March Against Monsanto May 24, 2013

March Against Monsanto everywhere tomorrow – including Boulder, CO at noon with me.

It’s enough already. If Monsanto were a character in a Dr. Who episode or cowboy story, they would have been put away as irredeemable bad guys long ago! Time to make life imitate art.

Want to learn more about why you should care? For a quick overview, check out my earlier blog post about GMOs: Just Say “NO” to Monsanto

For more in-depth understanding, here’s a link to a full-length film which you can see free on YouTube, Seeds of Death.

After I march for food security, I’m going up north a bit to call a wedding dance. It’s a deep love of life that leads both. Carry on in joy, everyone.

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Techno-fast March 22, 2012

No time? If you are feeling the pressure of what feels like increasing amounts of work and less time to do it in, you are not alone. Technology, like the computers we’re both using right now to communicate, has brought many blessings, but a sort of tyranny has come with it. Just keeping up with email can mean countless hours alone, staring at the flickering screen.

How long has it been since you just went outside, lay down in the grass, and watched the clouds?

No, really?

Does that idea feel somehow shocking, distasteful, dangerous, wrong, lazy, subversive; the slippery slope to slackerdom? Do your nerves twitch at the thought of the many things that you should be getting done? How wasteful – doing nothing!

But it’s not nothing; such down-time is how the imagination recharges. And the more creativity and life energy we have, the more brilliantly productive we can be – not to mention more happy.

I’ve finally come to the conclusion that there will always be too much work to get done in the time allotted for it, so constantly rushing to keep up is an exercise in futility;  a stress-inducing mistake. I think of my dad: when he worked, he worked hard. And then – here’s the kicker – he’d stop working. He did not get caught in that trap that many of us do, of sort of working all the time. All of the time. ALL the time. Lemme just take a moment to check my email. Again.

In the interest of sanity, we might ask ourselves, when do I allow myself to simply not participate? To rest, play, connect via real bodies, eat a long meal and talk together, do hands-on projects, or just walk around? And then to re-engage with work in a way that seems inviting since our energy is renewed?

I like to take one day per week to simply not engage electronically; to “just say no” to that particularly addictive mind drug. No internet, no email, no DVDs, no TV, no voicemail. I’m not Orthodox Jewish; I still do things like use my car to get in the groceries. I’ll do house chores, make something, play music, take a little hike, or read a book. It feels so freeing. When is the last time you spent an entire day wallowing in a novel?

There’s a little movement afoot to support this sort of thing, the National Day of Unplugging. I see this as part of a living ecopsychological meme, the return of a regular day of rest. The Sabbath was a very good idea whose time has come again, as our need is great. Such activities (or non-activities!) can contribute a great deal to our collective mental health, soul spaciousness, and subversive delight.  Just say no to constantly being wired.

This year, the Day of Unplugging runs from sundown Friday, March 23 to sundown, Saturday March 24. You might want to join in too.

And now, a fun techno-intervention for every day: the Cell Phone Stack.

If you want to keep your pals to yourself at a meal instead of watching them play with the latest iPhone app or take calls from other people who couldn’t be bothered to haul their actual breathing carcasses down there to join you, the Cell Phone Stack may be of interest. Here’s how Kempt, a men’s style / fashion / grooming site, describes this “solution for peace”:

It works like this: as you arrive, each person places their phone facedown in the center of the table. (If you’re feeling theatrical, you can go for a stack like this one, but it’s not required.) As the meal goes on, you’ll hear various texts and emails arriving… and you’ll do absolutely nothing. You’ll face temptation—maybe even a few involuntary reaches toward the middle of the table—but you’ll be bound by the single, all-important rule of the phone stack.

Whoever picks up their phone is footing the bill.

It’s a brilliant piece of social engineering, masquerading as a bar game. It takes the phone out of the pocket—where you can sneak a glance and hope nobody notices—and places it in the center of attention at all times. Suddenly, picking up your phone is the big deal you always secretly knew it was. And more importantly, it comes with consequences.

After posting this brilliant social intervention, the writer got a bunch of objections, which he answered in a subsequent post. This one’s my favorite:

Texting Is Totally Different from Answering a Phone Call.

This was the most common and most mystifying response. On some level, it’s true—texting is not nearly as rude as talking on the phone—but that doesn’t mean it isn’t rude. Anytime you’re giving a pocket-sized gadget precedence over a human being, something has gone wrong.

I also liked this one:

My Job Requires Me to Be On Call 24 Hours a Day.

No, it doesn’t; you just like to say that.

Ha! Busted.

Please begin to take some of each day’s 24 hours back for yourself. Do it often, if only for 10 minutes at a time. It’s a start. I hope I’ll get to join you watching pictures form in the clouds. Or hanging out at night and looking at the stars. Or wandering around the neighborhood like in a Ray Bradbury story, petting all of the cats and dogs. Or searching for edible weeds. Or loafing high in some tree’s branches all day, listening to birdsong. I’ll bring my book, and we can talk.

Just Say “No” to Monsanto March 1, 2012

It’s dark, it’s cold, and as I’m a classic test case in environmental psychology, I’m grumpy. So here comes another commentary on the news. When it warms up, things will be different around here; I promise. Regardless, this is something we all need to know about.

Today, the Indigenous Environmental Network sent this Ecologist article my way:  How Dow and Monsanto teamed up over ‘Agent Orange’ herbicide, by Richard Schiffman.

Why should we care about the shenanigans of Monsanto and Dow? What’s the problem?

In a nutshell, the problem is that strong chemical herbicides, over time, goad the ‘weeds’ into growing stronger. So then farmers have to keep buying more, and stronger, poisons. These harm the water and every being who drinks of it including migrating birds and wildlife; the bees and other pollinators, the farm workers, likely their own children – and the crop, which you will buy and eat. So farmers have to then buy expensive GMO crop seeds that are strong enough to withstand these toxic herbicides, the sale of both benefiting… guess who?! And by the way, guess who manufactures anti-cancer drugs as well?

For small farmers, it’s an economic disaster. They can no longer use their own native seeds, ones that may have been passed down in their families for generations and are also, of course, free of charge, unlike Monsanto’s patented monstrosities. Farmers in India are going to the poorhouse because of that vicious cycle. Thinking they were buying pest resistance, they didn’t realize they were instead indenturing themselves to an ever-increasing use of pesticides and the purchase of patented seeds.

If GMO crops accidentally contaminate the fields of neighboring farmers through wind, birds, bugs or genetic drift, these farmers then not only have to deal with the health consequences plus business consequences if the farm happens – er, happened – to be organic, but to add insult to injury, they have to pay Monsanto for patent infringement. Check out Canadian farmer Percy Schmeiser’s story: it will curl your hair. It seems the joke slogan is, horrifyingly, coming true: No Food Shall Be Grown that Monsanto Don’t Own.

 Further, think about this: genetic engineering is the largest uncontrolled biological experiment ever perpetrated on this planet. We have no idea what effects genetically modified organisms (GMOs) have, or will have over time, on our own health or the health of the ecosystem. Some scientists now suspect that GMOs may be playing a part in the vast “colony collapse” deaths of America’s honeybees.

This cycle is a race to the bottom for everyone involved, except the chemical companies. According to a report by Jeremy Scahill in The Nation (9/15/2010), Monsanto purchased the largest mercenary army in the world, Blackwater (now called Xe Services). So they’ve got the thug power to back up their coup. They’re now pushing Nepal to grow GMOs, according to Abi, who has started a facebook campaign: https://www.facebook.com/stopmonsantoinnepal

But we can still say “no.” In 2004, Mendocino county, California officially banned the cultivation, production and distribution of GMO crops, and more places are following. Boulder County, Colorado, where I now live, is in negotiation about it. The entire country of Hungary took that bold stand, and to show they were serious, they destroyed 1000 acres of maize found to have been grown with GMO seeds after they were banned. Many farmers didn’t know these seeds were GMO, and were shocked. Mexico’s heritage corn is in danger of being permanently contaminated by GMO corn, and they have banned most seeds like Hungary did. Reportedly, Japan wants to as well. But the free trade agreements (FTAs) Japan and Mexico have with the USA keep that from legally being possible: they can’t refuse corn seeds destined for our dinner tables. -Yet.

Let’s start taking care of our own and the planet’s health instead of the chemical company guys’ wallets.

Stand up and display political defiance of Monsanto and genetically modified foods. Demand labeling at least, for now, so we can have the possibility of making an informed choice about whether we wish to eat their products.

And on the everyday front, please buy and grow organic. It is really worth it.

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*** UPDATE 5/24/13:   See my related blog post, March Against Monsanto, which contains a link to a full-length YouTube film describing in much more detail why we should be concerned about GMOs.

Time to Clean House February 7, 2012

The League of Conservation Voters has come out with this year’s (2011) stats on our elected officials’ work. It specifically focuses on their choices affecting the health of the planetary systems that sustain our lives.

“The good news is that while the House voted against the environment an unprecedented number of times, both the U.S. Senate and the Obama administration stood firm against the vast majority of these attacks. Indeed, not only did the nation’s bedrock environmental protections emerge largely unscathed from 2011, the Obama administration also made major progress through administrative actions to protect our air and water.”

Read their Scorecard, then keep the info firmly in mind when deciding whom to hire again come next election. As a voter, I think it’s time to clean House.

I Stand with the Xingu River June 1, 2011

This photo, which I got from La Mina Circle in Los Angeles, reveals a tragic moment in the politics of the earth.

Chief Raoni of the Kayapó people broke down crying when he learned that the Brazilian president, Dilma Rousseff. approved construction to begin on the Belo Monte hydroelectric plant & dam project on  Xingu indigenous lands.

If it does go through as planned, the Belo Monte dam will inundate nearly a million acres of rainforest & indigenous lands. The new water body will be bigger than the Panama Canal.  40,000 local and indigenous people will be forced off their native lands, all that habitat vitally useful to countless local and migratory species destroyed, and millions of unknown species of animals and plants murdered.

The goal to produce electricity is a good one, but this way of attaining it is not. It brings unconscionably high environmental and social costs, and could just as easily be met through greater investments in energy-efficient, place-appropriate methods of generation.

Let’s just call the Belo Monte project what it is: a horrific genocidal project for the short-term financial gain of a few. This project means a death sentence for the people of the Great Bend of the Xingu river, as indigenous peoples’ culture and survival are inextricably tied to the land. It also means irreversible environmental destruction.

Large dam projects like this are just the sort that North Americans endorsed for so many years as a symbol of successful “progress” but which we are now are coming to regret, as we realize their contribution to unintended unpleasant environmental consequences. For example, such dams play a key role in the tragic loss of salmon populations, who need an adequate flow of very cold water in contiguous waterways to survive. This means less delicious wild salmon to eat and serious economic trouble for all the folks making a living from the fishing industry, as well as an unimaginable loss to the native peoples for whom salmon is an extremely important totem of their identity.

I stand with the Xingu River and its people of all species in opposing this madness. If you do too, AmazonWatch.org has a petition to the Brazilian president that you can sign:

Stop the Belo Monte Monster Dam!

From their website: “This is the last chance we have to paralyze Belo Monte’s construction,” said Renata Pinheiro. “The future of the Xingu is in your hands, indigenous peoples and social movements. You succeeded in stopping Belo Monte for 30 years – now more than ever we need to strengthen our resolve.”

Equal Rights Granted to Nature April 12, 2011

In a breathtaking movement toward sustainability through wisdom, indigenous philosophy regarding right relationship with Earth is about to become law.

From the U.K.’s excellent paper The Guardian, April 11, 2011:

Bolivia is set to pass the world’s first laws granting all nature equal rights to humans. The Law of Mother Earth, now agreed by politicians and grassroots social groups, redefines the country’s rich mineral deposits as “blessings” and is expected to lead to radical new conservation and social measures to reduce pollution and control industry.

The country, which has been pilloried by the US and Britain in the UN climate talks for demanding steep carbon emission cuts, will establish 11 new rights for nature. They include: the right to life and to exist; the right to continue vital cycles and processes free from human alteration; the right to pure water and clean air; the right to balance; the right not to be polluted; and the right to not have cellular structure modified or genetically altered.

Controversially, it will also enshrine the right of nature “to not be affected by mega-infrastructure and development projects that affect the balance of ecosystems and the local inhabitant communities”.

“It makes world history. Earth is the mother of all”, said Vice-President Alvaro García Linera. “It establishes a new relationship between man and nature, the harmony of which must be preserved as a guarantee of its regeneration.”

[read more here]

My friend Jon Berger pointed out that this is not a completely revolutionary idea. “Way back in the early 70′s,” he said, “a law prof named Christopher Stone published a completely serious and non-ironic article called “Should Trees Have Standing?,” which proposed that natural features like trees should have legal rights just like people do.” (Read it here on Harvard University’s pdf.)

I used to teach from this very article, including it amongst other provocative readings in environmental philosophy for my ecopsychology courses. But it’s a long haul from theory to actual practice (and not only by a small pocket area but by a whole country), particularly when the basic idea behind it is generally seen as so outlandish as to be laughable. Seeing such theoretical musings now put into actual practice is a big, wonderful shift. (And seeing it put into practice here in the heart of capitalist greed would be revolutionary.)

It remains how effective this law will actually be in halting the polluting and otherwise damaging actions of industries. After all, Ecuador changed its constitution to recognize rights of the more-than-human world, but this has not stopped the oil companies’ destructive activities in the Amazon rainforests.

But Bolivia is fortunate to have a VP like Linera, an intellectual, mathematician and ex-armed rebel who, according to Indymedia Ireland, defines himself as “the bridge between [supporters of] indigenous and the middle classes.”

In his eclectic combination, I hear echoes of another great Latin American scientist-cum-change agent, Ernesto “Che” Guevara. Following one’s eclectic interests needn’t mean mere dilettantism; followed with passion and persistence, they can lead to some amazing new perspectives. As issues get viewed across disciplines, a giddy freedom of thought can emerge. As Robert Heinlein said, “specialization is for insects.”

But I digress.

Both Guevara and Linera seem to be guided by deep caring. As Che once observed, “At the risk of seeming ridiculous, let me say that the true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love.”

This act, attempting – and succeeding! – at passing the Law of Mother Earth, certainly qualifies. The Bolivian government is reportedly committed to a strong conservation movement against pollution and other exploitative, extractive activities, conferring the power to monitor and control the activities of industry, including at local community levels. How moving and fitting that these changes are based on their indigenous idea of Pachamama, recognizing that this ancient wisdom, if acted upon, provides a clear path toward future survival.

Such a governmental commitment to nature’s basic rights means much greater leverage for achieving the kind of structural changes necessary for the future health of the land and all of the peoples that dwell there.

As if that weren’t enough, the new law also restores power and dignity to the area’s indigenous population. Foreign minister David Choquehuanca commented, “We indigenous people can contribute to solving the energy, climate, food and financial crises with our values.”

Yes!

Toxic to Bees; Not So Great For Us Either January 18, 2011

You have undoubtedly heard about the trouble honeybees are facing – every year, entire hives of them are suddenly found dead. And the numbers are mounting.

Their loss would mean much more than the obvious downer of no longer having delicious honey to eat. Bees are essential pollinators that much of the food chain depends upon. In other words, if we want to keep eating the way we do now, we need the bees to keep working with our plants.

Scientists struggle to understand what’s behind the sudden death of bee colonies. It’s likely that there is no single cause – no “point source” but rather a more complex matrix of sources that, blended together, create a toxin. This is quite common in systemic diseases – and that very complexity makes it difficult to prove any single source dangerous enough to ban. Thus we get weird cancers, allergies, autoimmune diseases like rheumatoid arthritis and Graves’ disease and chronic fatigue syndrome and Alzheimers.

I’m talking about bees, yes, but our health is dependent upon the same clean system as theirs is – plus we humans are also partially dependent upon the bees.

According to Credo action network, there is mounting evidence suggests that one critical factor may be a particular, widely used, class of pesticides.

“One such chemical, called clothianidin, is produced by the German corporation Bayer CropScience. It is used as a treatment on crop seeds, including corn and canola, and works by expressing itself in the plants’ pollen and nectar. Not coincidentally, these are honey bees’ favorite sources of food.”

Chemical pesticides like this were invented for war. They are violent, so it’s not surprising that they have unexpected side effects that affect the health of many species – including us. The precautionary principle should be applied to all human-made chemicals (prove they DON’T harm before use, rather than the reverse – otherwise known as the “Duh principle”).”

If you are so inclined, click on the “save the bees” to sign their petition to the EPA.  It calls for “the E.P.A. to immediately prohibit the use of clothianidin and conduct a full scientific review to determine its impact on honey bee populations.”

You might also write a letter to Bayer telling them you will no longer purchase their products until this pesticide is withdrawn and they stop the nasty practice of covering up real impacts with their own sketchy, in-house, so-called “scientific” studies.

Really, can you think of anything closer to evil than a company that manufactures health-care products also knowingly manufacturing something that instead creates widespread death – and then covering up that fact so they can continue to make more money on it? We must raise our voices and our wallets against such unethical corporate practices. Such practices must be stopped – before it’s too late.

If you feel bad about seeming confrontational, remember this: the corporate people will benefit too. All beings need a healthy planet more than anything else, even CEOs.