Re: [Biofuel] Join the Blockade of the Keystone Pipeline
a billion dollars per well. These processes are part of a desperate effort by corporations to make profits before a final systems collapse. Droughts are already sweeping the Midwest. The battle between farmers and fossil fuel corporations for diminishing water sources has begun. Yet our ruling elite refuses to face the stark reality of climate change. They ignore the imperative to find other ways of structuring our economies and our relationship to the environment. They myopically serve a doomed system. And, if left unstopped, the cost for all of us will be catastrophic. Weis, a former congressional staffer, expects the last section of the pipeline to be authorized by the president once the election is over. It is critical that people understand that completion of the southern leg of Keystone XL-which President Obama and Gov. Romney both fully support-would give TransCanada a direct line from Alberta's landlocked tar sands mine fields to refineries in Texas for export overseas, Weis explained. By tapping into Keystone I, which has already been built, the southern leg of Keystone XL would open the floodgates to tar sands exploitation in Canada. At a time when the climate is already dangerously destabilizing before our eyes, I can't believe we're even having this conversation. He described Obama's and Romney's failure to stand up to this corporate bully as a failure to defend America. It is unconscionable to put the interests of a transnational corporation before the health, safety and economic well-being of the American people, he said. Weis sees the struggle to halt the Keystone XL pipeline as a symbolic crossroads for the country and the planet. One path leads, he said, toward decay. The other toward renewal. There comes a time when we must say to the ruling elite: 'No more,' he said. There comes a time when we must make a stand for the future of our children, and for all life on Earth. That time is here. That time is now. ___ Biofuel mailing list Biofuel@sustainablelists.org http://sustainablelists.org/mailman/listinfo/sustainablelorgbiofuel Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Search the combined Biofuel and Biofuels-biz list archives (70,000 messages): http://www.mail-archive.com/biofuel@sustainablelists.org/ -- next part -- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: /pipermail/attachments/20121017/c81c6baf/attachment.html ___ Biofuel mailing list Biofuel@sustainablelists.org http://sustainablelists.org/mailman/listinfo/sustainablelorgbiofuel Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Search the combined Biofuel and Biofuels-biz list archives (70,000 messages): http://www.mail-archive.com/biofuel@sustainablelists.org/
Re: [Biofuel] Join the Blockade of the Keystone Pipeline
economy, but this is another corporate lie. The process of extracting shale oil through hydraulic fracking, for example, requires millions of gallons of chemically treated water that leaves behind poisoned aquifers and huge impoundment ponds of toxic waste. The process of extracting oil shale, or kerogen, requires it to be melted, meaning that tremendous amounts of energy are required for a marginal return. The process of tar sand extraction requires vast open pit mining operations or pumping underground that melts the oil with steam jets. Tar sand extraction also releases significantly more greenhouse gas emissions than conventional oil drilling, meaning an acceleration of global warming. Drilling in the Arctic, with its severe weather, costs as much as half a billion dollars per well. These processes are part of a desperate effort by corporations to make profits before a final systems collapse. Droughts are already sweeping the Midwest. The battle between farmers and fossil fuel corporations for diminishing water sources has begun. Yet our ruling elite refuses to face the stark reality of climate change. They ignore the imperative to find other ways of structuring our economies and our relationship to the environment. They myopically serve a doomed system. And, if left unstopped, the cost for all of us will be catastrophic. Weis, a former congressional staffer, expects the last section of the pipeline to be authorized by the president once the election is over. It is critical that people understand that completion of the southern leg of Keystone XL-which President Obama and Gov. Romney both fully support-would give TransCanada a direct line from Alberta's landlocked tar sands mine fields to refineries in Texas for export overseas, Weis explained. By tapping into Keystone I, which has already been built, the southern leg of Keystone XL would open the floodgates to tar sands exploitation in Canada. At a time when the climate is already dangerously destabilizing before our eyes, I can't believe we're even having this conversation. He described Obama's and Romney's failure to stand up to this corporate bully as a failure to defend America. It is unconscionable to put the interests of a transnational corporation before the health, safety and economic well-being of the American people, he said. Weis sees the struggle to halt the Keystone XL pipeline as a symbolic crossroads for the country and the planet. One path leads, he said, toward decay. The other toward renewal. There comes a time when we must say to the ruling elite: 'No more,' he said. There comes a time when we must make a stand for the future of our children, and for all life on Earth. That time is here. That time is now. ___ Biofuel mailing list Biofuel@sustainablelists.org http://sustainablelists.org/mailman/listinfo/sustainablelorgbiofuel Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Search the combined Biofuel and Biofuels-biz list archives (70,000 messages): http://www.mail-archive.com/biofuel@sustainablelists.org/ -- next part -- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: /pipermail/attachments/20121017/c81c6baf/attachment.html ___ Biofuel mailing list Biofuel@sustainablelists.org http://sustainablelists.org/mailman/listinfo/sustainablelorgbiofuel Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Search the combined Biofuel and Biofuels-biz list archives (70,000 messages): http://www.mail-archive.com/biofuel@sustainablelists.org/ -- next part -- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: /pipermail/attachments/20121017/22b94cec/attachment.html ___ Biofuel mailing list Biofuel@sustainablelists.org http://sustainablelists.org/mailman/listinfo/sustainablelorgbiofuel Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Search the combined Biofuel and Biofuels-biz list archives (70,000 messages): http://www.mail-archive.com/biofuel@sustainablelists.org/
[Biofuel] Who's behind the land grabs? - GRAIN
http://www.grain.org/article/entries/4576-slideshow-who-s-behind-the-land-grabs Slideshow: Who's behind the land grabs? GRAIN | 16 October 2012 Every day there are new stories of companies buying up farmlands. Malaysian palm oil giants buying up lands for plantations in West Africa. Wall Street bankers taking over cattle ranches in Brazil. Saudi businessmen signing land deals in the Philippines. The latest dataset on land grabs claims that 10 million hectares of land have been grabbed by foreign companies on average every year since 2007. The result is that a small number of people are taking over more and more of the world's farmlands, and the water that goes with it, leaving everyone else with less, or none at all. As the world plunges deeper into a food crisis, these new farmland lords will hold sway over who gets to eat and who doesn't and who profits and who perishes within the food system. The global farmland grab is only happening because people are pursuing it. The number of land grabbers is small, in contrast with the high number of people displaced by their actions. They are mostly men, often with experience working with agribusiness companies or banks. Some of them sit at high-levels of government and intergovernmental agencies, and sometimes at the highest levels. They operate out of the big financial centres of the world and often get together at farmland investor meetings, whether in Singapore, Zanzibar or New York City. We think it might help the debate over land grabs to pull back the curtain a little on who these people are. So we've pieced together a slide show that tells about some of those who have been actively pursuing or supporting farmland grabs. It's an emblematic set of land grabbers, not a comprehensive one. Knowing who's invovled can also help us in pressuring the land grabbers to stop. Each landgrabber profile indicates who his or her friends are and provides resources for those who want further information or to pursue actions. Download the slideshow in PDF (5.6 MB) or a text version in PDF (713 KB). http://www.grain.org/article/entries/4576-slideshow-who-s-behind-the-land-grabs.pdf?_preview=1 ___ Biofuel mailing list Biofuel@sustainablelists.org http://sustainablelists.org/mailman/listinfo/sustainablelorgbiofuel Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Search the combined Biofuel and Biofuels-biz list archives (70,000 messages): http://www.mail-archive.com/biofuel@sustainablelists.org/
Re: [Biofuel] Join the Blockade of the Keystone Pipeline
Keystone XL Contractor and SUNY Buffalo Shale Institute Conduct LA County's Fracking Study Tuesday, 16 October 2012 15:39 http://truth-out.org/news/item/12146-keystone-xl-contractor-and-suny-buffalo-shale-institute-conduct-la-countys-fracking-study --0-- http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/10/16-0 Published on Tuesday, October 16, 2012 by Common Dreams 'Time is Now to Make a Stand': Tar Sands Pipeline Blockade Grows as Company Lashes Out 50 campaigners break police lines to re-supply tree-sitters as month-long action continues - Common Dreams staff Campaigners with the Tar Sands Blockade-who have been maintaining tree sits and engaging in civil disobedience against the southern portion of TransCanada's tar sands pipeline in east Texas since last month-celebrated what they called their biggest day of action yet on Monday. As the Winnsboro, Texas tree blockade entered its fourth week, over 50 new supporters broke through police lines in order to bring fresh supplies, including food and water, to the tree-sitters. Despite a newly-expanded Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation (SLAPP) injunction served to the protesters by local law enforcement agencies, the anti-pipeline activists risked arrest in large numbers. They're saying we might get sued or worse, but stopping this pipeline is too important. said Glenn Hobbit, 28. Many of the activists continue to use aliases as a security precaution. See photos of the day's action here. The News-Journal in Longview, Texas reports that the SLAPP injunctions are temporary restraining orders issued by two state district court judges against the Keystone XL Pipeline protesters in both Wood and Franklin counties. The court orders prohibit protesters from interfering with, preventing or obstructing construction of the pipeline being built across private property in the two counties en route to the Gulf Coast, the local paper said. And adds: The Wood County restraining order was issued last week in 402nd District Court, about the same time a New York Times reporter and photographer were detained near Winnsboro by off-duty police officers hired by a TransCanada contractor. The pair, reporter Dan Frosch and photographer Brandon Thibodeaux, were released after identifying themselves as members of the press. The orders and and escalating arrests of protestors highlight increasing efforts by TransCanada to move forward construction that has been stalled for several weeks in some areas. Security measures have been increased, said TransCanada spokesman Dan Dodson, with patrols of pipeline easements day and night. Construction has been hampered by protesters who chained themselves to equipment in Franklin County and others in Wood County who have created a maze of tree houses. That protest has been spearheaded by the pipeline opposition group TarSands Blockade. Peaceful and nonviolent civil disobedience is one tool in the activist toolkit, Bill McKibben, a Middlebury College professor who has been one of the leading foes of the Keystone XL, said in an e-mail to the Washington Post regarding the ongoing protest in Texas. You don't want to use it all the time because it gets dull. But this is the kind of case for which it's designed, when you're up against the wall and truly powerful forces are refusing to listen to reason and just pushing ahead regardless. Former New York Times reporter and Truthdig columnist Chris Hedges wrote on Monday that the Keystone pipeline is part of the final phase of extreme exploitation by the corporate state. If completed, he continued: It will pump 1.1 million barrels a day of unrefined tar sand fluid from tar sand mine fields in Canada to the Texas Gulf Coast. Tar sand oil is not conventional crude oil. It is a synthetic slurry that, because tar sand oil is solid in its natural state, must be laced with a deadly brew of toxic chemicals and gas condensates to get it to flow. Tar sands are boiled and diluted with these chemicals before being blasted down a pipeline at high pressure. Water sources would be instantly contaminated if there was a rupture. The pipeline would cross nearly 2,000 U.S. waterways, including the Ogallala Aquifer, source of one-third of the United States' farmland irrigation water. And it is not a matter of if, but when, it would spill. TransCanada's Keystone I pipeline, built in 2010, leaked 12 times in its first 12 months of operation. Because the extraction process emits such a large quantity of greenhouse gases, the pipeline has been called the fuse to the largest carbon bomb on the planet. The climate scientist James Hansen warns that successful completion of the pipeline, along with the exploitation of Canadian tar sands it would facilitate, would mean game over for the climate. Hedges urged others to join the blockade, and quoted climate activist Tom Weis, who said: There comes a time when we must make a stand for the future of our
[Biofuel] End Polluter Welfare
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/10/16-1 Published on Tuesday, October 16, 2012 by Common Dreams End Polluter Welfare by Bernie Sanders The Big Energy industries (oil, coal and gas) along with their political allies like Mitt Romney are waging war against sustainable energy and the need to transform our energy system and reverse global warming. In many instances they are aided and abetted by the very powerful nuclear power industry. One of their main lines of attack (used repeatedly by Romney in his first debate with President Obama) is that the federal government is picking energy winners and losers. In fact, Romney has said he will not invest in chasing fads and picking winners and losers among energy technologies and he will allow the free market to determine energy development. Romney is right about one thing. The government does pick winners and losers in the energy sector. What Romney has not told the American people, however, is that the big winners of federal support are the already immensely profitable fossil fuel and nuclear industries, not sustainable energy. As a member of both the Senate Energy and Environment committees, I am working to stop the handouts to the fossil fuel industry. I have introduced legislation called the End Polluter Welfare Act. Rep. Keith Ellison filed the companion bill in the House of Representatives. Our measure calls for the elimination for all subsidies to the oil, gas and coal industries. Using the best available estimates from the non-partisan Joint Committee on Taxation and other budget experts, we found more than $113 billion in federal subsidies will go to fossil fuel corporations over the next 10 years alone. These subsidies benefit some of the wealthiest corporations on the planet, including the five largest oil corporations, which made a combined profit of $1 trillion over the last decade. Unlike sustainable energy incentives, many of these fossil fuel subsidies are written permanently into the tax code by industry lobbyists, which means they never expire. Let me give you just a few examples of outrageously strong federal support for Big Energy companies: * BP, after committing one of the worst environmental disasters in the modern history of America, was able to take a large tax deduction on the money it spent cleaning up the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. * Coal companies are able to sign single-bid sweetheart leases to mine on federal lands without paying fair value in royalties to the taxpayers of this country. * In 2009, Exxon-Mobil, one of the most profitable corporations in this country, paid no federal income taxes, and in fact received a rebate from the IRS. Many other large and very profitable oil companies also have managed to avoid paying federal income taxes in certain years. But it is not just fossil fuel companies. The nuclear industry also benefits from massive corporate welfare. The non-partisan Congressional Research Service reports that the nuclear industry has received over $95 billion (in 2011 dollars) in federal research and development support in the last 65 years. Nuclear corporations currently have access to billions in federal loan guarantees to build new plants and enrich uranium. They also have federal tax incentives for mining uranium, producing nuclear electricity and even decommissioning a plant. Perhaps most significantly, the nuclear industry would collapse tomorrow without a huge nuclear insurance program from the federal government. The Price-Anderson Act could, in the event of an American nuclear disaster, force taxpayers to pay out tens or even hundreds of billions in damage claims. Nuclear power is so risky that none of Mitt Romney's Wall Street or free market friends will provide that type of insurance. Let's be clear. The war against sustainable energy by the Big Energy companies has been extremely successful. During the last year, with almost unanimous Republican opposition, Congress has not been able to extend a very successful program, the 1603 grant, which had supported over 20,000 sustainable energy projects and tens of thousands of jobs. Congress also has been unable to extend the Production Tax Credit which primarily supports wind energy. The result has been significant layoffs and cancelled projects in the wind industry. What has not been often enough pointed out is that despite all the opposition, all of the lies coming from fossil fuel sponsored think tanks and the right-wing media, this country has made significant and important progress in moving toward energy efficiency and sustainable energy. That progress is critical in the fight to reverse global warming, which the vast majority of scientists who study the issue consider to be one of the greatest threats to our planet. With strong federal intervention, we have made some good progress in recent years, but clearly much more needs to be done. Let me just mention a few
[Biofuel] NATO packs it in; Turkey on the verge of a nervous breakdown
New W. intelligence: Syrian rebels don't have the numbers to win DEBKAfile Exclusive Report October 15, 2012 http://www.debka.com/article/22440/New-W-intelligence-Syrian-rebels-don%C3%A2%E2%82%AC%E2%84%A2t-have-the-numbers-to-win --0-- http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article32764.htm NATO packs it in; Turkey on the verge of a nervous breakdown By Thierry Meyssan October 16, 2012 Information Clearing House - On October 8, the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CTSO) began maneuvers dubbed Inviolable Fraternity. The scenario focuses on the deployment of a peace force in an imaginary country where international jihadists and terrorist organizations operate against a backdrop of ethnic and confessional divisions. The accredited diplomatic corps, which was invited to attend the exercises, listened attentively to the opening address of the deputy secretary general of the organization. He clearly indicated that the CTSO is preparing for an eventual intervention in the Greater Middle East. And for those feigning deafness, Nikolai Bordyuzha specified that his deputy was not speaking of Afghanistan. The Geneva Declaration negotiated by Kofi Annan on June 30 foresaw the deployment of a peace force if the Syrian government and the opposition jointly made the demand. The Free Syrian Army rejected the accord. The term opposition refers only to the political parties who have been meeting since in Damascus, under the aupices of the Russian and Chinese ambassadors. As the Geneva Accord was validated by the Security Council, the deployment of the blue chapkas can be set in motion without requiring an ad hoc resolution. Valery Semerikov stated that 4,000 men had already been enlisted in the Peace Force with 46,000 others in the wings available for the rapid mobilization. With this as background, the signs of Western retreat from Syria are multiplying. The influx of Western arms and combatants is drying up except for the ongoing transfers funded by Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Even more surprising: on six successive occasions, the NATO Command at Incirlik gave jihadists instructions to regroup within specified zones to prepare for huge offensives. While the Syrian Arab Army, which was formed to confront the Israeli Army, may be ill-adapted for guerilla warfare, it is highly effective in conventional combat. In each of these engagements, it easily encircled and wiped out the assembled units of the Free Syrian Army. Though the initial defeats suffered by the jihadists could have been attributed to a tactical error or to an incompetent commander, after the sixth debacle another hypothesis must be considered: that NATO is willingly sending these combatants to their deaths. In contrast to popular perceptions, the motivation of the jihadists is not, properly speaking, ideological or religious but rather, aesthetic. They are not looking to die for a cause and are not focused on the future of Jerusalem. They strike a romantic posture and seek to intensify their sensations whether through drugs or through death. Their behavior makes them easy to manipulate; they seek extreme situations which they are then placed in, and their movements are totally steered. Over the last years, Prince Bandar bin Sultan became the leading architect of these assemblages, including those of al-Qaeda. He supplied them with preachers promising a paradise where seventy virgins would provide them with ecstatic pleasures not if they accomplished a particular military or political feat but only if they died as martyrs wherever Bandar had need for them. It seems Prince Bandar has disappeared from the scene since the attack on him on July 26. He may well be dead. From Morroco to Xinjiang, the jihadists have been left to their own devices, without any real coordination. They could be recruited by any number of actors, as the recent assassination of the U.S. Ambassador in Libya confirms. As a result, Washington wants to unload this risky and burdensome rabble or at the very least reduce their number. The orders that NATO gives to the jihadists are designed to expose them to fire by the Syrian Arab Army which is eliminating them en masse. Recently, the French police killed a French Salafist who attacked a Jewish business establishment. The investigation that followed revealed that he belonged to a network including individuals that had gone to do jihad in Syria. The British police made a similar discovery four days later. The message from Paris and London is that the French and British killed in Syria were not agents on a secret mission but fanatics who acted on their own initiative. This is obviously false because certain of these jihadists were carrying communication instruments of NATO specification, supplied by France and the United Kingdom. Whatever the case, these events are marking the end of the Franco-British involvement alongside the Free Syrian Army, while Damascus
[Biofuel] Tell Me Lies: European Satellites Ordered To Drop Iranian Channels In Disregard of Free Speech
EU bans natural gas from Iran European satellite provider takes 19 Iranian television and radio broadcasters off the air October 15, 2012 http://www.timesofisrael.com/iranian-natural-gas-banned-by-the-eu/ --0-- http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article32762.htm Tell Me Lies: European Satellites Ordered To Drop Iranian Channels In Disregard of Free Speech By Danny Schechter October 16, 2012 Information Clearing House - New York, New York: Back in the 1960's, A British poet, Adrian Mitchell, one of the great bards of that era, wrote a poem that went on to become a stage show in the West End of London. It was called Tell Me Lies about Vietnam and represented one voice among millions in the world then opposing that War It was addressed, To Whom It May Concern and began with words that became its refrain: I was run over by the truth one day Ever since the accident I've walked this way So stick my legs in plaster Tell me lies about Vietnam Years later, before his death, (and I was at the memorial service in London) he kept rewriting the last paragraph into what he called a remix. The poem took on a more global statement That verse was a play on a children's song: You put your bombers in, you put your conscience out You take the human being, and you twist it all about And then this line: Tell me lies about - Iraq, Burma, Afghanistan, BAE Systems, Israel and Iran He understood well that Iran was one of the countries his country and others in the West (and their sycophantic media) are telling lies about. This poem came to mind in the days after the Nobel Prize Committee, for reasons best only known to themselves, decided to sully their Peace Prize by giving it to The European Union, an entity that is very much cheering on the pre-war against Iran with its own draconian sanctions. These were the same people who, for equally incomprehensible reasons, gave the prize to Barack Obama in the hope it would put him on the path of the peaceful. It didn't! A day later, as more thoughtful minds puzzled over the choice of a bloc of nations that has inspired region-wide protests for its brutal austerity programs, the EU took its first act as a peace maker with media censorship. It blocked Iran's ability to communicate with Europeans, even as any one knows anything about how peace is made knows that two- way communications is essential. All parties to a conflict need to know what the other is thinking, need to know how they view the world. Despite the fact that western media is available in Iran, and western journalists frequently report, or as many Iranians believe, 'distort' the news from there, the West now wants to seal off more than Iranian oil. They want to sanction Iranian ideas and keep their own people from hearing and seeing what Iranian TV channels consider important. In short, they just want to hear their own voices. This is the very essence of a propaganda system posing as a commitment to free press, Iran's PressTV had earlier been kicked off British Television where it had built a audience, on the barest of pretences, and now with the connivance, no doubt of Her Majesty's government, is being barred, along with 18 other Iranian channels, from access to European satellites Here's the edict: European satellite company Eutelsat says it's pulled the plug on several Iranian satellite channels following an order by the European Commission. Eutelsat told Press TV that it asked media services company- - Arqiva, to take Iranian satellite channels off one of its Hot- Bird frequencies on Monday. Arqiva said in a separate statement emailed to Press TV that the decision was made by the E-U Council. The channels include Press TV, Al-Alam, Jaam-e-Jam One and Two, Sahar One and Two, Islamic Republic of Iran News Network, Qur'an TV, and al-Kawthar. European satellite firms had been jamming the Iranian channels for months before the decision was announced. Iran's Arabic-language news channel, Al- Alam, has been jammed on a daily basis while airing a program on Bahrain. Technical experts say the jamming was carried out by British technicians. Observers are saying the jammings and now the ban show the European Union does not respect freedom of speech and is trying to silence the voice of alternative media. So when jamming is not enough by countries who are the first to yell the loudest when their signals are blocked, they resort to outright suppression by, in effect, using their power over the switch to turn it off, and not let their own people see it. Thinking about this affront to many sided global communications, one is reminded of the war Adrian Mitchell first wrote about. In those days, it was Radio Hanoi that was blocked. When I was in Vietnam, in 1974, I interviewed a radio broadcaster there who was constantly being denounced for calling on American soldiers to resist the war-perhaps because so many did. She was ridiculed as Hanoi
[Biofuel] All Together Now: World Food Day 2012
One in ten 'at risk of food poverty' One in 10 people in Ireland are too poor to afford a properly balanced diet, a study has shown. Tuesday, October 16, 2012 - 07:40 AM http://www.irishexaminer.com/breakingnews/ireland/one-in-ten-at-risk-of-food-poverty-570683.html UK food banks used by record number, says Trussell Trust A record number of people received emergency food from UK food banks in the last six months, a charity says. 16 October 2012 Last updated at 13:10 GMT http://www.bbc.com/news/business-19953938 Food Crisis Summit: Governments Should Scrap Biofuels, Not Push GM Crop October 16, 2012 http://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2012/10/16 Global Noise Protests Against Austerity and Debt Spread Worldwide Tuesday, 16 October 2012 http://truth-out.org/news/item/12136-global-noise-protests-against-austerity-and-debt-spread-worldwide --0-- http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/10/16-2 Published on Tuesday, October 16, 2012 by Civil Eats All Together Now: World Food Day 2012 by Jezra Thompson One in seven people around the world will feel hunger today. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) brings global awareness to this issue every year on October 16th, and have done so since 1981. Today, there are more than 100 countries that will celebrate World Food Day. Over 450 national and private organizations in the U.S., such as Oxfam America and Ending Hunger, will host events around this year's theme, Agricultural cooperatives-key to feeding the world, to bring better understanding around what cooperatives are and how they help relieve food insecurity and improve community self-sufficiency. Agricultural cooperatives are enterprises owned and democratically operated by the employees that work there. They range from farming to retail coops that pool together resources and share in the costs and benefits of running a business. There are many examples of co-ops and they take away the hierarchies that make it difficult to create a quality of life, says Madeleine Van Engel, a baker-owner at Arizmendi, a cooperative bakery in the San Francisco Bay Area. Many examples of agricultural cooperatives in the U.S. not only feed their community, but also create economic and social sustainability in places often deemed unlikely. Mandela Marketplace, a West Oakland non-profit, worked within their predominantly African-American and Latino community to identify ways to improve livelihoods and to create neighborhood investment. Together, they wanted to address the poor health statistics, where obesity rates are three times higher than the national average and where forty-eight liquor stores and zero grocery stores attempt to feed around 25,000 people. As a result, the Mandela Foods Cooperative opened its doors in 2009 as a worker-owned community market selling healthy food at an affordable price. Mariela Cedeno, Senior Manager at Mandela Marketplace, describes the cooperative as community driven. More than forty percent of the produce sold at the cooperative comes from small farmers within a 200-mile radius, most of them minority farmers. They also employ community members, like Leroy Musgraves, a retired African-American farmer who hosts nutrition education sessions in front of the cooperative twice a week. Three years later, Mandela Foods Cooperative is improving food security and the community marketplace in West Oakland. Ms. Cedeno says that, being a cooperative means that everyone gets value out of the business and everyone is engaged in its mission to increase access to healthy food and increase the community's wealth, they are equally invested in economic development and food. Since the success of Mandela Foods Cooperative, the community of West Oakland and Mandela Marketplace has organized a produce delivery service that works with community youth to stock the shelves of corner stores with fresh produce. The Toolbox for Education and Social Action lists 10 reasons why cooperatives work, starting with democracy and ending with viability. The FAO estimates that one billion people are members of cooperatives worldwide and they are generating more than 100 million jobs. The way we think about agriculture and food businesses is moving away from the trailblazing farmer tasked with feeding the world and moving closer towards business models that share resources, ideas, and finances. The National Council of Farmer Cooperatives found that cooperatives account for nearly $654 billion in revenue, over two million jobs, $75 billion in wages and benefits paid, and a total of $133.5 billion in value-added income. World Food Day invites us all to take action and join the conversations. Many community-based organizations, agricultural cooperatives, and community leaders will host dinners, organize food packaging events, arrange food drives, plan community gardening events, and engage schools and institutions. There are also several
[Biofuel] September was the warmest ever on record, say scientists
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/science/121015/september-was-the-warmest-ever-record-say-scientists September was the warmest ever on record, say scientists National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration said that the global temperature in September was 60.21 F, about 1.21 F above the 20th century average for September. Alexander Besant October 15, 2012 Researchers said that this September was the warmest one on record. National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said that the global temperature in September was 60.21 F, about 1.21 F above the 20th century average for September. It marked the 331st month in a row that global temperatures were above the 20th century average, said CBC News. The last one found below the 20th century average was February 1985. The NOAA report said that the higher than average temperatures occurred mostly in southern Greenland, Paraguay, northern Argentina, western Australia, Japan, Russia and Canada. The US itself was not particularly warm in September, however, being only the 23rd warmest September on record, said Mother Nature Network. More from GlobalPost: Arctic melt opens door for big oil's next boom Arctic sea ice was also the the smallest its ever been in recorded history at 1.39 million square miles in September. Oddly, Antarctica had the largest amount of sea ice in its recorded history last month, particularly on September 26th. Researchers said that Antarctica's ice is likely due to stronger-than-average circumpolar winds that spread out ice. The magnitude of the records in each (Arctic and Antarctic) are vastly different, said Deke Arndt, of the NOAA, reported the Sydney Morning Herald. The Arctic is plumbing new depths, completely leaving the rest of the record behind ... there kind of aren't enough superlatives to describe what has gone on there over the last five or six years. ___ Biofuel mailing list Biofuel@sustainablelists.org http://sustainablelists.org/mailman/listinfo/sustainablelorgbiofuel Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Search the combined Biofuel and Biofuels-biz list archives (70,000 messages): http://www.mail-archive.com/biofuel@sustainablelists.org/
Re: [Biofuel] Join the Blockade of the Keystone Pipeline
southern leg, from Cushing to Nederland, Texas, would slice through major waterways including the Neches, Red, Angelina and Sabine rivers as well as the Carrizo-Wilcox Aquifer, which provides drinking water for some 10 million Texans. The southern section of the pipeline is now the focus of the Tar Sands Blockade. The invasive extraction of tar sands and shale deposits, as well as deep-sea drilling in the Arctic, Alaska, the Eastern Seaboard and the Gulf of Mexico, has been sold to the U.S. public as a route to energy independence, a way to create millions of new jobs and a boost to the sagging economy, but this is another corporate lie. The process of extracting shale oil through hydraulic fracking, for example, requires millions of gallons of chemically treated water that leaves behind poisoned aquifers and huge impoundment ponds of toxic waste. The process of extracting oil shale, or kerogen, requires it to be melted, meaning that tremendous amounts of energy are required for a marginal return. The process of tar sand extraction requires vast open pit mining operations or pumping underground that melts the oil with steam jets. Tar sand extraction also releases significantly more greenhouse gas emissions than conventional oil drilling, meaning an acceleration of global warming. Drilling in the Arctic, with its severe weather, costs as much as half a billion dollars per well. These processes are part of a desperate effort by corporations to make profits before a final systems collapse. Droughts are already sweeping the Midwest. The battle between farmers and fossil fuel corporations for diminishing water sources has begun. Yet our ruling elite refuses to face the stark reality of climate change. They ignore the imperative to find other ways of structuring our economies and our relationship to the environment. They myopically serve a doomed system. And, if left unstopped, the cost for all of us will be catastrophic. Weis, a former congressional staffer, expects the last section of the pipeline to be authorized by the president once the election is over. It is critical that people understand that completion of the southern leg of Keystone XL-which President Obama and Gov. Romney both fully support-would give TransCanada a direct line from Alberta's landlocked tar sands mine fields to refineries in Texas for export overseas, Weis explained. By tapping into Keystone I, which has already been built, the southern leg of Keystone XL would open the floodgates to tar sands exploitation in Canada. At a time when the climate is already dangerously destabilizing before our eyes, I can't believe we're even having this conversation. He described Obama's and Romney's failure to stand up to this corporate bully as a failure to defend America. It is unconscionable to put the interests of a transnational corporation before the health, safety and economic well-being of the American people, he said. Weis sees the struggle to halt the Keystone XL pipeline as a symbolic crossroads for the country and the planet. One path leads, he said, toward decay. The other toward renewal. There comes a time when we must say to the ruling elite: 'No more,' he said. There comes a time when we must make a stand for the future of our children, and for all life on Earth. That time is here. That time is now. ___ Biofuel mailing list Biofuel@sustainablelists.org http://sustainablelists.org/mailman/listinfo/sustainablelorgbiofuel Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Search the combined Biofuel and Biofuels-biz list archives (70,000 messages): http://www.mail-archive.com/biofuel@sustainablelists.org/ -- next part -- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: /pipermail/attachments/20121017/c81c6baf/attachment.html ___ Biofuel mailing list Biofuel@sustainablelists.org http://sustainablelists.org/mailman/listinfo/sustainablelorgbiofuel Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Search the combined Biofuel and Biofuels-biz list archives (70,000 messages): http://www.mail-archive.com/biofuel@sustainablelists.org/ ___ Biofuel mailing list Biofuel@sustainablelists.org http://sustainablelists.org/mailman/listinfo/sustainablelorgbiofuel Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Search the combined Biofuel and Biofuels-biz list archives (70,000 messages): http://www.mail-archive.com/biofuel@sustainablelists.org/
