Light Pollution Harms Wildlife and Is Bad for Stargazing | Take Action Tuesday @EarthFoodLife

Where are the stars? The map above shows the relative amount of light pollution—caused by artificial light reflecting off molecules and aerosols in the atmosphere—occurring across the Earth. Parts of the eastern United States and western Europe (colored red) have an artificial night sky glow over nine times that of the natural sky. In areas marked orange or red, the central band of the Milky Way galaxy is no longer visible. (Image credit: P. Cinzano, F. Falchi, University of Padova; C. D. Elvidge, NOAA National Geophysical Data Center, Boulder. Copyright Royal Astronomical Society. Reproduced from the Monthly Notices of the RAS by permission of Blackwell Science.)

International Dark-Sky Association: In many places across the globe, particularly in major cities, the night sky has been reduced from a breathtaking show of hundreds of stars to a diffuse glow through which only a handful of stars can be seen. Light pollution has been a known issue for decades. But we’ve only recently been able to access the tools and technology to better understand which sources contribute the most to light pollution, what impact it has on the natural world (like changing the resting and feeding behavior of wildlife), and how to develop smarter policies to protect the night. In the coming weeks, citizen scientists can participate in Globe at Night, an annual, worldwide, kid-friendly campaign asking individuals to measure the quality of the night sky where they live. You don’t have to leave your backyard (or porch or patio) to take night sky measurements—and reporting results only takes a moment using the handy Globe at Night online web app. Your reported measurements are added to other reports from around the world where they are held in an open-source database. With these measurements, scientists can see how the quality of the night is changing all around the world. Your measurements will help to develop targeted policies and guidelines to help solve the problem of light pollution.
>>>Take part in the worldwide Globe at Night campaign from March 14-24, 2020.

Lady Freethinker: In China’s cruel and dangerous wild animal trade, millions of bats, civets, snakes, badgers, monkeys and other animals face brutal torture and slaughter each year, putting humans at risk of diseases such as rabies and coronavirus, which may have originated at a wild animal market. These markets also often sell dogs and cats, who are stuffed into tiny cages, transported unbearably long distances and bludgeoned to death or burned alive. Finally recognizing the severity of the situation, China has temporarily halted the trade and human consumption of wild animals, but a temporary ban is not enough. China must ban this practice permanently. These innocent animals are subjected to agonizing suffering as they are snatched from their homes and sold to meat markets. The horrendous wildlife trade is also a severe health threat to humans, and conservationists believe the only way to prevent future virus epidemics is to permanently ban this dangerous and unhealthy industry.
>>>Urge Chinese Ambassador Cui Tiankai to call for a permanent ban on China’s wild animal trade and the consumption of dog and cat meat.

Care2: Evidence shows that more than 2 million child laborers as young as 10 years old work on cocoa farms in West Africa, helping to produce a significant amount of the chocolate consumed in the U.S. That includes chocolate produced for one of the world’s largest candy companies, Hershey’s. As far as child labor goes, cocoa work is considered some of the worst work. Daily tasks include deploying dangerous pesticides, chopping brush and cocoa pods with machetes, and lifting excessively heavy bags. Impoverished kids who are sent to work on these farms are subjected to body-breaking work and do not attend school. Many of these children are also trafficked and forced to lie about their ages under the watchful eyes of coercive farmers. For two decades, chocolate companies have set goals to eradicate child labor on these farms, but they come up short each time.
>>>Urge Hershey’s CEO Michele Buck to guarantee their chocolate isn’t made using child labor.


Letter to the editor…

Taste of terror: Firefighters battle a wildfire in Hidden Valley, California. “This is only a taste of the horror and terror that will occur in decades,” said former California Governor Jerry Brown. The climate crisis has increased the size, intensity and burn area of wildfires. (Photo credit: Daria Devyatkina/Flickr)

Replying to “Insurers Should Support People, Not the Fossil Fuel Industry,” by Tony Dunn:

Thank you so much for this very important article. Here in Australia, I haven’t given a thought about the insurance company I’m insured with. This will change with my next renewal, which is due very soon. I will be asking many questions before they receive any payment from me. I live on a tiny farm amongst bushland in Victoria, Australia, and only discovered your posts by accident a few months ago. I try to read all I can on the issue of our climate emergency and do my best to contribute as little as possible to the harm that we humans do, not only to the environment, but to our fellow human beings. I’m afraid that unless things change rapidly there will be only misery for my grandson’s generation. So thank you for waking me up to another issue and I will endeavor to do my best in that area as well. Sadly, I don’t know many people of my generation willing to make the effort as it isn’t easy to take the steps required to live this way. —Susan Brinksma (Victoria, Australia)


Cause for concern…

Bad growth: Relatively developed economies collectively have no projected emissions growth; all of the projected future growth in energy-related CO2 emissions is from developing countries. (Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration, International Energy Outlook 2019, September 2019)

Round of applause…

Protecting Fido: While unrelated to the current coronavirus outbreak in humans, canine coronavirus is a highly contagious intestinal disease that infects dogs. (Photo credit: Canine Journal)

Parting thought…

(Photo credit: Bragi Thor/Flickr)

“To treat a chimpanzee as if he or she had no right to liberty protected by habeas corpus is to regard the chimpanzee as entirely lacking independent worth, as a mere resource for human use, a thing the value of which consists exclusively in its usefulness to others.” —Court of Appeals Associate Judge Eugene M. Fahey


Earth | Food | Life (EFL) explores the critical and often interconnected issues facing the climate/environment, food/agriculture and nature/animal rights, and champions action; specifically, how responsible citizens, voters and consumers can help put society on an ethical path of sustainability that respects the rights of all species who call this planet home. EFL emphasizes the idea that everything is connected, so every decision matters.

Click here to support the work of EFL and the Independent Media Institute.

Questions, comments, suggestions, submissions? Contact EFL editor Reynard Loki at [email protected]. Follow EFL on Twitter @EarthFoodLife.

Brazilian President Bolsonaro Wants to Steal Indigenous Lands for Mining and Ranching |Take Action Tuesday @EarthFoodLife

Unwelcoming committee: Uncontacted people in Brazil, May 2008. Many uncontacted tribes in Brazil are under increasing threat from illegal logging just over the border in Peru. Survival International estimates that there are over 100 uncontacted tribes worldwide. The men in the photo above have painted themselves with red dye, possibly as a show of aggression in response to a plane’s flyover.  (Photo credit: Survival International)

Survival International: Brazil’s far-right President Jair Bolsonaro is pushing hard to open up Indigenous lands to fossil fuel development, mining and agriculture. If he succeeds, many tribes are likely to be wiped out. His latest move is to appoint a fundamentalist evangelical missionary, Ricardo Lopes Dias, to head the federal department in charge of protecting uncontacted tribes’ territories, which has stirred fears of genocide. Mr. Lopes worked for years with the New Tribes Mission, one of the most extreme missionary organizations, spending ten years evangelizing tribes in the Javari Valley, home to more uncontacted tribes than anywhere else on Earth. The Indigenous organization there has strongly denounced his appointment. If this move isn’t challenged, Brazil’s long-standing policy to protect uncontacted tribes from forced contact will probably be reversed. Entire tribes could be wiped out by genocidal violence—and by diseases like flu and measles, to which they have little resistance.
>>>Urge Brazilian Justice Minister Sérgio Moro to reverse this dangerous appointment.

NRDC: The Trump administration is attacking the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), a bedrock environmental law that empowers the American people to have a say in decision making and to speak out against federal projects that would put their families’ health and well-being at risk. If Trump’s proposed rollback succeeds, his administration will be given free rein to hide the environmental and health impacts of dangerous federal projects like dirty oil and gas pipelines and other fossil fuel developments—speeding up climate change and silencing frontline communities in the process. We live in a democracy, not a dictatorship. Americans deserve to have their voices heard before polluters destroy our air and water, our children’s health and our climate. This is more than a fight for environmental law: It is an existential fight for our democracy and the future of our planet.
>>>Tell Council on Environmental Q Chairwoman Mary B. Neumayr, EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler, Interior Department Secretary David Bernhardt and Department of Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette that you oppose the attack on NEPA.

Care2: Every year, nearly 3.5 million foxes, minks and raccoon dogs are killed for their fur in Finland, the world’s biggest producer of fox fur along with China. Cage requirement for a fox and a raccoon dog is 0.8 square meters while for the mink it is 0.25 square meters, without a nest box—spaces so small that they can barely move. Foxes and raccoon dogs are killed by anal electrocution and minks are killed by gas to prevent any damages to the quality of the animals’ skin. Polls show that 74% of Finnish people oppose fur farming in its current form. Additionally, 60% see the killing of animals for their fur as wrong. Animal rights activists have taken plenty of film footage and photographs from a multitude of farms over the course of the last decade. The filmed material shows problems such as eye infections, leg deformations, obesity, open wounds and acute mental stress.
>>>Urge the Finnish Parliament to ban fur farming.


Letters to the editor…

Sy Montgomery interacts with Cleo the octopus at the Oregon Coast Aquarium (Photo credit: Amy Knuze)

Replying to “You’re Not So Different From an Octopus: Rethinking Our Relationship to Animals,” by Leslie Crawford:

Thanks for Leslie Crawford’s interview with “octopus whisperer” Sy Montgomery. I stopped eating octopuses many years ago when I discovered that they are smarter than I. They learn on a one-time experience basis; I’ve been married four times. —Geri Taran (Lawrenceville, Georgia)

All these creatures are our cousins and as we kill them off, we are killing family. —Gini Paulsen (Seattle, Washington)

Sy Montgomery is a real role model for the world for letting us know that, as she said, “nonhuman animals think and know and feel the way we do.” —Dr. Mapa Ha’ano Puloka (Kolomotu’a, Nukualofa, Kingdom of Tonga)


Cause for concern…

Hurricane Katrina battered the southeastern United States in 2005, killing more than 1,800 people and causing $125 billion in damages, making it the costliest tropical cyclone on record. (Photo credit: opacity/Flickr)

Risky business: JPMorgan Chase & Co., one of the largest banking institutions in the United States, has warned that we cannot rule out the most extreme risks of climate change, including the collapse of human civilization. “The response to climate change should be motivated not only by central estimates of outcomes but also by the likelihood of extreme events,” bank economists David Mackie and Jessica Murray wrote in a recent report to clients. “We cannot rule out catastrophic outcomes where human life as we know it is threatened.”


Round of applause…

The cruel cost of bacon: Activists give water to thirsty pigs trapped inside a transport truck at a vigil outside Farmer John Slaughterhouse in Los Angeles (Photo credit: Jo-Anne McArthur/We Animals)​​​​​​​

Animal activist Joaquin Phoenix is the executive producer of Gunda, a new dialogue-free documentary that explores the sentience of a pig. “Gunda is a mesmerising perspective on sentience within animal species, normally—and perhaps purposely—hidden from our view,” Phoenix told Screen Daily. “Displays of pride and reverence, amusement and bliss at a pig’s inquisitive young; her panic, despair and utter defeat in the face of cruel trickery, are validations of just how similarly all species react and cope with events in our respective lives. [Director] Victor Kossakovsky has crafted a visceral meditation on existence that transcends the normal barriers that separate species. It is a film of profound importance and artistry.” [Watch the trailer on Vimeo]


Parting thought…

Touching: Elephants have socially complex societies and form lasting, life-long relationships. (Photo credit: Phae/Flickr)

“Witnessing elephants interact with their dead sends chills up one’s spine, as the behavior so clearly indicates advanced feeling … This is one of the many magnificent aspects of elephants that we have observed, but cannot fully comprehend.” —George Wittemyer


Earth | Food | Life (EFL) explores the critical and often interconnected issues facing the climate/environment, food/agriculture and nature/animal rights, and champions action; specifically, how responsible citizens, voters and consumers can help put society on an ethical path of sustainability that respects the rights of all species who call this planet home. EFL emphasizes the idea that everything is connected, so every decision matters.

Click here to support the work of EFL and the Independent Media Institute.

Questions, comments, suggestions, submissions? Contact EFL editor Reynard Loki at [email protected]. Follow EFL on Twitter @EarthFoodLife.

110 Million Americans’ Drinking Water May Be Contaminated With PFAS | Take Action Tuesday @EarthFoodLife

(Photo credit: Jay Hsu/Flickr)

Make Them Pay: As many as 110 million Americans may have drinking water contaminated with toxic nonstick chemicals or PFAS. These chemicals are a health and environmental nightmare created by chemical companies 3M and DuPont (now Chemours), who reportedly had sufficient information decades ago to know that certain PFAS were harmful. PFAS can leave our environment polluted, our water undrinkable, and our bodies sick. Americans were treated like guinea pigs as chemical companies sold more and more PFAS. Taxpayers are now being asked to foot the bill for what could amount to billions of dollars in clean up and health costs. As if that weren’t enough, more PFAS are manufactured every day for products like nonstick and waterproof coatings and for some firefighting foam.  So the contamination cycle continues. It’s time to hold the chemical makers accountable.
>>>Demand that 3M and Chemours discontinue production of PFAS chemicals and pay to clean up their nonstick nightmare.

Care2: Ninety-five percent of all lemur species could disappear forever if Madagascar doesn’t take action now. Lemurs are native to the east African island of Madagascar and nowhere else. If that country doesn’t take immediate action, nearly every species could be lost forever. More than 100 species of lemur qualify as critically endangered, endangered or vulnerable to extinction in the wild. From deforestation-driven habitat loss to illegal poaching and hunting, lemurs are under attack from all sides. Recently, scientists reported that the entire Madagascan rainforest—the lemur’s only home—is under threat of being completely wiped out by 2070. But there is hope. The International Union for Conservation of Nature has a plan—it’s just up to the government of Madagascar to uphold the policies that protect these vulnerable animals.
>>>Urge President Andry Rajoelina of Madagascar to take action to save lemurs.

Change: Legislation is greatly needed in Virginia to require dog owners to keep their pets indoors once the temperature drops below 35 degrees, or exceeds 85 degrees. Currently, there is no protection for dogs left outside, and severe weather poses a fatal threat to these defenseless animals. On the morning of January 12, 2017, a dog was found frozen to death in Accomack County, Virginia, surrounded by snow, ice and vomit. Her neck was bound tightly by a short chain that prevented her from reaching her plastic, uninsulated igloo, and she died an agonizing death, alone. She was posthumously named Rainbow. Her owner Jose Berlanga was charged with one count of animal cruelty and one count of failure to provide proper shelter. He was found guilty of both counts, fined $650 and sentenced to 60 days in jail. However, the entire jail sentence was suspended, as was $500 of the $650 fine. In the end, Berlanga paid a small fine of $150 for Rainbow’s death. It is common to leave dogs outside in extreme weather, but a bill may make this cruel practice illegal in Virginia.
>>>Urge Virginia’s legislators to pass SB 272/HB 1552 to protect dogs in extreme weather.

Letter to the editor…

Past due? Pickering Nuclear Generating Station in Ontario, Canada, is one of the oldest nuclear power stations in the world. (Photo credit: ilker/Flickr)

Replying to “Renewables Are Gaining Traction, but We Need to Be Able to Store the Energy,” by Elliott Negin:

I live in Ontario, where conservative Premier Doug Ford has canceled hundreds of alternative energy projects at a cost of CAD$230 million (USD $173 million) to the taxpayer. Instead, we will cobble up our aging nuclear plants well past their projected life span at a cost several times that of alternative energy, such as hydroelectric power from Quebec. As for storage, in 2014, Harvard researchers announced a breakthrough on “flow batteries” which use an organic molecule similar to one found rhubarb. Since then, nothing. —Paul Whittaker (Ontario, Canada)

Cause for concern…

(Photo credit: State of Queensland/Wikipedia)

Going, going, gone: Yesterday marked the start of the weeklong U.N. Convention on Biological Diversity in Rome. Representatives from nearly 200 nations will address the severe threat facing Earth’s biodiversity, highlighted in a 2019 report warning that one million animal and plant species are at risk of extinction, primarily due to expanded farming and fishing (particularly in highly biodiverse tropical regions) and climate change. Also last year, the Bramble Cay melomys (above), a small rodent that lived only on a Great Barrier Reef island that was submerged by rising seas, became the first mammal declared extinct due to climate change

Round of applause…

Eerie Erie: This month marks the one-year anniversary of Lake Erie getting its own bill of rights, courtesy of activists in Toledo, Ohio, who used “rights of nature,” an emerging legal strategy, to develop a ballot measure giving residents the ability to sue on behalf of the lake, which was impacted by an algal bloom (above) that sickened more than 100 people. (Photo credit: NASA)

Parting thought…

Tennis player Novak Djokovic credits a great deal of his professional success to his vegan diet. (Photo credit: Marianne Bevis/Flickr)

“It’s a lifestyle more than just a diet because you have ethical reasons as well, being conscious of what is happening in the animal world.” —Tennis champion Novak Djokovic on being vegan


Earth | Food | Life (EFL) explores the critical and often interconnected issues facing the climate/environment, food/agriculture and nature/animal rights, and champions action; specifically, how responsible citizens, voters and consumers can help put society on an ethical path of sustainability that respects the rights of all species who call this planet home. EFL emphasizes the idea that everything is connected, so every decision matters.

Click here to support the work of EFL and the Independent Media Institute.

Questions, comments, suggestions, submissions? Contact EFL editor Reynard Loki at [email protected]. Follow EFL on Twitter @EarthFoodLife.

Trump’s EPA Is Ignoring America’s Asbestos Problem | Take Action Tuesday @EarthFoodLife

Death by dust: Tens of thousands of Americans die every year due to asbestos exposure, but the Environmental Protection Agency doesn’t care. (Photo credit: shaymus22/Flickr)

Care2: The Trump administration has found a way to “fix” America’s asbestos problem—to just ignore it. For decades, the government has known that inhaling asbestos fibers from insulation in buildings can cause serious illness in adults and children alike, including cancer. Yet Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently rolled back a policy that was intended to keep the public safe from this dangerous substance. Up until recently, the EPA required the monitoring and possible removal of asbestos that were still located in buildings all over the country. Now, only new uses of asbestos—yes, there still are new uses—will require EPA approval and health risk evaluation. This means that existing asbestos will continue to kill people, and the EPA doesn’t care. Studies show that around 12,000 to 15,000 Americans still die every year due to asbestos exposure. Many of them were exposed as children since a large number of public school buildings still contain the toxic insulating fiber.
>>>Urge EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler to immediately reinstate the asbestos mandate.

Endangered Species Coalition: Plastic is everywhere. It is difficult to even make it out the door in the morning without using–and potentially discarding–plastic that can go on to cause injury and death to wildlife. The bags we carry groceries in, the bottles we drink out of, and so very many other items in our day-to-day existence are composed of plastic. That plastic has to go somewhere when we are through using it. Every year, billions of pounds of plastic end up in our oceans where it subjects ocean species to injury or death and releases toxins into the water. Thousands of seals, seabirds, turtles, and other marine species are killed every year after becoming entangled in or ingesting plastic. Hundreds of thousands of seabirds ingest this discarded plastic every year, mistaking it for food. Plastic pollution is a crisis. Thankfully, some in Congress have taken notice. The recently-introduced Break Free From Plastic Pollution Act, from Senators Tom Udall (NM) and Jeff Merkley (OR) and Representative Alan Lowenthal (CA) would make multiple changes to address this threat.
>>>Urge Congress to support the Break Free From Plastic Pollution Act.

Change: During his 2018 campaign for governor of the Mexican state of Puebla, Miguel Barbosa signed a document promising to honor seven proposals by animal rights activists including one to “restrict violent events involving animals.” But now, as governor, he has announced the construction of a new bullfighting arena and cockfighting ring in the state’s eponymous capital city. Every year, thousands of bulls are tortured and then slaughtered in bullrings around the world. But global condemnation of this cruel spectacle is growing, with bullfighting now banned in at least 100 towns in Spain. From 2008 to 2013, attendance in Spanish arenas plummeted 40 percent. Argentina, Canada, Cuba, Denmark, Italy and the United Kingdom have imposed national bans, along with the Mexican states of Coahuila, Guerrero and Sonora.
>>>Tell Governor Barbosa to stand by his commitment to animal rights and end plans for a bullfighting ring and cockfighting arena.

Cause for concern…

Deadly traffic: A Philippine Pangolin pup nudges its mother, rolled up in a protective ball. The suspected origin of the COVID-19, the new coronavirus that has claimed more than 1,600 human lives, is a live animal market in Wuhan, China, which sells the critically endangered mammal. The genome sequence of coronavirus in pangolins was a 99 percent match to that of infected COVID-19 patients. Adherents of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) believe, without any scientific evidence, that its scales can treat a host of health ailments, making the pangolin the most trafficked animal in the world. (Photo credit: Shukran888/Flickr)

Round of applause…

Computing climate: This graph, created by the Met Office, the United Kingdom’s national weather service, shows the average global temperature for each month, from 1850 to 2017. The temperature increases as you move away from the center of the circle. (Image credit: Met Office)

Parting thought…

True cost of milk: A dairy farmer pushes a recently separated calf past a line of mother cows, who strain for a view of the baby. (Photo credit: Jo-Anne McArthur/Animal Equality)

“We feel entitled to artificially inseminate a cow and steal her baby, even though her cries of anguish are unmistakable. Then we take her milk that’s intended for her calf and we put it in our coffee and our cereal.” —Joaquin Phoenix


Earth | Food | Life (EFL) explores the critical and often interconnected issues facing the climate/environment, food/agriculture and nature/animal rights, and champions action; specifically, how responsible citizens, voters and consumers can help put society on an ethical path of sustainability that respects the rights of all species who call this planet home. EFL emphasizes the idea that everything is connected, so every decision matters.

Click here to support the work of EFL and the Independent Media Institute.

Questions, comments, suggestions, submissions? Contact EFL editor Reynard Loki at [email protected]. Follow EFL on Twitter @EarthFoodLife.

CDC Is Torturing Animals to Study Vaping | Take Action Tuesday @EarthFoodLife

Deadly smokescreen: Beagles and other animals have long been used in cruel tests to study the effects of smoking, though evidence indicates that such studies lack relevance to human health. In addition, a growing number of biotech companies now offer customizable models that have proven to be more human-predictive in inhalation testing. (Photo credit: PETA)

Citizens for Alternatives to Animal Research: In response to the public health crisis involving e-cigarette or vaping associated lung injury, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have made the dire decision to use animals to study the role of vitamin E acetate and other potentially toxic compounds in e-cigarettes. This decision is totally out of step with the current trend to reduce and eventually eliminate animal testing in regulatory toxicology studies. Decades of studies have shown that significant differences in the anatomy and physiology of the respiratory tract of humans and other animals make animal tests unfit for studying human pathologies. Animal testing is so unreliable that in 2018 the U.S. National Toxicology Program released a “Strategic Roadmap” advising regulatory agencies to “provide more human-relevant toxicology data while reducing the use of animals.” Currently, the CDC has numerous options for studying vaping without animals, including in vitro assays, in silico approaches, computational chemistry and a range of sophisticated tissue models that include 3D organoids and organs-on-chips. 
>>>Urge the CDC to use only non-animal alternatives to study vaping risks.

Environmental Working Group: Recent tests by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Environmental Working Group have found asbestos—a known carcinogen—in cosmetics made with talc. Geologically, talc and asbestos can be formed from the same parent rock. Cosmetics companies have known for decades that cosmetics made with talc can contain asbestos. But under pressure from industry, the FDA has for decades allowed voluntary testing methods that are too weak to reliably detect asbestos fibers in cosmetics. To make matters worse, companies have also been able to hide the results of their asbestos tests from the FDA. More than 2,000 cosmetics and personal care products have been found to contain talc, including more than 1,000 loose or pressed powders that could be inhaled. Small amounts of inhaled asbestos can cause mesothelioma and other deadly diseases, even many years after exposure.
>>>Urge the FDA to require the cosmetic industry to use the most sensitive state-of-the-art methods to test for asbestos in cosmetics—and make testing results available to the public.

Ocean Lifeline: How many times have you used your own utensils for take-out or delivered food and the plastic cutlery in the bag just gets thrown in a drawer, recycled or tossed in the trash? Hundreds of fast-food restaurants across the country include single-use plastic cutlery in take-out plastic bags—without asking the customer if they need it. A 2015 study by Ocean Conservancy scientists and their partners found that plastic cutlery is among the most dangerous to ocean animals, such as seabirds and turtles, especially as they break up into smaller to microplastics, which have been found not only in marine environments but also Arctic snow and even human stool. Single-use utensils can take up to 1,000 years to decompose. And most plastic utensils are made of polystyrene, which can release toxic chemicals when heated.
>>>Urge McDonald’s, Taco Bell, Chick-Fil-A, Panda Express, Sonic Drive-In and Whataburger to stop including single use plastic cutlery in every fast food take out bag.

Cause for concern…

In a jam: State-level efforts to become carbon neutral by 2050 or sooner could be thwarted by increasing emissions from the transportation sector, the biggest source of the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions, a new report by the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) suggests. “This projection of relentless climate pollution is nothing short of terrifying,” the Center for Biological Diversity said in a statement. “With Trump officials crippling emissions rules, climate-friendly lawmakers must build support for truly bold policies that avert the bleak future predicted by the EIA. We need much stronger measures.” (Photo credit: Eric Demarcq/Flickr)
Dollars and sense: As investors increasingly avoid unethical, unhealthy and polluting industries, markets are responding with new investment vehicles like the US Vegan Climate ETF, an animal- and environment-friendly exchange-traded fund (ETF). (Photo credit: thetaxhaven/Flickr)

Round of applause…

Parting thought…

The feelies: Internet star and ambassador for animals Esther the Wonder Pig was adopted by a Toronto couple who was told she was a so-called “mini-pig” (actually, no such animal exists). Esther is a commercially bred sow who now weighs nearly 700 pounds. After learning about factory farming and deciding to go vegan, Esther’s dads Steve and Derek founded the Happily Ever Esther Farm Sanctuary in Ontario, Canada. (Photo credit: Jo-Anne McArthur/We Animals)

“Most of us realize as children that animals are sentient beings. But then, somehow, for so many people, this truth gets overwritten—by schools teaching old theories, by agribusiness that wants us to treat animals like products, by the pharmaceutical and medical industries who want to test products on animals as if they were little more than petri dishes. But thankfully, scientific and evolutionary evidence for animal sentience has grown too obvious to ignore.” —Sy Montgomery


Earth | Food | Life (EFL) explores the critical and often interconnected issues facing the climate/environment, food/agriculture and animal/nature rights, and champions action; specifically, how responsible citizens, voters and consumers can help put society on an ethical path of sustainability that respects the rights of all species who call this planet home. EFL emphasizes the idea that everything is connected, so every decision matters.

Click here to support the work of EFL and the Independent Media Institute.

Questions, comments, suggestions, submissions? Contact EFL editor Reynard Loki at [email protected]. Follow EFL on Twitter @EarthFoodLife.

Nearly All U.S. Public Pension Funds Are Invested in Fossil Fuel Companies | Take Action Tuesday @EarthFoodLife

Keep it in the ground: Activists at the Global Climate March in Washington, D.C., on November 29, 2015, calling for divestment of fossil fuels. (Photo credit: Susan Melkisethian/Flickr)

Action Network: Nearly all public pension funds in the U.S. are invested in fossil fuel companies—essentially using Americans’ tax dollars to support the powerful polluters that are causing the greatest threat to our planet and to humanity: the climate crisis. We are already feeling the impact of escalating floods, fires, heatwaves and storms. Public money shouldn’t be used to fund public destruction. To make matters worse, state pension funds’ investments in fossil fuels actually place our pensions at risk. Big coal, oil and gas companies are underperforming compared to the rest of the market, and it is widely expected that the assets of many fossil fuel companies will eventually become stranded and stock values will plunge. This bursting of the “carbon bubble” could cause losses greater than the 2008 financial crisis, according to a recent study. Retirement savings should not be invested in an uncertain and volatile industry—and we certainly do not want to continue to financially support fossil fuel companies, the primary drivers of the climate crisis.
>>>Urge your governor and state legislators to divest state pension funds from fossil fuels.

Total Liberation International: The devastating Australian wildfires, which have killed over one billion animals, have dramatically exacerbated the severe threat to kangaroo populations, possibly driving some species closer towards extinction. Yet Chewy—the largest online pet retailer in the United States—is still selling kangaroo meat dog food and chews. The mass-scale, profit-driven killing of kangaroos for their meat, leather and pelts is the world’s largest land-based wildlife slaughter. It is an Australian government-sanctioned bloodbath and Chewy is complicit. Adult kangaroos are shot. Hundreds of thousands of joeys (baby kangaroos) are clubbed, shot or decapitated after their mothers are killed. And larger young but non-pouched orphaned kangaroos are left to die. Like the African elephant, this massive slaughter could eliminate them. Companies like Pets At Home in Australia and every single supermarket chain in the United Kingdom have stopped selling kangaroo meat for pets and humans. It’s time for Chewy to extend their compassion beyond domesticated dogs and cats, join other international retailers and ban all kangaroo products.  
>>>Demand that Chewy stop selling all kangaroo products immediately.

Voice for the Voiceless: Myan Kumaraya is an elephant who lives his life chained tightly to a tree at the Bellanwila Buddhist Temple in the Colombo District of Sri Lanka. In January 2019, a video surfaced of him being bathed in dirty water and beaten by his mahout or handler. Just recently two more videos surfaced again of him being bathed in dirty water and beaten. “We are very concerned for the welfare of Myan,” said Maneesha Arachchige, an activist from Rally for Animal Rights and Environment (RARE). “He seems to be beaten on a regular basis and the temple seems unconcerned. If action is not taken quickly we fear for the safety of those around Myan, as well as his own safety and wellbeing.”
>>>Urge the government of Sri Lanka to remove Myan Kumaraya from the Bellanwila Temple and place him in an environment free from abuse.

Cause for concern…

Children on a railway damaged by the floods that ravaged Pakistan in September of 2010. (Photo credit: Asian Development Bank/Flickr)

Round of applause…

Eco-nightmareHalf a billion plastic straws are used and discarded every day. Now China is ramping up restrictions on the production, sale and use of straws and other single-use plastic products, which are one of the nation’s biggest environmental problems. (Photo credit: frankieleon/Flickr)

Parting thought…

“Just as we will evolve past racism, sexism, ageism and religious persecution, we will evolve past barbarism toward animals, too.” —Nina Jackel


Earth | Food | Life (EFL) explores the critical and often interconnected issues facing the climate/environment, food/agriculture and nature/animal rights, and champions action; specifically, how responsible citizens, voters and consumers can help put society on an ethical path of sustainability that respects the rights of all species who call this planet home. EFL emphasizes the idea that everything is connected, so every decision matters.

Click here to support the work of EFL and the Independent Media Institute.

Questions, comments, suggestions, submissions? Contact EFL editor Reynard Loki at [email protected]. Follow EFL on Twitter @EarthFoodLife.

Brazil’s Indigenous Leaders Are Being Murdered, but the Government Won’t Act | Take Action Tuesday @EarthFoodLife

Getting away with murder: On June 21, 2019, activists gathered outside the Brazilian Consulate in San Francisco to protest the anti-environmental policies of Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro. In August, the United Nations high commissioner for human rights, Michelle Bachelet, called on Brazilian authorities to investigate the killing of Indigenous leader Emrya Wajãpi in an area known for illegal gold mining. Across the globe, killings of environmentalists have doubled over the past 15 years, reaching levels more commonly associated with war zones. (Photo credit: Peg Hunter/Flickr)

Care2: Ten Indigenous people—seven of them leaders of their communities in the Amazon rainforest—were murdered in 2019. It’s a sad, but unsurprising story. Brazil’s right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro has dramatically curtailed the rights of Indigenous people and allowed large companies to invade their lands to exploit resources for profit. This isn’t just exploitative, it’s deadly. What’s worse is that most of the murders have gone unsolved and the government has done little to find the killers. The message is clear: Businesses have a carte blanche to kill native people in Brazil. Fortunately, Bolsonaro isn’t a dictator yet. If the federal government won’t protect its citizens, local authorities can and must step in to bring justice for the victims and their grieving families.
>>>Urge the military and civil police in Brazil’s state of Maranhão to investigate all killings of Indigenous people and prosecute their murderers.

MoveOn: The Trump administration recently announced changes to SNAP that will cause hundreds of thousands of people to lose access to their “food stamp” benefits. SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program commonly referred to as “food stamps,” is a federal nutrition program that’s critical for fighting hunger in the United States. According to Feeding America, “SNAP provides families with their basic nutritional needs to get them through temporary hard times. It helps people get back on their feet and on the road to a better life.” However, the Trump administration has been working for the last three years to undermine SNAP as part of their agenda to limit access to public assistance programs. The newly announced attack on SNAP is especially outrageous because Congress rejected these proposed changes to the program during the Farm Bill debate last year. The House rejected it in a bipartisan vote of 330-83, and the Senate voted down a similar amendment 68-30. But now, Sonny Perdue, Trump’s Secretary of Agriculture, is moving forward with these changes through an undemocratic “executive order” that targets very poor people struggling to work—many of whom are homeless, living in small towns and rural communities with little or no access to employment, or have health conditions that prevent them from working.
>>>Urge the U.S. Department of Agriculture to stop the attacks on food assistance programs.

Horseracing WrongsForty-two racehorses, including former Breeders’ Cup winner Battle of Midway, have died at California’s world-famous Santa Anita Park since December of 2018. And the number of horses dying goes up every few days. Still, what’s happening there is no anomaly. Over the past 11 years, Santa Anita has averaged 50 dead racehorses annually; every 12-month period but one (when “only” 37 died) saw at least 40 corpses. What’s more, Santa Anita can’t even claim it’s heading in the right direction as two of the three worst years were 2015-16 and 2016-17. Nationally, through FOIA reporting, more than 5,000 confirmed kills on U.S. tracks since 2014 have been documented; over 2,000 horses are estimated to have been killed racing or training across America every year. But there’s more: Each year, hundreds more die back in their stalls from things like colic and laminitis, or are simply “found dead” in the morning. And perhaps worst of all, the vast majority of racehorses are brutally bled-out and butchered at Canadian and Mexican slaughterhouses—some 12,000-15,000 thoroughbreds alone each year. In short, the American horse racing industry is engaged in wholesale carnage.
>>>Urge Santa Anita to stop the senseless death of racehorses by closing down its track immediately.

Cause for concern…

Death by plastic: A seal trapped in plastic trash and discarded fishing gear. Pollution in marine ecosystems isn’t the only kind of pollution caused by plastic: The manufacturing of plastic is also a major contributor of greenhouse gas emissions. A proposed petrochemical plant near Baton Rouge, Louisiana, would be the industry’s biggest emitter of greenhouse gases in the United States. (Photo credit: Nels Israelson/Flickr)

Round of applause…

Life plan: A small wild cat native to the southwestern United States, Mexico and Central and South America, the ocelot is listed as endangered by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The Center for Biological Diversity has unveiled a U.S.-focused plan to “save life on Earth,” calling for President Trump to declare the global extinction crisis a national emergency and establish 500 new national parks, wildlife refuges and marine sanctuaries. (Photo credit: ucumari/Flickr)

A small call for help…

Parting thought…

“What’s the use of a fine house if you haven’t got a tolerable planet to put it on?” —Henry David Thoreau

Earth | Food | Life (EFL) explores the critical and often interconnected issues facing the climate/environment, food/agriculture and nature/animal rights, and champions action; specifically, how responsible citizens, voters and consumers can help put society on an ethical path of sustainability that respects the rights of all species who call this planet home. EFL emphasizes the idea that everything is connected, so every decision matters.

Click here to support the work of EFL and the Independent Media Institute.

Questions, comments, suggestions, submissions? Contact EFL editor Reynard Loki at [email protected]. Follow EFL on Twitter @EarthFoodLife.

Australian Wildfires Push Koalas to Edge of Extinction | Take Action Tuesday @EarthFoodLife

Clinging to life: The Australian wildfires have claimed the lives of an estimated 1 billion animals, among them the nation’s iconic koalas. The fires are just the latest human-caused menace threatening their existence: Overhunting for their pelts and habitat destruction through deforestation have already ravaged their population, which has plummeted by a shocking 95 percent since the late 18th century. Now, after the devastation wrought by the current wildfires season, experts warns that koalas are in danger of going extinct unless new government policies are implemented to save them. (Photo credit: Ninian Reid/Flickr)

Change: The horrific images of burnt and dying koalas from the recent bushfires all over the east coast of Australia have underlined a tragic reality: Koalas are in danger of becoming extinct. As the nation experiences record-breaking drought and bushfires, koala populations have shrunk along with their natural habitat. A third of koalas in Australia’s New South Wales region may have been killed in the deadly bushfires, but deforestation has meant that the koalas were already under threat before the fires. Koalas only live in Australia and rely on eucalyptus trees to survive. But these trees, which are the koalas’ only food source, are being destroyed at an alarming rate. Shockingly, koalas are in peril but are yet to be listed as an endangered species by the government. Koala populations in the states of New South Wales and Queensland fell 42 percent between 1990 and 2010, according to the Commonwealth Scientific Committee. Some experts say there will be no Koalas left by 2050.
>>>Urge the Australian government to immediately list the koala as an endangered species so that they can receive the support they need to survive.

The Rainforest Site: Pigeon shoots have been banned in every part of the country except for the state of Pennsylvania, In 2014, a bill to end pigeon shoots in Pennsylvania was allowed to expire after the NRA stepped in at the 11th hour with their powerful lobbyists—though 75 percent Pennsylvanians are in favor of a law that would ban this inhumane “sport” and 83 percent believe it’s an unnecessary form of animal cruelty. “After each round of shots at the birds, participants—sometimes children—take to the field to collect wounded and dead animals,” according to the Humane Society of the United States. “If the suffering pigeon is still alive, the collector will sometimes snap the animal’s head off or slam her against the ground before tossing her into a barrel full of dead and dying pigeons.” Many of these birds are not even from Pennsylvania. Footage of people netting and stealing pigeons in New York City is believed to point to an illegal smuggling ring that transports the birds over state lines to provide the live targets for the merciless shoots.
>>>Urge Pennsylvania lawmakers to ban pigeon shoots.

Lady Freethinker: In Agadir, Morocco, authorities are dumping street dogs in a hellish “pound” without access to any food or water. Left to starve, the desperate dogs have started to turn on one other, attacking and eating the weakest among them just to stay alive. In the dusty, bare compound, the ground is piled high with feces. Without vaccinations, healthcare or a sterilization program, sick dogs are giving birth to puppies in these appalling conditions. They have no chance of survival. Volunteers from Morocco Animal Aid (MAA) are doing everything possible to help these emaciated, dying animals. However, authorities are denying that these horrors are even happening and actively refusing MAA access to the site. In spite of restrictions, the charity rescues the sickest dogs when they can, but are already overloaded. When they are allowed access, they fill up water containers and clean up piles of filth, but it’s not enough.
>>>Tell Ambassador of Morocco to the U.S. Lalla Joumala Alaoui to urge the Moroccan government to save these dogs and develop more humane ways to deal with strays in their country.

Cause for concern…

Roads destroy habitats: A sloth attempts to cross a road in Alajuela Province, Costa Rica. A staggering 85 percent of Earth’s land-based animals are now exposed to intense human pressure—including human population density, roads, railroads, agriculture, forestry, mining, dams and power infrastructure—according to a new analysis of more than 20,000 terrestrial vertebrate species. These animals “have nowhere to hide from human pressures ranging from pastureland and agriculture all the way to extreme urban conglomerates,” said the paper’s lead author, Christopher O’Bryan of the University of Queensland. (Photo credit: Ian D. Keating/Flickr)

Round of applause…

Coal kills: A new study conducted by the University of California San Diego found that between 2005 and 2016, the shutdown of coal-fired plants saved more than 26,000 lives and 570 million bushels of corn, soybeans and wheat in their immediate vicinities.  (Photo credit: Russ Walker/Flickr)

Parting thought…

We don’t own the planet Earth, we belong to it. And we must share it with our wildlife. —Steve Irwin

Earth | Food | Life (EFL) explores the critical and often interconnected issues facing the climate/environment, food/agriculture and nature/animal rights, and champions action; specifically, how responsible citizens, voters and consumers can help put society on an ethical path of sustainability that respects the rights of all species who call this planet home. EFL emphasizes the idea that everything is connected, so every decision matters.

Click here to support the work of EFL and the Independent Media Institute.

Questions, comments, suggestions, submissions? Contact EFL editor Reynard Loki at [email protected]. Follow EFL on Twitter @EarthFoodLife.

Trump Wants to Auction Off the Arctic Refuge Coastal Plain to Big Oil | Take Action Tuesday @EarthFoodLife

It’s his home, not our gas station: “The Arctic Fox is one of the most endearing animals in the Tundra region,” according to UN Habitat, a team of nature and biological scientists at the United Nations, who warn that the fox “has been declining in numbers due to overhunting in some areas and the emergence of the large red fox in others … mainly due to the diminishing ice.” Now the Trump administration wants to open up this critical habitat to oil and gas development, which will further threaten the Arctic fox and several other endangered Arctic species, including polar bears, peregrine falcons, prairie pigeons, caribou and Pacific walrus. (Photo credit: Eric Kilby/Flickr)

Conservation Alliance: In the waning hours of 2017, Congress included a provision to open the Arctic Refuge to oil and gas development, without full and fair debate, as part of the Tax Reform Act of 2017. This is the first time the Refuge had been open to development in 50 years of protection. To make matters worse, this bill mandated two oil and gas lease sales in the next six years—even going so far as to add “oil and gas development” as a purpose of the Arctic Refuge, representing the first time this has ever been done in the history of the National Wildlife Refuge system. Since the bill passed, the Trump Administration has been working to further expedite auctioning off the Refuge Coastal Plain. Legislation (H.R. 1146) passed the House of Representatives to restore protections for the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in September 2019. Similar legislation to permanently protect the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge once and for all has been introduced in the Senate.
>>>Urge your senators to work to pass the Arctic Refuge Protection Act (S.2461) during the current meeting of Congress.

Environmental Working Group: Chlorpyrifos, a neurotoxic pesticide that can harm children’s brains even in small doses, shouldn’t be on the produce we buy at our local grocery store. But it may well be. Trump’s EPA recently decided to protect this hazardous chemical and pesticide industry profits instead of children’s health. Chlorpyrifos can still legally be sprayed on kids’ favorite foods, like apples, peaches and grapes—despite the fact that the EPA’s own assessments found that the levels of chlorpyrifos found on produce are unsafe. Although the government may be solidly in Big Ag’s pocket, it’s not too late for grocery stores to do the right thing.
>>>Urge grocery stores like Safeway, Kroger and Publix to ban produce sprayed with chlorpyrifos from their stores.

American Bird Conservancy: Birds are in crisis. With the loss of 3 billion birds over the past 50 years, we need Congress to act immediately to strengthen one of our nation’s oldest and strongest bird conservation laws—the Migratory Bird Treaty Act (MBTA)—to turn population declines around. The Trump administration has weakened enforcement of the MBTA and we need swift legislative action to restore migratory bird protections and create a much-needed permitting system to reduce preventable bird mortality from industrial and governmental developments. The best way to strengthen the MBTA is to support a new bill, H.R. 5552: the Migratory Birds Protection Act (MBPA).
>>>Ask your members of Congress to co-sponsor H.R. 5552 to restore and strengthen protections for birds.

Cause for concern…

President of pollution: Last week, the Trump White House detailed a sweeping revamp of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), which mandates environmental reviews for major proposals, such as highways and pipelines, as well as for plans by polluters to discharge contaminants into the air or water. “The most vulnerable communities are going to pay with lives and their health. They always have,” said Mustafa Santiago Ali of the National Wildlife Federation, who served as a senior advisor for environmental justice at the Environmental Protection Agency. “Moving forward with this is reckless and will endanger the lives of black and brown communities and indigenous communities.” (Photo credit: Noah (ax0n)/Flickr)

Round of applause…

Save species, save us: The new Global Deal for Nature, a draft Paris-style United Nations agreement, argues that nearly a third of Earth’s oceans and land must be protected by the end of the decade to prevent the planet’s sixth mass species extinction—a precipitous decline in biodiversity, caused by human activity—that puts humanity’s own survival at risk. (Photo credit: NOAA)

What we’re reading…

Ronnie Cummins, founder of the Organic Consumers Association, believes the solution to the climate crisis and related emergencies is right under our feet—and on our plates—through the transformation of our broken food system. His new book, Grassroots Rising: A Call to Action on Climate, Farming, Food, and a Green New Deal, presents a blueprint for building what he calls a “Regeneration Movement” based on consumer awareness, farmer innovation, political change and regenerative finance. “Regeneration calls for a transition from degenerative, climate-disrupting fossil fuels to renewable energy and from industrial food, farming, and land use to regenerative practices,” he writes. “In this way, through the miracle of plant photosynthesis, we can draw down billions of tons of excess carbon from the atmosphere into our soils, forests, and plants over the next few decades and thereby avert climate catastrophe. By mobilizing the grassroots power of a united body politic for survival and revival, we can head off climate chaos and build a new nation along the lines of a Green New Deal. At the same time, as our regeneration revolution spreads across borders, we can build a new global commonwealth of peace and justice.”

Parting thought…

“We cannot win this battle to save species and environments without forging an emotional bond between ourselves and nature as well—for we will not fight to save what we do not love.” —Stephen Jay Gould

Earth | Food | Life (EFL) explores the critical and often interconnected issues facing the climate/environment, food/agriculture and nature/animal rights, and champions action; specifically, how responsible citizens, voters and consumers can help put society on an ethical path of sustainability that respects the rights of all species who call this planet home. EFL emphasizes the idea that everything is connected, so every decision matters.

Click here to support the work of EFL and the Independent Media Institute.

Questions, comments, suggestions, submissions? Contact EFL editor Reynard Loki at [email protected]. Follow EFL on Twitter @EarthFoodLife.

Big Data, Big Oil and White Supremacy: Unveiling the Dark Forces Behind Trump’s 2020 Reelection Campaign With Josh Fox

In his new one-man show “The Truth Has Changed,” activist, director and writer Josh Fox is raising an alarm: The Democrats are ill-prepared for Trump’s oncoming misinformation campaign. (Image: Jared Rodriguez / Truthout via Flickr)

by Reynard Loki, Independent Media Institute

Josh Fox, the Emmy-winning and Oscar-nominated filmmaker behind “Gasland,” the documentary that started the global anti-fracking movement, is bringing a new message to audiences across the country with “The Truth Has Changed,” a live theater-based project that sounds the alarm on the right-wing disinformation campaign working to secure President Trump’s reelection. Commissioned by legendary documentary producer Sheila Nevins for HBO as a solo performance to inspire grassroots action, “The Truth Has Changed” traces Fox’s personal arc from 9/11 to present-day America to tell a story that is both a warning and a prescription to save our democracy—and the planet.

I talked to Fox about this new project and the dark forces working to spread lies and misinformation to influence the 2020 presidential election.

Reynard Loki: Your films have been about the environment, and the fight to save it from climate change, fracking, pipelines, the activists at Standing Rock. How has your previous work led you to your new live performance-based project, “The Truth Has Changed”?

Josh Fox: That’s a great question. It started with an intriguing proposal from HBO. They said, “We know you do theater. We know you’ve been on the road for 10 years bringing your films to people. And you in a live setting is a part of the show, right? It’s not just that people come out to see your films. They come to see you, so how about you do a one-man show that brings that reality to the people?” And that was an assignment from Sheila Nevins when she was at HBO. And I said, “Absolutely; I’ll try this.” And then I started to really think about it, and at first, it was kind of a reporter’s notebook, but to be honest, what I really zeroed in on was the fact that for the last 10 years, the oil and gas industry has made a huge effort to discredit my work and discredit all of the people who spoke about how bad fracking is. And this is very similar to the campaigns of climate denial, which hinge on widespread misinformation and then spreading disinformation and propaganda, smear and lies.

RL: Can you describe the effort to discredit your work?

JF: Big names in conservative smear campaigns were following me all around the country. [Steve] Bannon. Conservative commentator Andrew Breitbart. Filmmaker Phelim McAleer, whose pro-fracking documentary “FrackNation” attempted to refute my own documentary “Gasland.” Conservative activist James O’Keefe. GOP media strategist Fred Davis. These high-profile right-wing charlatans clearly did opposition research on me. They collected all this data on me and figured out how to attack me personally. They tried to get inside my psyche to unnerve me. And they did it in a very specific and deliberate kind of way.

RL: What exactly did they do?

JF: They created hate emails specifically designed for my personality. There were tweets threats; there were death threats on Twitter. They highlighted my life in the theater, my hairline, the fact that my family’s Jewish; they found out that I had quit smoking several years ago, but they found a picture of me with a cigarette in my hand online from the past, and they ran that as a pro-fracking TV ad in Ohio saying, “This environmentalist is a smoker.” They followed me around the country for years. They booked shadow tours of our films. They tapped into ethnic and regional stereotyping. And then they tried to paint me as some kind of rich, intellectual, New York City liberal, which is not the case. They flung all of these stereotypes at me. They gathered all this information about me—my background, my ethnicity, my age, my race, where I live, where I went to school, how much money I made, what I had done in my previous life before the films.

RL: Are you saying that those techniques used against you are similar to the current disinformation campaigns we’re seeing today? Could you have been a kind of beta test for this data-based approach to spread propaganda?

JF: Absolutely. Basically, what Steve Bannon did to me from 2010 to 2015, he did to the entire American electorate in 2016. In developing “The Truth Has Changed,” I made two startling realizations. One was that the people who ran those campaigns against me had a very strong hand in influencing the 2016 election: Steve Bannon, who was running Breitbart when all these attacks were happening against me, took over the Trump campaign and his team profiled the electorate in the exact same way. This connection led me down two trails in my own life. The first looked back to my own personal history as a grandson of Holocaust survivors. I have an intimate knowledge of how white supremacy works, how the Nazi playbook operates, and feel a sense of intergenerational trauma. The second trail looks to the present time and the future, to how the same techniques that were used in a smear campaign against an individual through Google, Facebook, data collection, [and] addressable ad technology, which enables advertisers to selectively segment audiences to serve different ads, are used to influence a massive amount of people. And instead of just following one person around and knowing one person’s data—mine—now they know the personal data of tens of millions of people, and they use that information to create highly personalized ads according to different personality types.

RL: How important was big data to Trump’s victory in 2016?

JF: During the 2016 election, CNN called political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica “Donald Trump’s mind readers” and his “secret weapon.” They gathered up to 5,000 data points on more than 220 million Americans. And they used that data to tailor ads specifically toward people’s personality types to influence their thinking. The same folks are currently rallying white supremacists all across the world and are making a bid to get Trump reelected in 2020. Their digital campaign created 5.9 million different ad variations in 2016, versus just 66,000 ads created by Hillary Clinton’s campaign. It was so key to Trump’s victory that Trump’s digital campaign manager Brad Parscale is now his campaign manager.

RL: So in “The Truth Is Changed,” you’re connecting big oil and white supremacy to big data—and how these forces are working together to influence the 2020 election.

JF: Yes, we’re talking about Bannon and the white supremacy movement. We’re talking about Trump’s former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who, before that, was the head of ExxonMobil and the oil and gas industry, which has brazenly taken over the government. We’re talking about Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and their collection of the personal data of billions of people around the globe. Together, they have created a situation in which big data, big oil and white supremacists powerfully influence the way the United States government operates. And certainly, in the 2020 election cycle, we’re going to have a very hard time figuring out what is true. I think we’re going to see the largest smear, misinformation and disinformation campaigns in the history of any election. So in “The Truth Has Changed,” I’m taking a deep dive not only into the smear techniques of big oil and how they work from a new technology perspective, from psychographics to addressable ad technology, but going into how that is now how we run elections in America, and then we’ve entered the age of misinformation because right now it’s very hard for people to tell what’s true.

RL: Do disinformation campaigns rely on gullibility?

JF: No, I wouldn’t say that at all, not with the state of our education system right now. This entire project starts with a high school girl in the front row of one of my films putting her hand up and asking me, “Josh, how do we know what’s true?” She said, “You say all these things about how fracking is bad, and climate change is real, but then we can look online, and we see that people are saying that the opposite of this is true. So how do we know?” She’s not gullible. She’s trying, but can’t figure out the difference between a persuasive argument that is true, and a persuasive argument that is false.

Friends of mine send me fake things all the time because it appeals to them. I’ve sent fake things out accidentally because they appeal for my sensibility. And it’s not only that these ads say things like, vote for Donald Trump, he’s a nice guy, or he’s a tough guy, or he’s a strong guy, or he’s a compassionate guy. It’s often taking people who are upset with the Democratic Party and funneling them toward, for example, Jill Stein, when they might otherwise vote for Hillary Clinton. And a lot of people will get really mad at me and say, “No, no, no, Jill Stein represents what I believe in.” But if you’re in Pennsylvania and you’re voting against the Democratic platform, which Bill McKibben, Cornel West and I helped write and which has real progress in it, and that vote then gets siphoned away to put Donald Trump in office, then you’ve been manipulated. These disinformation campaigns often take the most deep-seated things that are really important to you and turn that into their own political gain. People are assuming that there is some kind of standard for truth because there always used to be. But last year, when Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified to Congress and declared that political candidates no longer had to abide by any kind of standards of truth, they abandoned a century’s worth of journalistic integrity. And they are arguably the largest news publisher in the world.

RL: In the face of all of this, what can we do to suss out truth from lies?

JF: We always have to check for accuracy. The pursuit of the truth is not something that can be done easily, and it never has been. However, we are now seeing the standard-bearers of journalism consistently undermined, and they themselves also make mistakes and who are also subject to manipulation. The New York Times publishes things directly from State Department press releases constantly; it’s maddening. Today, people need to work harder to get to the truth. But beyond that, we must control and own our own data, because if someone knows you really well, it’s really easy for them to manipulate you.

Take, for example, the 1988 presidential election that pitted incumbent GOP Vice President George H.W. Bush against Democratic Governor Michael Dukakis. [Those who are old enough] probably remember the Willie Horton ad, a racist ad put out by the Republican campaign against Michael Dukakis, and it obviously caused a huge wave of controversy and anger because it was racist. But it only caused that level of controversy because it was visible to everyone. Now you can run 1,000 Willie Horton ads. You can run 10,000 Willie Horton ads. You can run a Willie Horton ad supposedly put out there by a fake Black Lives Matter page, and no one would ever know. So if you put out a racist ad and only racists can see it, it causes absolutely no controversy, but it’s deeply effective in rallying people. And a lot of the times people don’t even know that they’re racist. So you might have things happening to folks on an unconscious level, on a deep psychological level that they’re not aware of. But the internet knows. If you’ve got 5,000 data points on somebody, you know them on a very intimate level, you know their psychology, you know what they’re afraid of, you know their sexual orientation, you know their medical history, their age, their race. So your campaign to win them over becomes very effective.

RL: So, how do we get to a point where owning your personal data is a human right? Is this ever going to happen?

JF: There have to be laws, and those laws have to be in line with the current technology. We’re currently working with the New York State Senate to create a new slate of laws. There’s a privacy law in California that’s just recently been passed, but there’s some dispute as to how companies are supposed to comply. And so there have to be laws about data privacy that we can campaign for, but the Democrat campaigns must also address this issue. The New York Times recently reported that the Democrats have no strategy to stop this wave of misinformation. But they need to understand that how they handle misinformation is going to be the difference between tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of votes in battleground states like Michigan and Pennsylvania and Florida. So the Democrats have to get really serious about this issue—and they have to address it really fast. I’ve appealed to the Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and other campaigns, saying that this is really serious because it’s about to happen—and it’s going to happen worse than it’s ever happened before.

RL: Should we be allowed to sell our data?

JF: That is a fascinating question. I don’t know if I have a real clear answer. I mean, it’s being collected by your action, right? Everything you buy, everywhere you go, everything you search for, all things you know and all the things you don’t know, all that data goes in, and the algorithm learns what you personally crave and what you personally lack and what you really want in life, so that’s a digital map of your dreams, your insecurities, your life. And it is sort of like you’re on the road, right? It’s your digital biography. Do you own your movements in the world? It’s a very interesting question. I imagine there are some benefits. So, for example, if you’re on Instagram and you’re a man, and you’re constantly getting ads for feminine hygiene products, they’re an annoyance; they’re not useful to you. So perhaps you want to get ads that are more tailored to you. And of course, the way the news works these days is the news gives you back things that you agree with and that you want to see and that you want to read because there’s so much information out there. This does backfire upon you because, at that point, you end up being manipulated by the fact that now interests that are foreign to you and nefarious to you and harmful to you can start to target you.

RL: How has the truth crisis impacted the climate crisis?

JF: They go hand-in-hand. We get our terrestrial proof from the Earth. The planet is empirical data. Climate change deniers are saying that the empirical data that’s coming from the Earth is not true. Where do they say that? Principally, they say that online, which is its own “planet,” the cybersphere. It’s a planet that doesn’t exist on Earth. It exists by its own rules and has its own set of priorities. And if you leave terrestrial Earth, yeah, you can make it wherever you want. So when you’re in that cybersphere, it reigns true whenever you feel like on that particular day, for whomever is willing to pay for it.

The tobacco industry originally started doing this. They started to say things like, “Smoking is good for you.” And they created all this bogus science and fake reports that said, “These cigarettes are fine.” And what they were trying to do is sow confusion in people and stave off regulation. The exact same technique has been used by the oil industry.

RL: Why is the truth crisis such an urgent matter?

JF: It’s so important because the further we get away from the terrestrial planet as our source of empirical reality, the closer we come to being evicted from the planet like climate change, and that is those same forces, the oil industry and the conservatives that are forcing us to an unlivable world. This is an emergency because of the climate. It’s also an emergency because we’re seeing right now the reemergence of white supremacists and Nazis on this planet, and they are taking over. Right-wing authoritarian governments are sweeping elections across the earth, and they’re doing so primarily by using Facebook and WhatsApp and by lying directly to the public. Sixty-eight thousand fake Twitter accounts helped push the recent Bolivian coup. In the UK, Boris Johnson’s recent election, 88 percent of the conservative parties’ advertisements were misleading. In Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro was elected with the help of fake news messages sent via WhatsApp, a messaging app used by 120 million Brazilians, saying that his opponent was a criminal. Obviously, there’s Donald Trump, who had 5.9 million ad variations using Cambridge Analytica. There’s also Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines. Narendra Modi in India. There are dozens of examples. So you’re seeing right-wing, authoritarian, racist regimes cropping up all over the world. And in 2019, Steve Bannon raised $100 million for his white supremacist project in Europe. So what is really dangerous about all of this is the two-headed monster of the rise of white supremacy, Nazism and racism on the one hand and on the other hand, climate change denial and the fossil fuel industry. And these are linked, and these are linked in the persona and in many actions by the Trump administration. In 2017, Rex Tillerson, former CEO of ExxonMobil turned Secretary of State, created a contract between the State Department and Cambridge Analytica, and their mission was to influence elections all across the world. Big data and big oil running American diplomacy. And that continues to this day.

RL: Why should people see “The Truth Has Changed”? 

JF: Because this is a chance to rally for the truth. It’s the chance to rally for a new America. This project concerns itself with the oil industry, the world at war post-9/11, climate change. We’ve seen the United States get closer to war with Iran. We see Australia on fire, and authorities there must battle misinformation campaigns contending that the fires were caused by arson and not climate change. We know that we’re watching the extinction of countless species in real time. We’re in an emergency.

At every single performance of “The Truth Has Changed,” there will be activists in the room who are campaigning on these issues, and that’s what we need to do. We need to set the record straight. We need to say climate change is real. We need to say fracking is bad, we need to see Donald Trump as a racist and say that is not who we are as a nation. So we have to take our country back, and this is our effort to try to fight back against this wave of lies, smear and misinformation.

“The Truth Has Changed” opens at New York’s Public Theater this January, and will tour across the United States. For more information, visit internationalwow.com/tthc.php.