill Bees (August 21, 2008)
• Secret Report Says Biofuels Caused Food Crisis (July 8, 2008)
• Germany Bans Pesticide Blamed for Bee Deaths (June 30, 2008)
• The Shrimp Effect: Does Eating Shrimp in Canada Kill People in Myanmar? (May 8, 2008)
• Banned Pesticides Killing Birds (April 10, 2008)

image: DO'Neill

Earth Hour

Tomorrow, hundreds of millions of people around the world will turn their lights off for one hour

Break out the candles, the hand-crank radio and the deck of cards (or maybe even a Ouija board). Earth Hour is tomorrow at 8:30pm local time.

Started by WWF in 2007 in Sydney, Australia, when 2.2 million businesses and homes turned off their lights to show their solidarity in combating climate change, Earth Hour has grown to global proportions: Last year, over 4,000 cities in 88 countries participated.

This year, a record 6,000 cities across 115 countries have joined up, with celebrities like Tom Brady, Gisele Bündchen and Edward Norton acting as spokespersons for the event.

Landmarks such as Mount Rushmore in South Dakota, the Gateway Arch in St. Louis, the Las Vegas Strip, the Empire State Building and Chrysler Building in New York, the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, the National Cathedral in Washington D.C., California's Santa Monica Pier, the Space Needle in Seattle, the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, the Eiffel Tower in Paris, the Hiroshima Peace Memorial, India Gate in New Dehli and Burj Khalifa in Dubai will be shrouded in darkness.

According to a Zogby International online survey, 86 million people took part in last year's Earth Hour, which also increased climate change awareness by 4 percentage points immediately after the event. And even more importantly, energy consumption was reduced up to 10 percent.

Who knew that being in the dark could be so enlightening?

GET INVOLVED

• Participate in this year's Earth Hour
• Add your Earth Hour photos to Flickr
  
• Add your Earth Hour videos to YouTube
• Sign a Sierra Club petition to protect wildlife habitat from the effects of climate change
  
• Analyze and reduce your impact on the environment with the National Grid Floe
• Sign the "We Can Solve It" petition for a global treaty on climate change

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• Low Country (October 22, 2009)
• North Pole Rabbit Hole (October 5, 2009)
  
• Four Degrees (September 29, 2009)
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• Retreat at Îles Kerguelen (September 8, 2009)
  
• Dethroning the Emperors of the South Pole (August 21, 2009)
• Gone in 75 Years: Polar Bears (June 29, 2009)
• Congress Tackles Climate Change (June 24, 2009)
• A Crack in the Ice (May 14, 2009)
• Polar Transcendentalism (May 11, 2009)
• The Sea Also Rises (March 14, 2009)
• Oceanic Acid Trip (March 10, 2009)
• Long Journey Into Ice (March 5, 2009)
• Noah's Ark for Climate Change (March 2, 2009)
• Earth Hour (March 1, 2009)
• The Albatross and the Rising Sea (February 12, 2009)
• Lilypad: Future Ecopolis for Global Warming Refugees (January 15, 2009)
• North Pole May Be Ice-Free in Five Years (August 12, 2008)

image: pokrajac

Clash of the Titan

Three hundred and fifty-five years ago today, Christiaan Huygens discovered Saturn's largest moon

Christiaan Huygens was a man of many talents. Born in 1629 in the Hague, he was a mathematician, horologer, physicist, astronomer and an early science fiction writer.

In addition to performing critical studies of optics and centrifugal force, Huygens invented the pendulum clock, which remained the world's most accurate timekeeper until the 1830s.

On March 25, 1655, Huygens discovered Saturn's largest moon, Titan.

The Huygens probe, part of the Cassini-Huygens Mission to Saturn, is named after him. It landed on Titan on January 14, 2005 near the Xanadu region.

After the Cassini-Huygens mission found hydrocarbon lakes in Titan's polar regions, the satellite became the only place other than Earth known to have large, stable bodies of surface liquid.

In fact, Titan's atmosphere and chemical makeup make it quite similar to the early Earth, suggesting that it may be a possible host for extraterrestrial microbial life.

After three-and-a-half centuries, it turns out that it was most appropriate that Huygens was the one to discover Titan: In his 1698 book Cosmotheoros, he discussed his own belief in extraterrestrial life.

GET INVOLVED

• See an image of Titan taken by Cassini
  
• Participate in Cassini's Saturn Observation Campaign
• View a video of Titan's canyon country
  
• Sign a petition to add the option for US taxpayers to contribute to NASA on the IRS 1040 tax form
  
• Donate to the American Astronomical Society
  
• Download this month's free night sky map and calendar from Skymaps.com

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• Titan's Sikun Labyrinthus (March 12, 2010)
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• Saturnian Hex (December 11, 2009)
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• Orbiting Saturn, Five Years Later (July 10, 2009)
  
• Goodbye Ulysses (June 30, 2009)
• An Old Lake on the Red Planet (June 20, 2009)
• A Possible New World Fit for Life (April 28, 2009)

image: portrait of Christiaan Huygens, by Caspar Netscher, 1671.

In Search of the "God Particle"

The most expensive science experiment in human history is about to begin

Next week, near the French-Swiss border near Geneva, scientists almost 600 feet beneath the Earth's surface will fire up a $9 billion science project.

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the world's largest and highest-energy particle accelerator. It was built by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) to search for the theorized Higgs boson, also known as the "God particle."

"Its purpose is simple but ambitious: to crack the code of the physical world; to figure out what the universe is made of; in other words, to get to the very bottom of things," writes Joel Achenbach in National Geographic.

The LHC will do this by colliding two proton beams in a circular tunnel 17 miles (27 km) long very close to the speed of light. This will recreate the conditions present at a moment less than a billionth of a second after the Big Bang. In other words, the LHC will simulate the beginning of everything.

The Higgs boson, scientists hope, will briefly appear. Cosmologists contend that this particle was responsible for the rapid expansion of the universe, and finding it will help to answer some of the most puzzling questions: Are there other dimensions, as predicted by string theory? What is the nature of dark matter and dark energy? Why is gravity so much weaker than the other three fundamental forces? How do elementary particles acquire mass?

Finding the Higgs boson will help to confirm the predictions and the "missing links" in the Standard Model of physics, the basic nature of matter and the fundamental secrets of the universe.

But before LHC can get down and dirty, there's quite a lot more work to do. Beset by a string of technical difficulties, the project has had a few starts and stops.

"Just lining the beams up is a challenge in itself," says Steve Myers, director for accelerators and technology at CERN, in a BBC News article. "It's a bit like firing needles across the Atlantic and getting them to collide half way."

No one said that finding the God particle would be easy.

GET INVOLVED

• Go on a video tour of the Large Hadron Collider with CERN physicist Brian Cox
  
• Download a PDF of physics experiments you can do at home, exploring motion, heat, sound, electricity, magnetism and light
• Do these fun physics experiments with your kids
  

RELATED POSTS

• Hunt for "God Particle" Resumes This Summer (December 30, 2008)
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• Something's Out There, And We're Racing to It (November 10, 2008)

image: Peter Ginter

If the USDA Says It's Organic, Is It?

Many foods are labeled "organic" by the USDA, but what exactly does that mean?

Born in 1896, Walter Ernest Christopher James, 4th Baron Northbourne was a British rower who competed in the 1920 Summer Olympics in Antwerp. He won the silver medal in Men's Eights.

But among today's locavorous, sustainable-eating cognoscenti, Lord Northbourne -- also an agriculturist -- is probably more remembered for coining the term "organic farming" in his 1940 book Look to the Land.

In contrast to what he called "chemical farming" -- a system of non-self-sufficiency that relied on "imported fertility" -- Lord Northbourne's "organic farming" utilizes sustainable, ecologically balanced methodologies that perceived the farm as a "holistic organism" existing within the larger context of its ecosystem.

Today, the term "organic" is complex and fraught with contradictions. There is no limit, for example, on the size of an organic farm, and many large corporate farms have an organic division.

The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) does not perform inspections of organic farmers. Even if they wanted to, the department is too small to do so.

Instead, the federal government grants accreditation to third-party organic certifiers who dole out the highly-prized "organic" labels that we see on our food products.

But in 2008, the USDA put 15 of 30 federally-accredited organic certifiers on probation.

According to the USDA's National Agricultural Library, the word "organic" is "a labeling term that denotes products produced under the authority of the Organic Foods Production Act (OFPA). The principal guidelines for organic production are to use materials and practices that enhance the ecological balance of natural systems and that integrate the parts of the farming system into an ecological whole."

Sounds like Lord Northbourne would have approved of this definition. And people have responded. Since the passage of the OFPA in 1990, the consumer demand for organically made foods has increased steadily -- about 20% every year.

But the organic label isn't all what it seems. And as with many labels, the devil is in the details.

Small eco-conscious companies like Eden Organics (founded in 1968 in Ann Arbor, Michigan, "by a group of friends who were trying to source good food," according to their website) have come out against the USDA label, even refusing to use it on their "organic" products.

According to the Eden website:

Though all EDEN organic food is grown, handled, processed, and certified in a way that meets and exceeds the requirements for using the 'USDA Organic' seal, Eden Foods chooses not to use this seal on its product labels or marketing materials...this seal does not approach Eden's high standards for organic, in practice or in spirit...

The most serious degradation of national organic standards occurred in October 2005. In a back room deal the Organic Trade Association lobbied Congress to legalize the adulteration of organic food with basically any toxic additive a manufacturer may want to use, including substances that do not need to appear on ingredient panels. More than 400,000 consumers contacted their government representatives asking them not to weaken organic standards in such a way, but agribusiness influences prevailed. As a result, food bearing the 'USDA Organic' seal no longer needs to be natural food.

In addition, "USDA organic" doesn't mean "pesticide-free." It means that farmers must use pesticides made with organic ingredients. But many of those are just as harmful to the environment as synthetic versions.

By the time Lord Northbourne went to that big organic farm in the sky in 1982, his concept was stoking sustainable fires across America. Organic farming was reaching a national level of recognition.

Just a year earlier, the American Society of Agronomy hosted a symposium to determine if organic farming could contribute to a more sustainable agriculture.

Unsurprisingly, the agronomists concluded that it could. The problem, almost three decades later, boils down to a pesky little organic label.

It seems the only way to be confident that what you're buying is really organic is to go back to the old adage that has helped consumers put healthy, sustainable food on their tables for centuries: "Know your farmer, know your food."

GET INVOLVED

• Sign an Organic Consumers Association petition urging the National Organic Program (NOP) to implement the Peer Review Panel to ensure that third-party organic certifiers are properly accredited
  
• Find out 10 ways to eat sustainably
  
• Sign the MakeOurFoodSafe.org petition urging the US Congress to pass strong food safety legislation (US citizens)
  

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• Rogue Honey (June 22, 2009)
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• No Bees, No Food (March 11, 2009)
• Eat Healthy and Save the World, Simultaneously (January 23, 2009)
• Getting Smaller: Our Food (January 21, 2009)
• Pick up the Fish Phone (January 20, 2009)
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• Frozen, Canned or Fresh? (December 12, 2008)
• Michael Pollan Should Be the Next Secretary of Agriculture (November 18, 2008)
• The Ones That Got Away: "Organic" Fish (November 9, 2008)
• If We Really Are What We Eat, Most of Us Are A Bit Disturbing (October 17, 2008)
• Goodbye, Fish and Chips (October 12, 2008)
• Over a Century Later, A Sustainable Crop Experiment Thrives (October 6, 2008)
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• Understanding A Powerful Crop Virus (August 22, 2008)
• EPA Sued Over Pesticide That May Kill Bees (August 21, 2008)
• Secret Report Says Biofuels Caused Food Crisis (July 8, 2008)
• Germany Bans Pesticide Blamed for Bee Deaths (June 30, 2008)
• The Shrimp Effect: Does Eating Shrimp in Canada Kill People in Myanmar? (May 8, 2008)
• Biofuels Fuel Food Crisis (April 15, 2008)
• Banned Pesticides Killing Birds (April 10, 2008)

image: USDA

Water, Water, Not Everywhere

March 22 is World Water Day. So when you take a drink, take a moment to think

Rio de Janeiro is situated on the plains of the western shore of Brazil's Baía da Guanabara near the Tropic of Capricorn. The name Guanabara comes from the Tupi-Guarani phrase goanã-pará, meaning "bosom of the sea."

So it is fitting that it was in Rio when, in 1992, the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) established World Water Day, an annual international observance of life's most precious liquid.

But almost two decades later -- as Rio's once luxurious ecosystem has been severely battered by urbanization, pollution and deforestation, particularly of its mangroves -- the future of the world's clean water looks bleaker than ever.

At the United Nations climate conference in Copenhagen in December, former U.S. vice president Al Gore warned that a billion people may lose their access to clean water with the record-breaking melting of the polar and Himalayan ice due to global warming.

"There are more than a billion people on the planet who get more than half of their drinking water -- many of them all of their drinking water -- from the seasonal melting of snow melt and glacier ice," Gore said.

He noted that scientific modeling suggested "a 75 percent chance that the entire polar ice cap during some of summer months could be completely ice free within five to seven years," a situation that has already impacted the survival of many species that rely on sea ice for their survival, like endangered polar bears and seals.

But of course water is not just for drinking -- and frozen water is not just a main habitat for dozens of species. Among so many other uses, water is also necessary to make absolutely everything we eat. Every calorie of food, in fact, requires a liter of water to produce it.

The problems caused by the increasing lack of accessible, clean water are further exacerbated by the unstoppable growth of the human population, which will swell from the current 6.7 billion to an estimated 9 billion people over the next 40 years.

By 2030, according to "Climate Futures," a report by the London-based sustainable development non-profit Forum for the Future, a lack of water could lead to the mass exoduses of places that have succumbed to "desertification," such as central Australia and Oklahoma. Water conflicts in the Middle East and Africa could erupt into violent warfare.

Famed environmentalist and marine environmentalist Rachel Carson once remarked, "In an age when man has forgotten his origins and is blind even to his most essential needs for survival, water along with other resources has become the victim of his indifference."

If you are reading this, chances are you will also enjoy some clean water today. As you do, take a moment to think about the millions of people around the world for whom getting clean water isn't just a simple matter of turning on the tap. For you, it might not always be that easy, either.

[13.7 Billion Years is a member of the Food & Water Watch Special Blog Outreach Unit.]

GET INVOLVED

• Learn more about World Water Day
  
• Sign the petition to adopt Article 31 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights giving all people the right to clean and accessible water
• Sign the Food & Water Watch "Take Back the Tap" pledge to choose tap over bottled water whenever possible, fill a reusable bottle with tap water and support policies that promote clean, affordable tap water for all
• Sign the Food & Water Watch petition urging your representative to vote "NO" to the National Sustainable Offshore Aquaculture Act (H.R. 4363), which would permit the creation of factory fish farms U.S. federal waters that would output toxic waste and disease directly into the open ocean (U.S. citizens)
  
• Build a pond
• Join the "Million Ponds Project"
• Download "Water, Wetlands and Forests: A Review of Ecological, Economic and Policy Linkages," a report released by the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) to mark World Water Day 2010 and highlight the need for clean water. The report, produced in collaboration with the Secretariat of the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands and other partners, aims to foster better awareness of the crucial role that forests and wetlands play in sustaining the availability and quality of water critical for human well-being
  

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• Killing Weeds, Poisoning Ourselves (February 18, 2010)
• Encedalus Lives Again (February 12, 2010)
• Dig a Hole, Fill It with Water (February 9, 2010)
• No Snow, No Ice, No Water (December 15, 2009)
• Taming the Mighty Colorado River (October 26, 2009)
  
• Oil and Water Don't Mix (October 7, 2009)
• Gulf of Mexico Dead Zone Is A Time Bomb (July 5, 2009)
• Ghosts in the Water (May 10, 2009)
• Ancient Water Source Key to Australia's Future (December 27, 2008)
• Save Kolahoi, Save Kashmir (October 28, 2008)
• Got Water? Visions of Planet Earth in 2030 (October 14, 2008)
• Future of Water Looking Murky (September 4, 2008)
• Water Experts Raise Warning Flag (July 14, 2008)
• Record Glacier Melt from Climate Change (March 16, 2008)

image: satellite view of Guanabara Bay (credit: Ron Beck, USGS Land Processes Data Center, Satellite Systems Branch, NASA)

The Real Price of Meat

Eating meat is a costly affair on several levels. The international "Meatout" campaign adds up the total bill

The deleterious effects of meat-eating are being seen on a global level.

"As environmental science delves deeper into the effects of meat production, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to ignore the consequences of this unsustainable practice that causes problems including a loss of biodiversity, global warming, deforestation, air and water pollution, diseases and violence," writes Alicia Graef of Care2.

According to a new report by Worldwatch.org, "livestock and their byproducts actually account for at least 32,564 million tons of CO2 per year, or 51 percent of annual worldwide GHG [greenhouse gas] emissions."

The report concludes that the best way to reverse climate change is to replace animal products with soy-based products and other alternatives, stating, "This approach would have far more rapid effects on GHG emissions and their atmospheric concentrations -- and thus, on the rate the climate is warming -- than actions to replace fossil fuels with renewable energy."

All this C02 can be deadly for humans. In a study published in Environmental Science & Technology, Stanford University professor Mark Jacobson estimated that localized "C02 domes" could cause the premature deaths of 50 to 100 people a year in California and 300 to 1,000 for the continental United States, according to a recent article in Scientific American.

Of course, humans aren't the only ones who can die from the global warming effects of the meat industry (not to mention the direct health problems caused by eating red meat, such as cardiopathy, atherosclerosis, colon cancer, rheumatoid arthritis, endometriosis and even Alzheimers). There are also the billions animals that are killed every year on their way to dinner tables around the world.

"It's also difficult to ignore the intense suffering of innocent animals who are treated as mere commodities with dollar signs attached, but there seems to be a disconnect between neatly wrapped packages on store shelves and their origins," writes Graef.

In an effort to educate the public about the effects of eating meat, the Farm Animal Rights Movement (FARM), which is dedicated to "promoting planetary survival through plant-based eating" and In Defense of Animals (IDA), whose mission is "to end animal exploitation, cruelty, and abuse by protecting and advocating for the rights, welfare, and habitats of animals, as well as to raise their status beyond mere property, commodities, or things," have joined with consumer protection and animal rights advocates, healthcare professionals and public officials around the world for Meatout, an international grassroots diet education campaign that launches on March 20.

It is difficult to comprehend the real price of meat. But starting to tally its true global cost is a step in the right direction.

GET INVOLVED

• Check out Meatout
  
• Read about the HBO documentary "Death on a Factory Farm"
• Choose a pork substitute for your recipe
  
• Read PETA's "The Hidden Life of Pigs"
  
• Sign a PETA letter urging Unilever to stop pig abuse
• Read the Yale College Vegetarian Society's "Top 10 Reasons to Become Vegetarian"
  

RELATED POSTS

• Ohioans Seek Humane Treatment of Farm Animals (February 3, 2010)
• The Castrato Oinks (January 12, 2010)
• These Little Piggies Didn't Go to Market (May 2, 2009)
• Animal Farm (April 10, 2009)
• The Gloomy Dean (January 30, 2009)
• Eat Healthy and Save the World, Simultaneously (January 23, 2009)
• California Passes Landmark Anti-Cruelty Act (November 7, 2008)
• If We Really Are What We Eat, Most of Us Are A Bit Disturbing (October 17, 2008)
• Patrick Martins: About a Bird (November 20, 2009)

image: Keith Weller, USDA

Canada Increases Seal Hunt Quota

The world's largest annual slaughter of marine mammals is about to begin

Last month at a G7 economic meeting in Iqaluit on the south coast of Baffin Island, Canadian Finance Minister Jim Flaherty tried to serve seal meat. Not a single foreign diplomat took up his offer.

Perhaps that's not a surprise. In April 2009, the European Union voted 550 to 49 in favor of banning seal products from Canada, calling the seal hunt "inherently inhumane."

The United States, Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy, Austria, Croatia, Slovenia, Germany, Switzerland, Hungary, Czech Republic, Mexico and Panama have either banned seal products or have made moves to do so.

Even the majority of Canadians are expressing their distaste for the hunt. A recent poll found that 72% of Canadians support regulations banning the hunting of seal pups and 81% would not be upset if the commercial seal hunt were to end altogether.

But it seems that the growing domestic and international chorus of opprobrium towards the brutal hunt has fallen on deaf ears within the Canadian government.

This week, Canada announced an increase in the quota of baby harp seals that hunters can kill during this year's seal hunt to 330,000 to supply a declining market for seal meat, blubber and fur.

"This quota is all the more outrageous because Canada knows that many baby seals are likely to perish because of melting ice before the sealers even arrive," said Nigel Barker of the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) in an email.

"Harp seals need sea ice to give birth to and nurse their pups," said Humane Society International (HSI)/Canada Executive Director Rebecca Aldworth in an email. "But for the first year on record, virtually no sea ice has formed in key birthing areas such as the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Without it, mother seals won't have a place to give birth to their pups, and many pups may perish as a consequence of the environmental disaster."

But the Canadian government may permit the sealers to kill any of the few surviving seal pups that they can find.

There is however one Canadian senator who is taking a stand: Mac Harb. "Canada’s commercial seal hunt is a dying industry based primarily on demand for fur for luxury items," writes Senator Harb on his Web site. "But markets for seal fur are disappearing and sealers’ earnings have plummeted." Each sealer earns about $1,000 minus expenses for participating in the hunt. Harb has introduced a bill to end the hunt.

Founder and president of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society Paul Watson said in an email, "Finally, a Canadian politician with the guts to speak out for justice for the seals."

"The seal hunt is an economic failure," said International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) President Fred O'Regan in an email. "An analysis published in the journal Marine Policy earlier this year determined that ending Canada's commercial seal hunt would save Canadians a minimum of $6.9 million per year."

"If Prime Minister Stephen Harper stops the hunt, I’ll personally escort him to the seal nursery, so the seal pups can show their gratitude face to face," Barker said. "I can guarantee him that it will be a trip he'll never forget."

GET INVOLVED

• Join Humane Society International's various efforts to stop Canada's seal hunt
• Sign an IFAW petition supporting the Harb Bill to end Canada's seal hunt
• Tell Canada what you would be willing to do if they ended their seal hunt
  
• Sign the PETA petition to boycott Canadian maple syrup as long as the seal hunt continues

RELATED POSTS

• From Syrup to Seals in Canada (February 15, 2010)
• Europe to Canada: Stop Killing Seals (May 6, 2009)
• Senators Stand Up for Seals (April 5, 2009)
• Death Row Baby Seals Find A Friend in Canada's Senate (March 15, 2009)
• EU to Propose Ban on Seal Products (April 17, 2008)
• Canadian Seal Hunt Protesters Arrested (April 9, 2008)
• Canadian Seal Hunt Begins (March 29, 2008)
• New Standards Attempt More Humane Seal Hunt (March 27, 2008)
• Exclusive Interview with Francois Hugo, Founder, Seal Alert-SA (July 15, 2009)

image: Jerry Vlasak (right) inspects a seal carcass on Prince Edward Island in 2005 (credit: Sea Shepherd Conservation Society)

Thinking Green: What Is a Shamrock?

The seamróg is much more than an Irish symbol

Today is St. Partick's Day, and as people around the world celebrate Irish culture, one little plant will take centerstage: the shamrock.

A three-leafed old white clover, the shamrock comes in two varieties: Trifolium repens (Dutch white clover, known in Irish as seamair bhán) and the more common Trifolium dubium (a lesser clover, known in Irish as seamair bhuí).

"Seamair" is the Irish word for "clover." The diminutive version of word -- "seamróg" -- is anglicized as "shamrock," a close approximation of the original Irish pronounciation.

This herbaceous perennial plant native to Europe, North Africa and West Asia, was a popular Victorian-era symbol and has even been registered as a trademark by the Irish government.

Unsurprising, the shamrock is an emblem employed by a host of sports teams and businesses, such as Celtic F.C., the Irish Rugby Football Union, the Boston Celtics, Aer Lingus, IDA Ireland, University College Dublin, University of Notre Dame and the Northern Ireland Tourist Board.

Traditionally used for its medicinal properties, the Cherokee, Iroquois, Mohegan and other Native American tribes made infusions of clover to treat fevers, coughing and common cold symptoms.

Prized for its ability to fix nitrogen, clover is also used as a "companion plant" in organic lawn care, helping to prevent leaching and some lawn diseases.

And it is also a vital survival food. Abundant, hardy and rich in protein, fresh clover has been used for centuries as a salad ingredient.

But Saint Patrick used it to illustrate more spiritual matters -- the Christian doctrine of the Trinity: the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost.

So as you raise that pint of Guinness to celebrate Ireland's history and culture, remember the humble shamrock, a small common plant that has meant much to so many.

GET INVOLVED

• Make a honey and clover sandwich
  
• Sign a petition to the United Nations to show your support of biodiversity
• Analyze and reduce your impact on the environment with the National Grid Floe
• Build a pond
• Join the "Million Ponds Project"
• Support Conservation International campaigns to protect biodiversity hotspots around the world

RELATED POSTS

• From Syrup to Seals in Canada (February 15, 2010)
• Dig a Hole, Fill It with Water (February 9, 2010)
• Less Species = More Disease (December 9, 2009)
  
• Putting for Birdie (November 4, 2009)
• The Trees of the Maya (July 29, 2009)
• Coffee Made in the Shade? It's for the Birds (January 2, 2009)
• Saving Wildlife on the Back Nine (December 4, 2008)
• Banned Pesticides Killing Birds (April 10, 2008)

image: Dutch white clover (Trifolium repens) (credit: jengods)

The Ultimate Price of Ivory

As an international convention decides what to do with over 100 tons of old ivory, the slaughter of elephants in Africa continues

African elephants are quickly disappearing to the ivory trade. With less than 500,000 remaining, their numbers have been reduced to just 35 percent of what they were 1980, mostly to supply consumer demand for ivory in China, Japan and Thailand.

This week, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) will decide whether to grant requests by Tanzania and Zambia to reduce the protection status of their elephants so that they can offload 112 tons of their stockpiled ivory with a one-time sale.

Kenya and Mali, on the other hand, are leading a group of African nations calling for a 20-year ban on ivory exports, arguing that any legal trading encourages poaching, which has lately been on the rise.

An international team of 27 conservationists has weighed in on the debate, writing in the March 12 edition of the journal Science that permitting the sale could lead to increased slaughter of elephants throughout the continent, according to ScienceDaily.com.

The scientists point to Tanzania and Zambia as major corridors for the illegal ivory trade, citing DNA evidence of ivory seized in 2002 and 2006 that traces back to the two countries.

"These two countries are at the center of the illegal ivory trade in Africa. It's kind of unbelievable that their requests have gotten this far," said Samuel Wasser, a University of Washington conservation biologist and lead author of the Science paper.

As CITES debates the request of Tanzania and Zambia, they must remember the main question: Do we want elephants or ivory? Because in the end, we can't have both.

GET INVOLVED

• Sign an Avaaz.org petition urging the 175 parties of the UN Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species to reject any exemptions in the global ban on the ivory trade, to extend that ban for at least 20 years, and to take all necessary steps to enforce that ban and protect the elephants
• Sign a Care2 petition to permanently ban the sale of ivory
  
• Sign a petition urging eBay to ban all ivory sales on its site
• Adopt an elephant from the World Wildlife Fund for $25
• Donate to Save the Elephants

RELATED POSTS

• Elephants in Vietnam: Just 80 Left (December 3, 2009)
• Of People, Pachyderms and Peppers (October 20, 2009)
• Bye Bye Bangkok (August 15, 2009)
• Elephants Beaten At Ringling (July 24, 2009)
• RIP Ned (May 28, 2009)
• Free Lucky (April 27, 2009)
  
• Remembering Buddha's Precious Pachyderm (February 26, 2009)
• L.A. Times Poll: Should Billy the Elephant Remain at the L.A. Zoo? (January 9, 2009)
  
• 2,000 Elephants Missing in Chad (December 15, 2008)
• Getting Close to the Elephants of Samburu (August 19, 2008)
• Elephant Extinction Possible by 2020 (August 3, 2008)
• Future Uncertain for Thailand's Elephants (July 31, 2008)
• Listening to the Secret Lives of Elephants (July 5, 2008)

image: The tusks and face of an elephant killed for its ivory lie on the ground in an African forest (credit: Karl Ammann).