One is enough: Future generations should have a fair start in life, and freedom from the ravages of the climate and other ecological crises. (Photo credit: Hindrik Sijens/Flickr)
Smaller, more sustainable families would create massive long-term savings and catalyze sustainable development.
By Carter Dillard, Independent Media Institute
4 min read
Existential crises, from accelerating climate change to a pandemic that is mutating to overcome the defenses of our immune system, have prompted talk of the need for fundamental change. This talk rarely, if ever, touches on the one form of change that is the most fundamental: Altering the way we have kids or create future generations. It is a choice that would change who we as a society are—and who we are becoming.
This option is almost never discussed, despite the disproportionate long-term positive impact better family planning policies can have on the environmental, inequality, and public health crises we face, because it means making decisions that are not individualistic in nature, but are, instead, shaped by the need to ensure a better and a more sustainable future for everyone. Whatever happens in the world, for many, that sense of familial autonomy and privacy—the right to have as many kids as they want, when they want, irrespective of the needs of both their own families and the environment, the opportunities the children will or won’t have—gives them a feeling of power and freedom. Most people are at best unaware of and at worst uncaring about how their decisions impact the freedom of others—future generations’ freedom to a fair start in life, and freedom from the ravages of the climate and other ecological crises.
Much like the refusal to wear a mask during the peak of the pandemic, the assertion of autonomy relating to the questions of having kids is absurd and cruel in the current circumstances. It’s a power-grab masquerading as an assertion, rather than the praxis, of freedom. Unlike those who refuse to wear masks to protect others from the spread of COVID-19, however, people asserting the self-contradiction of procreative autonomy are buoyed up by the population growth culture pushed by governments and big business because baby-making grows the pyramid—which Nobel laureate Steven Chu decried—atop which these parties sit.
In my experience—having spent over a decade wrestling with leadership in civil society and social justice to stop treating the right to have kids as an unlimited right, instead of something more nuanced like free speech—I have found that the dilemma boils down simply to being a collective action problem. Most people would plan for and have children more sustainably and equitably if they could be assured others would too. But there is a lack of trust that whoever goes first will see others follow suit. Such problems are nothing new. That is why we have a social contract and government, which can help us act collectively, and perhaps lead us to a more child-centered thinking of working together to give every child a fair start in life.
What would that look like?
In the United States, Black families typically have one-tenth the wealth of white families. The impacts of this wealth disparity are especially hard on kids, and can ripple forward into future generations. President Biden’s child care and tax credit proposal is a step in the right direction, but it could be better. All benefits to wealthy families who don’t need the funding could be cut. Those savings could then be used as cash incentives to power up family planning and early childhood investment systems in the United States to target child abuse by amending the federal child abuse law, incentivizing having kids only when parents are really ready, and promoting smaller and more sustainable families, as well as fostering and adoption. These changes can have 20 times the impact on climate emissions, as compared to short-term fixes, and when they are made as part of recognizing our sacred constitutional right to nature, they will create massive long-term savings and catalyze sustainable development.
Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ) has already proposed a vehicle called “baby bonds,” which would “create a new American birthright—giving every child a fair chance at economic opportunity and mobility,” and if these changes are made progressively, they can accomplish significant sustainable changes.
This change can help combat climate change and widen the opportunities for children, all while achieving goals that go beyond U.S. partisan values. It specifically prioritizes children and social equity over big business (as leftists seek to do) and improves the possibility of personal autonomy without the interference of so-called big government (thus satisfying the interests of the right wing).
This is not a loss of control—when we take into account future generations, it’s a net gain, where future generations have control over their lives that a fair start would provide, control over systems of governance, and control over the environment that can help us deal with the climate change crisis in an effective manner.
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Carter Dillard is the policy adviser for the Fair Start Movement. He served as an Honors Program attorney at the U.S. Department of Justice and served with a national security law agency before developing a comprehensive account of reforming family planning for the Yale Human Rights and Development Law Journal.
Take action…
Waterworld: Global warming and changes in shifting monsoons have combined to drive an increase in precipitation and major flooding in India, which has threatened the food and water security for billions of people. (Photo credit: Oxfam International/Flickr)
India is the third-largest emitter of greenhouse gases in the world, after China and the United States. From 1990 to 2018, the nation’s emissions skyrocketed a staggering 335 percent. Aman Sharma, a student in India, has launched a public petition—already signed by more than 374,000 people around the world—urging the Indian government to declare climate change a national emergency. “Record-breaking heat waves have become a regular occurrence in India, killing thousands of people,” he writes. “Melting snowcaps are slowly increasing the sea level. Rainfall patterns in India are changing, and this has had a devastating effect on farmers’ harvests and affecting the migration patterns of different birds and animals.”
Urge India’s environment minister to declare climate change a national emergency.
Cause for concern…
Another deadly mess: Crude oil from a suspected underwater pipeline leak contaminates the Pacific Ocean offshore of Orange County, California, on October 3, 2021, in one of the biggest spills in the state’s recent history. In some areas, dead fish and birds washed ashore. (Photo credit: U.S. Coast Guard/Flickr)
New bill of health: A wildlife rescuer rinses oil off a brown pelican at the Fort Jackson Bird Rehabilitation Center in Buras, Louisiana, following BP’s 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. After a federal investigation found that the disaster killed about 100,000 birds, the energy giant agreed to a $100 million settlement. (Photo credit: International Bird Rescue Research Center/Flickr)
Appetite for destruction: Satellite imagery from 2019 shows the rampant deforestation impacting East Kalimantan, the Indonesian part of the island Borneo, caused by the palm oil industry. (Image credit: European Space Agency/Flickr)
“In addition to its role in human rights abuses, the palm oil industry is also a primary driver of deforestation, which not only exacerbates climate change by releasing into the atmosphere carbon that was previously safely stored in trees cut down to make room for plantations, but threatens wildlife and biodiversity… Made from the oil palm plant, palm oil is the world’s most widely traded vegetable oil. It is found in about half of all consumer goods, including common foods like bread, cookies, crackers, doughnuts, peanut butter and breakfast cereal, as well as everyday household products like soap and laundry detergent. Palm oil is also found in a host of cosmetics and beauty products like lipstick, mascara, body lotion, bubble bath and anti-wrinkle creams. The list goes on.”
“A man of my spiritual intensity does not eat corpses.” —George Bernard Shaw
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.
Needless abuse: According to USDA figures, in 2019, there were more than 40,000 monkeys held ‘on reserve’ in federal research facilities, in addition to the more than 68,000 monkeys subjected to experiments. (Photo credit: shankar s./Flickr)
While the European Union votes to phase out animal research, the United States wants more.
By Reynard Loki, Independent Media Institute
6 min read
In the last two years, the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) has invested nearly $29 million to breed more monkeys for biomedical research, with an additional $7.5 million to be spent by October. The investments, which include infrastructure improvements at the U.S. National Primate Research Centers (NPRCs), have been made in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, as researchers have been testing numerous vaccines on nonhuman primates, most commonly rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta)—a species of Old World monkey commonly used to study infectious diseases—before human trials began.
Using the pandemic as the pretext, the Biden administration has proposed using even more taxpayer money to conduct primate research, suggesting a 27 percent funding increase for the NPRCs in its fiscal year 2022 budget request. If Congress gives the administration its stamp of approval, an additional $30 million would be given to the centers.
“We have been making investments to bring the levels up and to plan for the future,” James Anderson, director of the NIH Division of Program Coordination, Planning, and Strategic Initiatives in Bethesda, Maryland, told Nature. “What happens if [a pandemic] happens again, with another virus in three years? We want to be ready for that.”
“A couple of years ago, we were feeling the pinch,” Nancy Haigwood, director of the NPRC in Beaverton, Oregon, told Nature. Citing the pandemic, Haigwood said, “we are truly out of animals,” though Nature reports that the center she runs houses some 5,000 primates.
Animal rights advocates are rebuffing the proposed increase in funding, which would subject many more animals to cruel and deadly experiments. In an email to Earth | Food | Life, Barbara Stagno, president and executive director of Citizens for Alternatives to Animal Research and Experimentation (CAARE), an animal rights nonprofit organization based in New York, countered the claim that there is a dearth in primates for research. The group has launched a public petition urging Congress to reject the additional funding for primate research.
While the centers are claiming that there are not enough primates to conduct research, Stagno presented figures from the U.S. Department of Agriculture showing that the opposite is true. “In 2019 there were 40,269 monkeys held ‘on reserve,’ in addition to the 68,257 monkeys subjected to experiments,” said Stagno. “Not only were over 40,000 monkeys warehoused ‘on hold’ for use in experiments, but that number is a 14 percent increase from 2018, clearly demonstrating a growing surplus—not a shortage—of monkeys.”
In fact, scientists at the NIH concluded in 2015 that research on SARS and MERS, two strains of coronaviruses that crossed the species barrier to infect humans within the preceding 12 years, had been largely unsuccessful “in part because of difficulties in developing animal models that provide consistent and reproducible results.”
In addition, Stagno pointed out that the trajectory of the COVID-19 biomedical response actually proved that nonhuman animal testing for vaccines is unnecessary. “With the urgency imposed by the pandemic, key vaccine developers Pfizer and Moderna were given approval to run human trials ahead of normally required animal testing,” she said. “The result was that vaccines for COVID-19 were developed and made accessible to the public in record time, with less animal testing than ever before. In bypassing animal testing to evaluate the vaccines, the scientific community acknowledged that these tests are not scientifically predictive of human response, but rather are based on regulatory requirements that are a hindrance to rapidly developing safe and effective treatments.”
Indeed, as CAARE highlights, the most informative work addressing the COVID-19 pandemic comes from human-based science. Other organizations, notably the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, a nonprofit animal rights group based in Washington, D.C., also strongly support alternatives to nonhuman animal research, arguing that the U.S. doesn’t need more monkeys for vaccine testing, but rather a new strategy altogether.
“Instead of monkeys and other animals, more ethical, effective, and sustainable human-based methods are the future,” the group says. “Because they use human cells and tissues, these approaches can better replicate the pathology of human diseases, including COVID-19… examples of powerful human-based COVID-19 research include studies that have used donated human tissue, human brain organoids, human lung airway chips, human stem cell-derived cardiac tissue, human intestinal organoids, and mini human lungs in a dish. Learning from these human-relevant findings and supporting much more of this kind of research is the only way we will solve this crisis and better prepare for future pandemics.”
Stagno criticized the federal government’s request for more funding for primate research by comparing the U.S. position to that of Europe. “At a time when the European Parliament voted [on September 15] to phase out animal experiments, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services [under whose jurisdiction the NIH falls] is asking for another $30 million to expand primate research. This is totally out of step with where modern science needs to go.”
“While the past decade has seen amazing new developments in alternatives to animal testing, policymakers, regulators and parts of the scientific community are yet to fully recognize the potential of these new methods,” said Member of the European Parliament Tilly Metz. “The resolution we voted on today aims to accelerate the shift in mentalities, regulation and funding.” She added, “There are no excuses to perpetuate the current level of reliance on animal experiments. It is clear that an ambitious phase-out plan, with clear milestones and achievable objectives, is the next step needed to start reducing significantly the use of animals in science.” And while Europe is leading today’s charge to eliminate animal testing, animal welfare in general has also been gaining ground across Asia in recent years.
When it comes to cruel, deadly and unnecessary experiments, particularly on our close evolutionary cousins, it’s time for the United States to get in sync with modern science. Congress shouldn’t just reject additional funding for primate research—it should ban it altogether.
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Reynard Loki is a writing fellow at the Independent Media Institute, where he serves as the editor and chief correspondent for Earth | Food | Life. He previously served as the environment, food and animal rights editor at AlterNet and as a reporter for Justmeans/3BL Media covering sustainability and corporate social responsibility. He was named one of FilterBuy’s Top 50 Health & Environmental Journalists to Follow in 2016. His work has been published by Yes! Magazine, Salon, Truthout, BillMoyers.com, Counterpunch, EcoWatch and Truthdig, among others.
Pesticide residues have been found on around 70 percent of non-organic produce, according to Environmental Working Group, which has published the Shopper’s Guide to Pesticides in Produce, ranking the pesticide contamination of 46 popular fruits and vegetables.
Youth brigade: Young climate activists went on strike and marched in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on September 24, 2021, protesting fracking in Allegheny County and the construction go Line 3, a tar sands pipeline in Minnesota that threatens the environment and violates a treaty with Native Americans. Across the world, young activists aligned with Greta Thunberg’s Fridays for Future movement, took to the streets to demand action from world leaders ahead of the UN climate talks in November. (Photo credit: Mark Dixon/Flickr)
Directed by award-winning nonfiction filmmaker Elizabeth Lo, “Stray” (Magnolia Pictures, 2021) follows the lives of three stray dogs wandering through the streets of Istanbul as they search for food and shelter. The film explores what it means to have no legal status, safety or security.
“A simple work of genius,” said director Michael Moore. “I have never seen a feature film like this. The dogs are not being used by the human filmmakers to tell a human story—we are here to let the dogs tell us their story, even if we haven’t a clue what’s going on inside their heads.”
Paradise lost: An estimated 15 to 20 tons of plastic trash wash ashore every single year on a 0.6-mile uninhabited stretch of Kamilo Beach on the island of Hawaii. (Photo credit: M. Lamson/Hawaii Wildlife Fund via National Institute of Standards and Technology)
Tree life: On December 10, 1997, environmental activist Julia Butterfly Hill climbed up a 1,000-year-old redwood tree to a height of 180 feet, and remained there for 738 days in her successful bid to save the tree—dubbed “Luna”—from being cut down by the Pacific Lumber Company. (Photo credit: Stuart Franklin/Jacob Freeze/Flickr)
“Do you remember the pine that stood on the bank of the Arc, lowering its leafy head over the chasm that opened at its feet? That pine protected our bodies with its foliage from the heat of the sun, ah! May the Gods preserve it from the fatal blow of the woodcutter’s axe!” —Paul Cézanne, in a letter to Émile Zola
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.
Water works: The name acequia is derived from the Arabic word for irrigation canal: al-Sāqiyah. In Spain’s Granada, the magnificent late 13th, early 14th century Moorish Patio de la Acequia is part of the Alhambra complex and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. (Photo credit: Ajay Suresh/Wikimedia Commons)
Time-proven acequia irrigation systems already in use in New Mexico make it possible for people to thrive in arid regions.
By Erika Schelby, , Independent Media Institute
9 min read
Here in the Southwest, we are trapped between the extremes of a decades-long megadrought and sudden violent flooding. In New Mexico, the feverish heat started far too early: on June 14, 2021, Albuquerque broke a heat record with a temperature of 103 degrees Fahrenheit. Fortunately, the monsoons arrived, but they didn’t bring much relief; the earth was already scorched, baked hard by the sun and high temperatures. In this region, July and August are usually the wettest months of the year. But the desperately needed rains hit a soil that was extensively compacted and no longer permeable. Much of the water ran off in forceful flash floods. On July 21, it swept three people away in the state’s largest city. They were relaxing on the side of a man-made urban arroyo (channel to contain rushing water) in Albuquerque when the deluge after a sudden storm seized them. They drowned. The population has long been warned to avoid arroyos.
In the midst of unsettling weather events like these, it is good to look at something that works in the Southwest: the homegrown water management acequias. The ancient acequia irrigation system—a “community-controlled irrigation system”—has proven to be a lifeline for small-scale farmers in the Southwest. The new Spanish arrivals introduced this system to the Americas. Now, this time-tested, ecologically sound, and culturally significant water democracy of the acequias and the small-scale farmers who depend on this irrigation system for their survival in the arid regions of the Southwest are both under assault in the face of modern development in the region.
Acequia irrigation systems are an ancient invention, going back to at least the 1st century B.C. They make it possible for people to survive and thrive in the arid regions of the world, and even in deserts. This irrigation system can be found in India, China, Central and Southeast Asia, and North Africa. The Muslims “who invaded Spain in the 8th century” introduced their water management knowledge to the country, and centuries later the new Spanish arrivals introduced this irrigation system to the Americas, where they encountered various irrigation techniques, including the techniques used by Native Americans north of the Rio Grande. The name acequia is derived from the Arabic word for irrigation canal: al-Sāqiyah.
The acequia method appears to be simple, but it is, in fact, quite sophisticated. A superb engineering feat, it works with the help of “gravity-fed ditches” that utilize the lay of the land and depend on various other factors such as season changes and the melting of the snow. The flow and the allocation of the water to individual fields have to be just right to be beneficial; otherwise, they can lead to danger and potential pitfalls: water stagnation, accumulation of salts and pollutants, silt deposits, and more. However, the acequia system is adaptive and beneficial for the environment. The earthen ditches enhance water seepage into the soil, refill the aquifer, create lush narrow wetlands, and boost biodiversity. Data collected in a study of acequias by Sam Fernald, a professor of watershed management and director of the Water Resources Research Institute at New Mexico State University (NMSU), and his fellow researchers found that “only 7 percent of the water diverted from the Rio Grande into a north-central New Mexico acequia irrigation system [was] lost to evapotranspiration,” according to Farm Progress. By intricate interactions, this system allows for the rest of the precious water to return to the river and/or the aquifer.
The associations that manage acequia make great stewards of the land thanks to what they have learned from their long experience about how to get by during recurring droughts. There are rules that need to be followed in times of scarcity. Acequias tend to cooperate with nature and have evolved with time after being tweaked and tinkered with over many generations. And what’s more, the Spanish arrivals who built this canal network also created a stable social institution for the entire community: They established the first self-organized local democracy developed by European newcomers in North America. Then, in 1848, after the Southwest became part of the United States, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which ended the Mexican-American war, led to acceptance of the former legal status that Mexicans had under Spain and granted them individual water rights as constitutional rights.
On December 21, 2020, NMSU presented the results of a 10-year study of acequia systems titled “Acequia Water Systems Linking Culture and Nature: Integrated Analysis of Community Resilience to Climate and Land Use Changes.” Sam Fernald was the principal investigator of the interdisciplinary project, which involved 10 different fields ranging from hydrology to agricultural economics to global culture and society. It was funded by a $1.4 million grant from the National Science Foundation and studied the many facets of acequia systems. Scientists from the Sandia National Laboratories worked on putting all the data of the research together in models that will support ongoing investigations.
In New Mexico, the inhabitants of a village or settlement with membership to an acequia association are known as parciantes. They know in their bones that el agua es la vida (water is life), and they value every drop. They hold the use rights, but do not own the water itself—apparently one cannot own nature. With one farmer, one vote, they elect a mayordomo (or ditch boss) who is in charge of acequia management and governance. Each spring, all able-bodied men perform the essential hard work of cleaning and fixing the unlined channels of the water distribution network. The entire concept is based on mutual aid, shared labor, collective cooperation, and sacrifice in times of scarcity (drought), when water allocations are reduced for all members.
The New Mexico Acequia Commission estimates that currently there are about 700 acequias in the state with additional systems operating in southern Colorado. Most are small-scale acequias. Conflict about water was and still remains intense and complex in the entire region. Growing populations, urban sprawl, aggressive development, and extractive industries want more water. Small-scale farmers and the acequia systems are under assault. The political and legal maneuvers employed to obtain water use rights are extremely complicated. One example of this is the big-gun strategies that were used to get access to the water supply and get all the legal and environmental approvals required for building a brand-new city called Santolina, which is meant to accommodate 100,000 people in the middle of the waterless desert west of Albuquerque. The project lingers on. The Guardian published a story in 2015 with the headline, “Why does Barclays want to build a city in the middle of the New Mexico desert?” Why indeed. Yet the British bank Barclays bought the acreage, part of the Atrisco Land Grant, in a foreclosure transaction from the former failed developer SunCal to build a “38,000-home mega-development.”
When economic growth and progress are on the menu, how can the centuries-old oasis culture of the Southwest, with its small agricultural producers, prevail? Are acequia systems old-fashioned? Are they no longer relevant? Is the wish to preserve them impractical nostalgia?
Of course, the promoters of growth and development also depend on water. They want more and more when there is less and less. Some decades ago, manipulated photos of Albuquerque, New Mexico’s largest city, showed that it was sitting on an underground lake, nicknamed Lake Superior. But this aquifer was an illusion: wishful thinking. There was far less water underground, it was pumped out too fast, and users depleted it rapidly.
Thankfully, the city came to its senses. From 1994 to 2018, the Albuquerque metro area reduced water use per capita from 252 gallons per day to 125 gallons. The consumption was down to 121 gallons per capita per day in 2019 (although it crept up again during the pandemic in 2020). To achieve the 2019 decrease in water use, residents reduced consumption of water to maintain their lawns and xeriscaped their gardens, among other adaptations. Albuquerque has earned its reputation as “one of the best water conservation cities in the West.”
That’s admirable, but there is more that can be done. Scientists at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and elsewhere fear that the Western United States is advancing toward a “megadrought” situation as severe as anything known since prehistory. Our climate is warming, and the mountain snowpacks that feed and replenish our rivers are decreasing every year.
Saving water: From 1994 to 2018, the Albuquerque metro area reduced water use per capita from 252 gallons per day to 125 gallons. (Image credit: Albuquerque Bernalillo County Water Utility Authority)
Considering this, the water democracy of the acequias makes a lot of sense. The system works. It has shown staying power and sustainability for centuries. The farmers who participate may have just a few acres of land, and by some measurements, they could be classified as poor; but in rich countries, this is called “relative poverty.” An acequia farmer in Albuquerque’s still semi-rural South Valley may hold a job in the city and also take care of his or her small farm. These farmers are likely to own their own homes, as do 80 percent of the long-established Hispanics who live there. Perhaps the farmers don’t have much, but they have autonomy, dignity, and self-sufficiency.
And these farmers can trace back historic roots to this place, as their family might have farmed the same modest parcel of terra firma since the 1600s. But developments like Santolina would cover this land with concrete and make these farmers homeless. The trends are in favor of the acequias. During the pandemic, the global food supply chains were shaken and disrupted. Shoppers in North America, 65 percent of those surveyed in the U.S. and 82 percent in Canada, said they would be more likely to purchase locally produced food. For instance, it makes very little sense to grow lettuce or spinach on the West Coast and ship it for consumption to the East Coast, thousands of miles away. This not only leaves a big carbon footprint but also raises questions about the freshness of these vegetables despite the cooling systems installed in the trucks transporting them.
To bypass Big Ag, it is crucial for small-scale farmers to grow value-added crops that are better-tasting, more nutritious, environmentally sound, and income-friendly for the producer: the emphasis should be on quality, not quantity. All over the world, there is much ongoing imaginative innovation, scientific research, and technical know-how that can be studied and perhaps adapted. What is the Netherlands or Singapore doing with regard to small-scale urban farming? How are growers in the Sonoran Desert able to sustain their agricultural needs? The big tasks required to repair and preserve our planet can overpower the mind. So perhaps setting our own local house in order is a good starting point. In this context, the Southwest is fortunate to already have a model for water democracy in the acequias. Something so viable deserves respect and support.
Born with toxicity: Cancer-linked compounds in the chemical family known as PFAS were found in umbilical cord samples from babies born in the United States, but the Environmental Protection Agency has decided not to set legal limits for these toxic chemicals in the nation’s drinking water. (Photo credit: Jay Hsu/Flickr)
Consumer Reports: “Consumer Reports’ members helped test drinking water throughout the country, and the results are disturbing: Nearly every sample had measurable levels of PFAS, a group of compounds known as ‘forever chemicals’ because they don’t break down easily in the body or the environment. Despite mounting evidence of widespread PFAS contamination and potential health risks—including cancer, learning delays in children, and interference with vaccine efficacy—the EPA has failed to set an enforceable standard for PFAS in our water.”
Urge the Biden administration to protect our health and set tap water standards now that protect kids and vulnerable people from PFAS contamination.
Cause for concern…
Melting away: Jökulsárlón, a large glacial lagoon in southeast Iceland, was created after the glacier started receding from the edge of the Atlantic Ocean due to climate change. (Photo credit: Eskinder Debebe/United Nations/Flickr)
United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres warned that “the world is on a catastrophic pathway,” following the release of a worrisome new country-by-country analysis of emission reduction pledges revealing that the commitments made under the Paris climate accord are not enough to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.
About time: “I plan to get to the bottom of how fossil fuel companies have raked in trillions of dollars of profit at the expense of our planet and our health, all while spreading doubt and disinformation about the dangers of fossil fuels,” said House Oversight Committee Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) through a spokesperson. (Photo credit: Ralph Alswang/Center for American Progress/Flickr)
“U.S. Democratic lawmakers on Thursday asked the chiefs of four major fossil fuel companies and two lobbying groups to testify next month on whether the industry led an effort to mislead the public and prevent action to fight climate change,” reports Timothy Gardner for Reuters.
Furry friends, furry fiends: There is a dark side to our domestic connection with animal life. (Photo credit: yukariryu/Flickr)
“Pets and the pet industry are not only replacing the role of nature in our human experience, they’re devastating wildlife directly. In myriad ways, pets pose a clear threat to the wonderful, wild splendor of the rest of life on earth: cats and dogs stalk wildlife as human-subsidized killers; jungles are robbed of animals to satisfy the pet trade; diseases deadly to wild creatures are spread by globe-trotting pets; released pets in nonnative habitats (such as pythons in the Everglades) eat every wild animal in sight or squeeze them out as indomitable competitors; and the pet food business, with its insatiable demand, drains our oceans of vital forage fish. The impacts are considerable. Over the past five centuries, pets have been among the leading culprits in clobbering literally hundreds of species of threatened and extinct birds, mammals, reptiles, and amphibians around the globe. Domestic cats alone have helped obliterate more than 60 species in that period—including the Stephens Island wren of New Zealand and the Hawaiian crow—creatures lost forever from the rich variety of our living planet. Dogs have been linked to the extinction of 11. Other pets, and the pet industry that supports them, have been linked to other dwindling wildlife populations around the world.”
Cleanup crew: Launched in 2013, the annual Boskalis Beach Cleanup Tour eliminates all the marine litter from the entire Dutch coastline in just a few weeks. (Photo credit: Anjo De Haan/Stichting De Noordzee/Flickr)
“The question is not ‘Can you make a difference?’ You already do make a difference. It’s just a matter of what kind of difference you want to make during your life on this planet.” —Julia Butterfly Hill
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.
Econo-diversity makes cities resilient in times of crisis.
By Christina Conklin and Marina Psaros
6 min read
Editor’s note: Using a unique blend of place-based storytelling and clear explanations of both climate science and climate policy, Christina Conklin and Marina Psaros, in their new bookThe Atlas of Disappearing Places: Our Coasts and Oceans in the Climate Crisis(2021, The New Press), look at the likely impacts of the climate crisis—extreme weather, melting sea ice, flooded coastlines, and species extinction in 20 of the most at-risk communities around the globe, from New York, Shanghai and the Cook Islands, to Bangladesh, Kenya and Vietnam.
The 2020s were lean years in New York, as elsewhere. But the city’s 2022 lawsuit against the Big Five—Chevron, BP, Shell, Exxon, and ConocoPhillips—picked up where their 2018 lawsuit had failed, seeking to defray the skyrocketing costs of climate adaptation. Dozens of other cities, counties, and states had also taken legal action, chipping away at the oil companies’ deniability defense until it was clear the oil giants had known for decades they were deceiving the public about their direct responsibility for global warming. Investor unease forced them to ask the State Department to facilitate a grand settlement. By 2026, the Greenhouse Gas Settlement’s trust fund received its opening payments of $100 billion, a sum to be paid annually for as long as each company earned revenue through fossil fuel extraction. This sudden disincentive to produce catalyzed the U.S. energy industry’s first real commitment to renewables, far behind their Asian and OPEC counterparts.
New York used its share of the settlement to channelize the streets in Lower Manhattan, making them concave rather than convex—a Danish idea that successfully drained most water away from subway entrances. The city levied a graduated carbon tax that allowed developers and billionaires to pick up most of the tab for improved sea defenses along with tax credits to those who included more than 50 percent affordable housing on land higher than three meters (ten feet) above the 2020 sea level. Mostly, citizens and leaders carried on as they always had, aware of the need for action but not willing to give up the familiar contours of their city.
But the Valentine’s Day Flood of 2033 changed the public’s understanding of just how dangerous a storm could be. Rather than a sea surge like Sandy, this unseasonably warm nor’easter blew in heavy rains from upstate, sending more than 6 centimeters (2.5 inches) of water per hour down rivers, streets, and subway tunnels every hour. February’s full moon brought the highest tides of the year into New York Harbor, sending water deep into Bronx and Queens neighborhoods that had never seen flooding before. Many who were out for the night did not receive the text alerts, and nearly 20,000 people drowned as roads became rivers.
The rain came down for four days and nights. Much of the region’s transportation system was shut down for months. Half a million people fled upstate and out of state and thousands without the means to relocate moved into makeshift shelters to wait for the cleanup. The lesson of Sandy—that far-sighted relocation planning could prevent much suffering—hadn’t been learned. The city had no comprehensive flood response plan in place, and many flood barriers had failed, so slow recovery response heaped layers of trauma onto a city that had already been through so much.
But some communities on Staten Island, which had a lot of experience with flooding, had been prepared. They had held community meetings since Sandy, where they discussed and debated different approaches to coping with the Big One they all knew was coming. When it did, they felt clear-eyed, informed, and self-empowered. Their block-by-block safety teams helped the elderly and disabled evacuate to agreed safe houses, and the rest headed for the well-appointed shelter they had campaigned for a decade earlier, built on the high ground of the former Fresh Kills landfill. The borough had the lowest death toll in the city, even though it was largely a former swamp.
Threatened by rising seas: The yelllow, orange and red areas in the map above show the 5-meter flood line, with the most vulnerable communities in red. After Hurricane Sandy devastated the U.S. East Coast in 2012, Mike Bloomberg, then the mayor of New York, said in his major post-storm speech that more than 800,000 of the city’s residents could be living within the one-hundred-year flood zone. Illustration by Christina Conklin, from The Atlas of Disappearing Places (The New Press, 2021). Reprinted with permission.
New Jersey and Connecticut were also devastated, with many smaller rivers breaching their banks and washing away small towns. The three governors crossed political lines to finally implement a plan that had first been proposed back in 2017, creating a Regional Coastal Commission and vesting it with the regulatory powers to relocate low-lying communities and add protection to higher, densely populated places. After two years of thoughtful development, the commission released the New Mannahatta Plan, a vision that more closely realigned the metropolitan landscape with its original 17th-century topography. In Manhattan, Canal Street was reverted to an actual canal, and Water Street became the shoreline and a floodable park. In Staten Island and Queens, whole neighborhoods were rebuilt further inland, the buildings torn down and converted into storm berms along the +2-meter shoreline. All along the tri-state coast, the RCC established floating communities, added ferries and water taxis, converted the most undefendable sites to open space, and built even denser urban hubs on high ground.
They opened Meadowlands National Park as a restored wetlands, to great fanfare. As the subway faltered and failed after repeated inundations, the city re-elevated its trains, running them up the dry spine of Manhattan from the Bowery to Broadway and Central Park. Transformational adaptation had finally reached the shores of the Hudson.
It took more than two decades to fully implement, but as the city enters the second half of the century, it has squarely faced its challenging geography. Now, New York is indeed the “dramatically reshaped city” that Daniel Zarrilli, former chief climate policy adviser to New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, predicted decades ago, though its resilience is tinged with notes of sadness, healing, and regret.
Key Term: Economy
Economy once referred to the administration of a single home or community resources, with an emphasis on frugality. The contemporary understanding of “the economy” as a unifying national discourse only dates to the Great Depression, when countries were together by hardship. In recent generations, most nations have accepted the maxim that economic growth is the goal of a successful society. But climate instability is already creating economic instability as disasters mount, and diverse economic models are needed to see us through. Environmental economics is favored by some because it seeks to value the air, water, and land in the current system as costs and benefits are calculated. More radically, steady-state economics, first proposed by John Stuart Mill and developed more recently by Herman Daly as “ecological economics,” imagines an economy that neither grows nor shrinks, but lives within the carrying capacity of its environment, with well-distributed wealth and improving standards of living through innovation.
How we understand the purpose and goals of our economy can help us learn how to manage the finite resources of a single planet. In the United States, neighborhood barter economies, sharing economies, and local currencies all expanded in response to “shelter in place” orders that accompanied the COVID-19 pandemic. Such econo-diversity (like bio-diversity) can help communities be more resilient in times of crisis.
Marina Psaros is a sustainability expert and has led climate action programs across public, private, and nonprofit organizations for over a decade. She is one of the creators of the King Tides Project, an international community science and education initiative. She is the co-author of The Atlas of Disappearing Places.
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Losing ground: The Hawaiian monk seal (Monachus schauinslandi) is an endangered species of earless seal that is endemic to the Hawaiian Islands. Sea-level rise threatens monk seals’ pupping beaches, with one key breeding island already gone. (Photo credit: vivtony00/Flickr)
Center for Biological Diversity: “A groundbreaking report from the Center finds that 233 threatened and endangered species in 23 coastal states are at risk from sea-level rise. This means that, left unchecked, rising seas threaten the survival of 17 percent—one out of six—of our nation’s federally protected species. The report highlights five at-risk species living in different parts of our coasts: the Hawaiian monk seal, Key deer, loggerhead sea turtle, Delmarva peninsula fox squirrel, and western snowy plover. The report provides a roadmap of the priority actions needed to protect wildlife from sea-level rise impacts—foremost among them deep and rapid cuts in greenhouse gas pollution, protecting natural coastal buffers, and making room for wildlife to move inland as the oceans rise.”
Urge Congress to pass the Extinction Prevention Act to provide crucial funding for the most critically endangered species.
Cause for concern…
Dirty business: Conservationists have warned that ReconAfrica’s exploratory fossil fuel project in Botswana and Namibia will threaten wildlife, local communities and ecosystems. (Photo credit: Claire Gribbin/Flickr)
Deep issue: Fire crews battle the blaze on the offshore oil rig Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico on April 21, 2010. The House Natural Resources Committee advanced climate change legislation that would block oil drilling in most offshore waters and invest billions of dollars in conservation efforts. (Photo credit: U.S. Coast Guard/Florida Sea Grant/Flickr)
Dead zone: Cutting down forests not only destroys wildlife habitat and removes valuable ecosystem services but also releases their stored carbon into the atmosphere, which contributes to global warming. (Photo credit: crustmania/Flickr)
“In addition to sequestering carbon and protecting the Earth’s climate, forests provide a wide range of ecosystem services, from supplying food, fuel, timber and fiber, to purifying the air, filtering water supplies, maintaining wildlife habitats, controlling floods and preventing soil erosion. Moreover, the COVID-19 pandemic has made clear to the public something that scientists have been warning for decades: Deforestation is linked to the spread of zoonotic diseases. But those services are threatened when forests are cleared for wood products and land-use changes, like making space for climate-destructive industries like the meat industry.”
A river runs through it: Carved over the course of 5 to 6 million years by the flow of the Colorado River, the Grand Canyon exposes nearly 2 billion years of the Earth’s geological history through layers of rock that at some points are more than a mile deep. (Photo credit: Lennart Sikkema/Wikipedia)
“Nature is not a place to visit. It is home.” —Gary Snyder
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.
Waterworld: Louisiana National Guardsmen with the 922nd Engineer Vertical Construction Company helped rescue 135 people and four dogs in the flooded community of LaPlace, Louisiana, in the aftermath of Hurricane Ida. (Photo credit: Louisiana National Guard/Flickr)
The infrastructure bill may not be enough to address the climate crisis; some lawmakers are urging the president to declare a national emergency.
By Reynard Loki, Independent Media Institute
8 min read
On August 30, 2021, President Joe Biden committed the federal government to help Louisiana and Mississippi recover from Hurricane Ida’s devastation for “as long as it takes for you to recover.” With several federal agencies working on the massive recovery effort, the president added during the virtual briefing at the White House that “it’s in moments like these that we can certainly see the power of government to respond to the needs of the people.” The devastating hurricane has killed more than 60 people, left more than 1 million people without power, and could cost more than $50 billion in damages.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) was quick to make the connection between Hurricane Ida and climate change. “Global warming is upon us,” he said. “When you get two record rainfalls in a week (in New York City), it’s not just coincidence. When you get all the changes that we have seen in weather, that’s not a coincidence… It’s going to get worse and worse and worse, unless we do something about it.” Schumer and other federal lawmakers have used Hurricane Ida as a selling point to pass Biden’s $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill—which includes several climate change mitigation and resiliency measures and passed the Senate on August 10—as well as the Democrats’ $3.5 trillion budget reconciliation spending plan, which has been dubbed the “human infrastructure” bill. A recent poll found that a majority of Americans support both measures. “It’s so imperative to pass the two bills,” Schumer said.
The hurricane’s intensity was likely fueled by climate change. Kerry Emanuel, an atmospheric scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who studies the connection between hurricanes and the climate, said of Ida’s power, “This is exactly the kind of thing we’re going to have to get used to as the planet warms.”
In their latest climate report published in August, the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) found that human activity, particularly the combustion of fossil fuels, is the likely driver behind the increase in both the frequency and intensity of hurricanes over the past four decades. “The alarm bells are deafening, and the evidence is irrefutable: greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel burning and deforestation are choking our planet and putting billions of people at immediate risk,” UN Secretary-General António Guterres said in a statement on the report. “Global heating is affecting every region on Earth, with many of the changes becoming irreversible.” Linda Mearns, a senior climate scientist at the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research and one of the report’s co-authors, meanwhile, offered a stern warning: “It’s just guaranteed that it’s going to get worse,” she said, adding that there is “[n]owhere to run, nowhere to hide.”
Adding to the concern is the fact that the end of hurricane season is still far from over, as meteorologists at the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) monitor Hurricane Larry’s path across the Atlantic Ocean. Moreover, Hurricane Ida is just one of the several extreme weather events that have caused death and destruction across the nation. Massive wildfires, fueled by extreme heat and dry conditions, are ripping through California, where more than 1 million acres have been burned in 2021. These are unprecedented times: Only twice in the history of California have wildfires raged from one side of the Sierra Nevada mountain range to the other, and both of those wildfires took place in August.
The National Interagency Fire Center has reported that more than 5 million acres have been charred this year nationwide as of September 7. Nearly half of the land area of the lower 48 states is currently experiencing drought, with the NOAA warning in August that these extremely dry conditions—with precipitation at below-average levels and temperatures at above-average levels—are likely to “continue at least into late fall,” according to the New York Times. As a whole, the United States experienced its hottest June in the 127 years since temperature records have been maintained, while July was Earth’s hottest month on record.
“Climate scientists were predicting exactly these kinds of things, that there would be an enhanced threat of these types of extreme events brought on by increased warming,” said Jonathan Martin, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “It’s very distressing. These are not encouraging signs for our immediate future.”
The increase in both the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events like hurricanes, wildfires, droughts and heat waves is providing a fitting backdrop for amplified calls to pass Biden’s infrastructure bill, which would help mitigate the impacts of the climate crisis by repairing 20,000 miles of aging roads and 10 of the country’s most economically crucial bridges to make them more resilient to extreme weather. The bill also seeks to accelerate the nation’s shift toward clean energy to achieve the Paris climate agreement’s goal of reducing global greenhouse gas emissions in order to limit the planet’s surface temperature increase in this century to 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels. (The agreement’s hope to limit the increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius now seems unlikely, given the findings of the new IPCC climate report.) The bill seeks to utilize a combination of federal spending and tax credits to improve transportation, broadband internet, housing and the electric grid, as well as financial support to advance the nation’s manufacturing capabilities, specifically those industries that the administration believes will help the United States compete economically with China.
The White House issued a fact sheet describing the president’s infrastructure plan, saying that it would “create a generation of good-paying union jobs and economic growth, and position the United States to win the 21st century, including on many of the key technologies needed to combat the climate crisis.” The bill would be the first to earmark spending specifically for climate resilience, including $6.8 billion for the Army Corps of Engineers to address federal flood control and ecosystem restoration projects, with an eye toward environmental justice, and calling for 40 percent of all climate-related investments to happen in disadvantaged communities.
“Mr. Biden’s pledge to tackle climate change is embedded throughout the plan,” reports Jim Tankersley for the New York Times. “Roads, bridges and airports would be made more resilient to the effects of more extreme storms, floods and fires wrought by a warming planet. Spending on research and development could help spur breakthroughs in cutting-edge clean technology, while plans to retrofit and weatherize millions of buildings would make them more energy efficient.”
In August, Schumer said that the bipartisan infrastructure bill and Democrats’ reconciliation spending package would cut the United States’ carbon dioxide emission levels by 45 percent by 2030 compared to 2005 levels. He added, “When you add administrative actions being planned by the Biden administrative and many states—like New York, California, and Hawaii—we will hit our 50 percent target by 2030.” That is the goal that Biden set for the nation after he rejoined the Paris climate accord.
“In order to avoid the worst long-term consequences of the climate crisis, we need to put the U.S. on the path to 100 percent clean energy—otherwise, this summer may just be a preview of the disasters to come,” Brooke Still, senior director of digital strategy at the nonprofit League of Conservation Voters (LCV), told Earth | Food | Life recently in an email. “We know what a transition to clean energy will take: We need to stop using oil and coal and go big on clean energy. It’s clear the public agrees—71 percent of the public supports making the investments in climate, justice, and jobs that President Biden proposed. But climate deniers, fossil fuel interests, and obstructionist members of Congress are slowing things to a crawl.” LCV has launched a public petition urging Congress to “invest in clean energy and… in people and communities who too often have been left behind.”
While some lawmakers have pegged the two bills as key to combating climate change, others—including Representatives Earl Blumenauer (D-OR), Matt Cartwright (D-PA), Raúl Grijalva (D-AZ), Tom Malinowski (D-NJ), Jim McGovern (D-MA) and Mark Pocan (D-WI)—are calling for the White House to take another measure: declare the climate crisis a national emergency. These congressional members, along with Oregon Secretary of State Shemia Fagan, have joined with several advocacy groups, including the California League of Conservation Voters, Global Warming Solutions, and Progressive Reform Network, to sponsor a public petition urging Biden to declare a national emergency due to the climate crisis. By doing so, President Biden would unlock certain executive options to tackle climate change directly.
“From Oregon to Texas, from wildfires to winter storms, the results of our inaction on climate change are visible every day. It’s a disaster and a grave threat to the future of our country and planet,” states the petition. “We’ve nibbled at the edges of the problem for too long. It’s time for bold action. One key step? President Biden should declare climate change a national emergency. That declaration will elevate climate change as a national security priority and allow us to devote more resources to cut carbon emissions, invest in clean energy, hold polluters accountable, and ensure climate justice for frontline communities.”
To achieve his goal of slashing annual emissions by 50 percent by 2030 compared to 2005 levels, Biden must eliminate around 2 billion metric tons of climate pollution from the nation’s energy system. “Is that even possible?” the Atlantic’s Robinson Meyer asked Danielle Arostegui, a senior analyst for U.S. climate policy at the nonprofit Environmental Defense Fund. She responded, “It’s not Can we do it? but Will we do it?” As the nation—and the world—steer through the climate crisis, it is becoming clear that our goals and our actions are not necessarily aligned. As the saying goes, where there’s a will, there’s a way. But just because there’s a way doesn’t mean there’s a will.
Robert Brulle, a sociologist who studies the influence of the fossil fuel industry on U.S. politics, framed the obstacle to ensure meaningful climate action bluntly: “It’s really hard to get people to change their way of life and existence.”
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Home sweet home? We only have one Earth to live on, and it’s one thing that we all have in common. (Photo credit: Ivan Radic/Flickr)
A group of representatives on Capitol Hill have joined with several advocacy groups to launch a public petition urging President Joe Biden to declare climate change a national emergency. “That declaration will elevate climate change as a national security priority and allow us to devote more resources to cut carbon emissions, invest in clean energy, hold polluters accountable, and ensure climate justice for frontline communities,” they write.
Urge President Joe Biden to declare climate change a national emergency.
Cause for concern…
Danger zone: The California National Guard was deployed in August to battle the Dixie wildfire, the second-largest wildfire in California’s history. (Photo credit: 1st Sgt. Harley Ramirez/U.S. Army National Guard/Flickr)
Earth-friendly foods: Eating less meat and dairy —which accounts for 14.5 percent of anthropogenic global greenhouse gases—and more plant-based foods like fruits, vegetables, grains and beans is an excellent way to reduce your climate impact and stay healthy. (Photo credit: Stacy Spensley/Flickr)
Treehuggers: Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity, Inc. and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service joined forces to plant trees and engage urban youth in conservation and biological sciences at Bayou Sauvage National Wildlife Refuge in New Orleans, Louisiana, in 2015. (Photo credit: Tom MacKenzie/U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service/Flickr)
“I seem to spend an inordinate amount of time following my 3-year-old son around and switching things off. I tried something new the other day: ‘It’s bad for the planet when you switch things on that you don’t need,’ I said. He stopped and looked at me for a moment, then switched off the light and continued playing. A small victory. This felt like the start of something we’ll need to continue talking about for many years. What’s clear to me now is that there won’t be a single moment when we need to have ‘the talk’ about climate change. Instead, climate change needs to be something that’s part of our everyday conversations and actions. It needs to be fun and engaging, solutions-focused, and fact-based. And, above all, it needs to start now. Here are five techniques that can help.”
“For in the true nature of things, if we rightly consider, every green tree is far more glorious than if it were made of gold and silver.” —Martin Luther
Reynard Loki is a writing fellow at the Independent Media Institute, where he serves as the editor and chief correspondent for Earth | Food | Life. He previously served as the environment, food and animal rights editor at AlterNet and as a reporter for Justmeans/3BL Media covering sustainability and corporate social responsibility. He was named one of FilterBuy’s Top 50 Health & Environmental Journalists to Follow in 2016. His work has been published by Yes! Magazine, Salon, Truthout, BillMoyers.com, Counterpunch, EcoWatch and Truthdig, among others.
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.
Bad policy: “The use of animals for [the Department of Justice’s live tissue training] is expensive, obsolete, unnecessary and opposed by most Americans,” Representatives Matt Cartwright (D-PA) and Ted Lieu (D-CA) wrote to the agency in 2019. (Photo credit: Oliver Gouldthorpe/Flickr)
It makes no sense to continue wasting both tax dollars and animals’ lives.
By Stephen R. Kaufman, Independent Media Institute
3 min read
When I went to medical school in the 1980s, it was standard practice to have students cut apart live dogs and other animals as part of the curriculum to teach them medical skills and concepts. Since then, these crude and cruel animal labs have been abandoned in medical schools and advanced surgical courses in favor of realistic human simulators that are more humane, cost-efficient and effective.
Apparently, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) didn’t get the memo about this.
According to federal contracts uncovered by taxpayer watchdog White Coat Waste Project (WCW), for which I serve as a volunteer medical adviser, the U.S. Marshals Service and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (both under the DOJ) have still been conducting “live tissue training” (LTT) courses. LTT is a euphemism for inflicting traumatic, life-threatening injuries on live animals to teach certain emergency medical procedures.
As DOJ funding panel Chairman Rep. Matt Cartwright (D-PA) and House Judiciary Committee member Rep. Ted Lieu (D-CA) astutely wrote in a letter to the DOJ in 2019, “LTT involves intentionally wounding live animals—usually stabbing, burning and shooting pigs and goats, and sometimes even dogs—and then having trainees crudely attempt to repair the damage… The use of animals for this training is expensive, obsolete, unnecessary and opposed by most Americans.”
Many of the animals die from these traumatic injuries during the courses, and even those who survive are killed at the end.
The federal government’s own studies show that human simulators like the Cut Suit, TraumaMan and TOMManikin that mimic human anatomy—even replicating bleeding and breathing—are more effective and economical than these outdated animal labs. Unlike the animals who are purchased, transported, dismembered, killed and thrown away after every LTT course, each simulator can train many students and can be reused time and again.
Even the U.S. Defense Department states in a 2016 report that LTT is “outdated and cost-prohibitive” and a 2017 report from the Pentagon says that “live tissue training options are not anatomically accurate.” An Army-funded study at Yale concluded in 2015, “it is clear that simulated training costs less than live tissue training.” And a 2020 U.S. military-funded study concluded that human simulation is an effective replacement for LTT.
Adding insult to injury, the DOJ has already spent taxpayers’ money to purchase high-tech trauma simulators, but has continued to waste $131,793 on recent, completely unnecessary LTT courses anyway. The DOJ can’t defend this waste and abuse, so instead it tried to keep the details a secret, and it took a federal lawsuit by White Coat Waste Project to pry away relevant documents from the agency.
A majority of Americans on both sides of the aisle want change and support doing away with this outdated practice. A June 2020 national survey of 1,000 taxpayers by Lincoln Park Strategies found that 63 percent of them—which included 66 percent of Republicans surveyed and 65 percent of Democrats surveyed—backed the effort to ask the DOJ to defund LTT.
As a physician, medical educator and animal advocate, I oppose this senseless waste of tax dollars and animals’ lives. There needs to be political support from leaders like members of Congress and Attorney General Merrick Garland to take swift and decisive action to cut live tissue training from the curriculum.
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Stephen R. Kaufman, MD, is a board-certified ophthalmologist and assistant professor at the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine. He is also a volunteer medical adviser for the nonprofit White Coat Waste Project, which works to end taxpayer-funded animal experiments.
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Pig pals: Spending time with rescued pigs at Farm Sanctuary in Watkins Glen, New York, the nation’s largest farm animal rescue organization. Pigs are intelligent, emotional and cognitively complex, yet are subject to cruel, deadly and unnecessary experiments by the U.S. federal government. (Photo credit: Jo-Anne McArthur/We Animals Media)
White Coat Waste Project: “The Department of Justice (DOJ) wastes American taxpayer money to fund cruel and wasteful live tissue training on pigs, goats, and possibly dogs. The DOJ sent $131,793 of your tax money to the FBI and U.S. Marshals service for animal abuse that would land an individual in jail. During live tissue training, pigs, goats, and sometimes even dogs are shot, stabbed, burned alive, and blown up. […] Many of the victims die from botched surgeries, and those who survive are killed anyways. What’s worse? The DOJ doesn’t need to butcher live animals for training. They already own more effective and more cost-efficient human patient simulators. Even the Defense Department has criticized live tissue training as ‘outdated and cost-prohibitive.’ There’s simply no excuse for these atrocities.”
Stormy weather: The crew of the International Space Station took this image of Hurricane Ida as the storm “made landfall in Louisiana… [on August] 29, 2021, with maximum sustained winds of 150 miles per hour,” NASA reported. (Photo credit: European Space Agency)
“Hurricanes are heat engines, feasting off warm, tropical waters,” reports Andrew Freedman for Axios. “The vast majority of extra heat going into the climate system from burning fossil fuels is being absorbed by the oceans, and the seas are warming as a result… A recent scientific assessment found that the planet’s oceans have warmed faster during the past 100 years than at any point in the past 11,000 years.”
Poisoned ecosystems: The widespread use of neonicotinoid pesticides in the United States has made the nation’s agricultural landscape 48 times more toxic to honeybees—and most likely other insects—than it was just 25 years ago, according to a 2019 study. (Photo credit: Aqua Mechanical/Flickr).
“Three common neonicotinoid insecticides were ruled ‘likely to adversely affect’ thousands of endangered species and critical habitats, according to draft biological evaluations released by EPA,” reports Emily Unglesbee for Progressive Farmer. “Now EPA will work with the Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service to decide if additional changes need to be made to these insecticides’ labels or registrations to protect any of the affected species.”
Depraved: Killing contest contestants bring their dead coyotes to be weighed and counted, Williamsport Fire Department, Williamsport, Indiana, on December 6, 2020. (Photo credit: The HSUS)
“You would really have to try hard to find anything more depraved than a wildlife killing contest, which targets coyotes, foxes, bobcats, squirrels, raccoons, crows and even wolves and cougars in some states, for the sake of a prize that could range from cash to hunting equipment. These contests are responsible for the mindless killing of an inconceivable number of animals, all under the guise of sport. Contests like these should be relegated to history books; instead, these events still take place in nearly all of the 42 states where wildlife killing contests are legal and result in the killing of thousands of animals every year.”
Monet’s muse: The European goldfinch is one of the many species of birds that the impressionist painter Claude Monet may have spotted in his garden in Giverny, France. (Photo credit: Bengt Nyman/Wikipedia)
“I would like to paint the way a bird sings.” —Claude Monet
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.
Earth defenders: Indigenous youth climate activists with Fridays For Future protest inside COP25, the 25th UN Climate Change Conference, on December 13, 2019, in Madrid, Spain. (Photo credit: John Englart/Climate Action Network/Flickr)
In its first major climate report since 2013, the IPCC offers its starkest warning yet: Serious impacts of global warming are now unavoidable.
By Reynard Loki, Independent Media Institute
9 min read
In a grim report released on Monday, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says that climate change was “unequivocally” caused by human activity, and that within two decades, rising temperatures will cause the planet to reach a significant turning point in global warming. The report’s authors—a group of the world’s top climate scientists convened by the United Nations (UN)—predict that by 2040, average global temperatures will be warmer than 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, causing more frequent and intense heat waves, droughts and extreme weather events. UN Secretary-General António Guterres called the bleak findings a “code red for humanity.”
The report found global warming increasing at a faster rate than earlier predictions estimated. “It is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land… [and] at a rate that is unprecedented in at least the last 2,000 years,” the report says. “Widespread and rapid changes in the atmosphere, ocean, cryosphere and biosphere have occurred.” Even if the world’s nations enacted sharp and stringent reductions in the emissions of greenhouse gases today, overall global warming is still estimated to rise around 1.5 degrees Celsius within the next 20 years. That means that the hotter, more dangerous future that scientists and the Paris climate agreement sought to avoid is now unavoidable.
Linda Mearns, a senior climate scientist at the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research and one of the report’s co-authors, offered a stern warning: “It’s just guaranteed that it’s going to get worse,” she said, adding that there is “[n]owhere to run, nowhere to hide.” In an interview with the Hill, Kim Cobb, the lead author of the report’s first chapter, said, “We’re already reeling, clearly, from so many of these impacts that the report highlights, especially in the category of extremes that are gripping these headlines and causing so much damage, but of course the 1.5 degree C world is notably and discernibly worse.”
“The alarm bells are deafening, and the evidence is irrefutable: Greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel burning and deforestation are choking our planet and putting billions of people at immediate risk,” Guterres said in a statement on the report. “Global heating is affecting every region on Earth, with many of the changes becoming irreversible.”
There is a sliver of hope that the worst impacts of the climate catastrophe might be averted, but time for that is rapidly running out, and many actions must be taken by governments, the private sector and civil society in tandem and with urgency—a tall order. “I again call on donors and the multilateral development banks to allocate at least 50 percent of all public climate finance to protecting people, especially women and vulnerable groups,” Guterres said. “COVID-19 recovery spending must be aligned with the goals of the Paris Agreement. And the decade-old promise to mobilize $100 billion annually to support mitigation and adaptation in developing countries must be met.”
Key stakeholders in the climate crisis response are the world’s Indigenous peoples, who are particularly vulnerable to the direct impacts of climate change, as they are often living on the front lines of the natural environment and depend on healthy ecosystems for their survival. The climate crisis also adds another difficulty to the long list of obstacles that Indigenous communities have faced for centuries, including loss of land and resources, human rights violations, discrimination, marginalization and unemployment.
Negotiators at COP26, the upcoming UN climate conference taking place in Glasgow in November, should include Indigenous voices, knowledge and needs as they outline the world’s climate mitigation plan. Hopefully, they will uphold the sentiment expressed during the COP26 Climate and Development Ministerial held in March, where the “importance of drawing on the knowledge held by [I]ndigenous peoples, women, rural communities, young people and local authorities was… emphasized, along with the importance of pursuing rights-based approaches.”
Vehia Wheeler, co-founder of Sustainable Oceania Solutions, a small, women-owned social enterprise based in Hawaii that seeks to educate the young citizen scientists of Oceania using ancestral knowledge in partnership with STEM methods, called for Indigenous voices and their climate solutions to be championed at COP26. “Indigenous knowledge systems should be a guide for the future,” she recently said in a tweet shared by COP26.
One main reason that the world’s Indigenous communities must play a central role in the climate fight is the fact that they hold or manage a disproportionate amount of officially protected regions, regions that have experienced a low human impact. According to an assessment on the species extinction crisis issued by the UN Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) in 2019, Indigenous peoples occupy 28 percent of the Earth’s land, but more than 40 percent of formally protected areas—and 37 percent of all remaining terrestrial areas with low human impact. “Three-quarters of the land-based environment and about 66 percent of the marine environment have been significantly altered by human actions,” the IPBES report states. “On average these trends have been less severe or avoided in areas held or managed by Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities.” Deforestation rates across the Amazon, for example, are two to three times lower in lands held by Indigenous peoples.
In other words, when it comes to conserving nature and biodiversity—important strategies in the battle to save the climate—these front-line communities are doing a lot of things right. Unlike the Western viewpoint that the natural world is something that humans can and should dominate, Indigenous communities across the globe have lived in harmony with nature, seeing the life on the planet as part of an interconnected whole. “We put our non-human relatives first, meaning the trees, the sky, the water,” Nikki Cooley, co-manager of the Tribes and Climate Change Program for the Institute for Tribal Environmental Professionals in Flagstaff, Arizona, told Yale Environment 360 last year. “We don’t treat them as objects to be studied in a lab. We revere them.”
Working intimately with the land and its natural resources, and often guided by a holistic mix of current science and traditional knowledge, Indigenous people have been successfully mitigating climate risks and adjusting to changes in the climate and environment for generations. “Indigenous peoples have always been on the front lines,” said Cooley. “Tribes have always been adapting to climate change. Now we have to adapt even faster.”
“People around the world increasingly see the urgent need to tackle the twin emergencies of climate change and biodiversity loss,” writes Steven Nitah, a former politician from the Northwest Territories, Canada, who served as the chief negotiator for the Łutsël K’e Dene First Nation, in a recent commentary in One Earth. “We can make progress on both these fronts if the world also recognizes the leadership of Indigenous peoples who oversee the most healthy, biodiverse, and intact lands and waters left on Earth.”
The 2019 IPBES report notes that current modeling on a regional and global scale lacks Indigenous input and suggests that policymakers consider “the views, perspectives and rights of Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities, their knowledge and understanding of large regions and ecosystems, and their desired future development pathways.” The UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs for Indigenous Peoples supports that view, contending that Indigenous communities are “vital to, and active in, the many ecosystems that inhabit their lands and territories and may therefore help enhance the resilience of these ecosystems,” adding that “[I]ndigenous peoples interpret and react to the impacts of climate change in creative ways, drawing on traditional knowledge and other technologies to find solutions which may help society at large to cope with impending changes.”
“The gravity of the climate emergency has been tirelessly called out by Indigenous and front-line communities for decades,” said Tom Goldtooth, executive director of the Indigenous Environmental Network. “We must pressure the IPCC before the mitigation report comes out early next year to listen to the voices of the traditional knowledge holders of Indigenous peoples and end carbon pricing, carbon capture and solar radiation management mitigation strategies that keep fossil fuels coming out of the ground.”
Home field advantage: During the “Peoples World Conference on Climate Change and the Defense of Life” event held in Cochabamba, Bolivia, in 2015, the views of Indigenous people were emphasized. (Photo credit: United Nations/Eskinder Debebe/Flickr)
“The front lines are already way ahead of the politicians. We are leading with solutions—from community-owned solar energy systems that create safe, good-paying jobs to just recovery efforts that ensure those communities most impacted by the crisis are built back in sustainable and safe ways based on community needs,” said Elizabeth Yeampierre, executive director of UPROSE and co-chair of the Climate Justice Alliance Board of Directors. “To truly address the climate crisis, we need policymakers to enact bold and transformative policies like the THRIVE Act, which [was] crafted in deep consultation and partnership with Black, Brown, Indigenous, Asian and Pacific Islander, poor, and marginalized communities.”
And while it is clear that Indigenous knowledge is critical to solving the climate crisis, the future is in everyone’s hands. And it’s not just about focusing on what society emits into the atmosphere (the net-zero myth), but also about how we behave as consumers overall. What we eat, what we buy, where we travel—all of it degrades the environment to some degree and impacts the climate. “Every single day that we live, we make some impact on the planet,” said famed primatologist Jane Goodall. “We have a choice as to what kind of impact that is.” It’s a responsibility that falls on the shoulders on individuals as well as worldwide leaders of industries and governments.
To survive the climate emergency that has gripped the planet, we each need to look at ourselves and reconsider our behaviors as consumers, homemakers, parents, travelers, drivers, eaters and voters. Support must be given to political, business, civic, Indigenous, Black, Brown, LGBTQ, women and youth leaders who are laser-focused on just, equitable and science-based climate solutions. “If we combine forces now, we can avert climate catastrophe,” said Guterres. “But, as [the IPCC] report makes clear, there is no time for delay and no room for excuses.”
Take action…
Women warriors: As part of a week of actions that was kicked off by the Global Youth Climate Strike in September 2019, Indigenous women with Idle No More SF Bay led a march in San Francisco’s financial district, to protest banks that are financing the fossil fuel industry. (Photo credit: Peg Hunter/Flickr)
“[UK cabinet minister] Alok Sharma will act as president of the summit alongside an all-male team of climate and energy ministers. Nicola Sturgeon, first minister of Scotland, will welcome world leaders to the talks, but has no formal standing in the negotiations, and women will currently only be represented at a more junior level. Women are disproportionately affected by the impacts of climate change. Without representation at a leadership level, how can we expect their interests to be fairly represented?” —Sian Conway, Change.org
Urge COP26 President Alok Sharma: Address the gender divisions in climate by forming a representative and inclusive UK leadership team for COP26
The emperor has no ice: “The lifecycle of Emperor penguins is tied to having stable sea ice, which they need to breed, to feed and to molt,” said penguin ecologist Stephanie Jenouvrier of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. (Photo credit: Christopher Michel/Flickr)
“These penguins are hard hit by the climate crisis, and the U.S. government is finally recognizing that threat,” said Sarah Uhlemann, international program director at the nonprofit Center for Biological Diversity, following the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s recent proposal to list Emperor penguins as threatened under the Endangered Species Act.
“[V]egans have a very specific reputation, especially online—namely, that they prioritize aesthetics over everything else,” writes Lydia Wang for Refinery29. “But, intersectional vegan activists are working to change that, by starting a nuanced, thoughtful conversation about the many interconnected reasons to eliminate meat consumption.”
Climate crisis casualty: The Bramble Cay melomys (Melomys rubicola) is the first mammal believed to have gone extinct as a direct result of climate change. Endemic to the island of Bramble Cay in the Great Barrier Reef, its habitat was destroyed by rising sea levels. (Photo credit: Henry Gonzalez/Flickr)
“The natural world is undergoing two enormous crises that are currently threatening the natural world: climate change and biodiversity loss. These crises are intertwined. Climate change is currently impacting 19 percent of species listed as threatened on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, the world’s catalog of endangered species. We are currently experiencing the Sixth Extinction, the sixth major extinction event in Earth’s history and the only one caused by human activity. The Sixth Extinction is not only itself accelerating—it is also accelerating climate change, creating a destructive feedback loop. Now scientists are beginning to understand that another kind of destructive feedback loop is happening: Our own efforts to protect the climate could actually harm biodiversity.”
Open wide: A male great spotted woodpecker feeds his baby. (Photo credit: Martha de Jong-Lantink/Flickr)
“May my heart always be open to little birds who are the secrets of living.” —E.E. Cummings
Reynard Loki is a writing fellow at the Independent Media Institute, where he serves as the editor and chief correspondent for Earth | Food | Life. He previously served as the environment, food and animal rights editor at AlterNet and as a reporter for Justmeans/3BL Media covering sustainability and corporate social responsibility. He was named one of FilterBuy’s Top 50 Health & Environmental Journalists to Follow in 2016. His work has been published by Yes! Magazine, Salon, Truthout, BillMoyers.com, Counterpunch, EcoWatch and Truthdig, among others.
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.
Earth defenders: Indigenous youth climate activists with Fridays For Future protest inside COP25, the 25th UN Climate Change Conference, on December 13, 2019, in Madrid, Spain. (Photo credit: John Englart/Climate Action Network/Flickr)
In its first major climate report since 2013, the IPCC offers its starkest warning yet: Serious impacts of global warming are now unavoidable.
By Reynard Loki, Independent Media Institute
9 min read
In a grim report released on Monday, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says that climate change was “unequivocally” caused by human activity, and that within two decades, rising temperatures will cause the planet to reach a significant turning point in global warming. The report’s authors—a group of the world’s top climate scientists convened by the United Nations (UN)—predict that by 2040, average global temperatures will be warmer than 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, causing more frequent and intense heat waves, droughts and extreme weather events. UN Secretary-General António Guterres called the bleak findings a “code red for humanity.”
The report found global warming increasing at a faster rate than earlier predictions estimated. “It is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land… [and] at a rate that is unprecedented in at least the last 2,000 years,” the report says. “Widespread and rapid changes in the atmosphere, ocean, cryosphere and biosphere have occurred.” Even if the world’s nations enacted sharp and stringent reductions in the emissions of greenhouse gases today, overall global warming is still estimated to rise around 1.5 degrees Celsius within the next 20 years. That means that the hotter, more dangerous future that scientists and the Paris climate agreement sought to avoid is now unavoidable.
Linda Mearns, a senior climate scientist at the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research and one of the report’s co-authors, offered a stern warning: “It’s just guaranteed that it’s going to get worse,” she said, adding that there is “[n]owhere to run, nowhere to hide.” In an interview with the Hill, Kim Cobb, the lead author of the report’s first chapter, said, “We’re already reeling, clearly, from so many of these impacts that the report highlights, especially in the category of extremes that are gripping these headlines and causing so much damage, but of course the 1.5 degree C world is notably and discernibly worse.”
“The alarm bells are deafening, and the evidence is irrefutable: Greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel burning and deforestation are choking our planet and putting billions of people at immediate risk,” Guterres said in a statement on the report. “Global heating is affecting every region on Earth, with many of the changes becoming irreversible.”
There is a sliver of hope that the worst impacts of the climate catastrophe might be averted, but time for that is rapidly running out, and many actions must be taken by governments, the private sector and civil society in tandem and with urgency—a tall order. “I again call on donors and the multilateral development banks to allocate at least 50 percent of all public climate finance to protecting people, especially women and vulnerable groups,” Guterres said. “COVID-19 recovery spending must be aligned with the goals of the Paris Agreement. And the decade-old promise to mobilize $100 billion annually to support mitigation and adaptation in developing countries must be met.”
Key stakeholders in the climate crisis response are the world’s Indigenous peoples, who are particularly vulnerable to the direct impacts of climate change, as they are often living on the front lines of the natural environment and depend on healthy ecosystems for their survival. The climate crisis also adds another difficulty to the long list of obstacles that Indigenous communities have faced for centuries, including loss of land and resources, human rights violations, discrimination, marginalization and unemployment.
Negotiators at COP26, the upcoming UN climate conference taking place in Glasgow in November, should include Indigenous voices, knowledge and needs as they outline the world’s climate mitigation plan. Hopefully, they will uphold the sentiment expressed during the COP26 Climate and Development Ministerial held in March, where the “importance of drawing on the knowledge held by [I]ndigenous peoples, women, rural communities, young people and local authorities was… emphasized, along with the importance of pursuing rights-based approaches.”
Vehia Wheeler, co-founder of Sustainable Oceania Solutions, a small, women-owned social enterprise based in Hawaii that seeks to educate the young citizen scientists of Oceania using ancestral knowledge in partnership with STEM methods, called for Indigenous voices and their climate solutions to be championed at COP26. “Indigenous knowledge systems should be a guide for the future,” she recently said in a tweet shared by COP26.
One main reason that the world’s Indigenous communities must play a central role in the climate fight is the fact that they hold or manage a disproportionate amount of officially protected regions, regions that have experienced a low human impact. According to an assessment on the species extinction crisis issued by the UN Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) in 2019, Indigenous peoples occupy 28 percent of the Earth’s land, but more than 40 percent of formally protected areas—and 37 percent of all remaining terrestrial areas with low human impact. “Three-quarters of the land-based environment and about 66 percent of the marine environment have been significantly altered by human actions,” the IPBES report states. “On average these trends have been less severe or avoided in areas held or managed by Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities.” Deforestation rates across the Amazon, for example, are two to three times lower in lands held by Indigenous peoples.
In other words, when it comes to conserving nature and biodiversity—important strategies in the battle to save the climate—these front-line communities are doing a lot of things right. Unlike the Western viewpoint that the natural world is something that humans can and should dominate, Indigenous communities across the globe have lived in harmony with nature, seeing the life on the planet as part of an interconnected whole. “We put our non-human relatives first, meaning the trees, the sky, the water,” Nikki Cooley, co-manager of the Tribes and Climate Change Program for the Institute for Tribal Environmental Professionals in Flagstaff, Arizona, told Yale Environment 360 last year. “We don’t treat them as objects to be studied in a lab. We revere them.”
Working intimately with the land and its natural resources, and often guided by a holistic mix of current science and traditional knowledge, Indigenous people have been successfully mitigating climate risks and adjusting to changes in the climate and environment for generations. “Indigenous peoples have always been on the front lines,” said Cooley. “Tribes have always been adapting to climate change. Now we have to adapt even faster.”
“People around the world increasingly see the urgent need to tackle the twin emergencies of climate change and biodiversity loss,” writes Steven Nitah, a former politician from the Northwest Territories, Canada, who served as the chief negotiator for the Łutsël K’e Dene First Nation, in a recent commentary in One Earth. “We can make progress on both these fronts if the world also recognizes the leadership of Indigenous peoples who oversee the most healthy, biodiverse, and intact lands and waters left on Earth.”
The 2019 IPBES report notes that current modeling on a regional and global scale lacks Indigenous input and suggests that policymakers consider “the views, perspectives and rights of Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities, their knowledge and understanding of large regions and ecosystems, and their desired future development pathways.” The UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs for Indigenous Peoples supports that view, contending that Indigenous communities are “vital to, and active in, the many ecosystems that inhabit their lands and territories and may therefore help enhance the resilience of these ecosystems,” adding that “[I]ndigenous peoples interpret and react to the impacts of climate change in creative ways, drawing on traditional knowledge and other technologies to find solutions which may help society at large to cope with impending changes.”
“The gravity of the climate emergency has been tirelessly called out by Indigenous and front-line communities for decades,” said Tom Goldtooth, executive director of the Indigenous Environmental Network. “We must pressure the IPCC before the mitigation report comes out early next year to listen to the voices of the traditional knowledge holders of Indigenous peoples and end carbon pricing, carbon capture and solar radiation management mitigation strategies that keep fossil fuels coming out of the ground.”
Home field advantage: During the “Peoples World Conference on Climate Change and the Defense of Life” event held in Cochabamba, Bolivia, in 2015, the views of Indigenous people were emphasized. (Photo credit: United Nations/Eskinder Debebe/Flickr)
“The front lines are already way ahead of the politicians. We are leading with solutions—from community-owned solar energy systems that create safe, good-paying jobs to just recovery efforts that ensure those communities most impacted by the crisis are built back in sustainable and safe ways based on community needs,” said Elizabeth Yeampierre, executive director of UPROSE and co-chair of the Climate Justice Alliance Board of Directors. “To truly address the climate crisis, we need policymakers to enact bold and transformative policies like the THRIVE Act, which [was] crafted in deep consultation and partnership with Black, Brown, Indigenous, Asian and Pacific Islander, poor, and marginalized communities.”
And while it is clear that Indigenous knowledge is critical to solving the climate crisis, the future is in everyone’s hands. And it’s not just about focusing on what society emits into the atmosphere (the net-zero myth), but also about how we behave as consumers overall. What we eat, what we buy, where we travel—all of it degrades the environment to some degree and impacts the climate. “Every single day that we live, we make some impact on the planet,” said famed primatologist Jane Goodall. “We have a choice as to what kind of impact that is.” It’s a responsibility that falls on the shoulders on individuals as well as worldwide leaders of industries and governments.
To survive the climate emergency that has gripped the planet, we each need to look at ourselves and reconsider our behaviors as consumers, homemakers, parents, travelers, drivers, eaters and voters. Support must be given to political, business, civic, Indigenous, Black, Brown, LGBTQ, women and youth leaders who are laser-focused on just, equitable and science-based climate solutions. “If we combine forces now, we can avert climate catastrophe,” said Guterres. “But, as [the IPCC] report makes clear, there is no time for delay and no room for excuses.”
Take action…
Women warriors: As part of a week of actions that was kicked off by the Global Youth Climate Strike in September 2019, Indigenous women with Idle No More SF Bay led a march in San Francisco’s financial district, to protest banks that are financing the fossil fuel industry. (Photo credit: Peg Hunter/Flickr)
“[UK cabinet minister] Alok Sharma will act as president of the summit alongside an all-male team of climate and energy ministers. Nicola Sturgeon, first minister of Scotland, will welcome world leaders to the talks, but has no formal standing in the negotiations, and women will currently only be represented at a more junior level. Women are disproportionately affected by the impacts of climate change. Without representation at a leadership level, how can we expect their interests to be fairly represented?” —Sian Conway, Change.org
Urge COP26 President Alok Sharma: Address the gender divisions in climate by forming a representative and inclusive UK leadership team for COP26
The emperor has no ice: “The lifecycle of Emperor penguins is tied to having stable sea ice, which they need to breed, to feed and to molt,” said penguin ecologist Stephanie Jenouvrier of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. (Photo credit: Christopher Michel/Flickr)
“These penguins are hard hit by the climate crisis, and the U.S. government is finally recognizing that threat,” said Sarah Uhlemann, international program director at the nonprofit Center for Biological Diversity, following the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s recent proposal to list Emperor penguins as threatened under the Endangered Species Act.
“[V]egans have a very specific reputation, especially online—namely, that they prioritize aesthetics over everything else,” writes Lydia Wang for Refinery29. “But, intersectional vegan activists are working to change that, by starting a nuanced, thoughtful conversation about the many interconnected reasons to eliminate meat consumption.”
Climate crisis casualty: The Bramble Cay melomys (Melomys rubicola) is the first mammal believed to have gone extinct as a direct result of climate change. Endemic to the island of Bramble Cay in the Great Barrier Reef, its habitat was destroyed by rising sea levels. (Photo credit: Henry Gonzalez/Flickr)
“The natural world is undergoing two enormous crises that are currently threatening the natural world: climate change and biodiversity loss. These crises are intertwined. Climate change is currently impacting 19 percent of species listed as threatened on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, the world’s catalog of endangered species. We are currently experiencing the Sixth Extinction, the sixth major extinction event in Earth’s history and the only one caused by human activity. The Sixth Extinction is not only itself accelerating—it is also accelerating climate change, creating a destructive feedback loop. Now scientists are beginning to understand that another kind of destructive feedback loop is happening: Our own efforts to protect the climate could actually harm biodiversity.”
Open wide: A male great spotted woodpecker feeds his baby. (Photo credit: Martha de Jong-Lantink/Flickr)
“May my heart always be open to little birds who are the secrets of living.” —E.E. Cummings
Reynard Loki is a writing fellow at the Independent Media Institute, where he serves as the editor and chief correspondent for Earth | Food | Life. He previously served as the environment, food and animal rights editor at AlterNet and as a reporter for Justmeans/3BL Media covering sustainability and corporate social responsibility. He was named one of FilterBuy’s Top 50 Health & Environmental Journalists to Follow in 2016. His work has been published by Yes! Magazine, Salon, Truthout, BillMoyers.com, Counterpunch, EcoWatch and Truthdig, among others.
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.
One of a kind: After the recently discovered female Rafetus swinhoei turtle was caught and identified, a health check was done, samples were taken, an ultrasound was performed, and a microchip was inserted before she was released back into the lake. (Photo credit: WCS Vietnam)
A 500-year-old legend is key to the survival of a rare giant softshell turtle.
By Hoang Bich Thuy and Nguyen Dinh Thang, Independent Media Institute
4 min read
Like many turtle species, Swinhoe’s softshell turtle (Rafetus swinhoei)has for centuries held special cultural significance in Viet Nam. For the people of the country, the Hoan Kiem turtle, as it is known locally, is a symbol of Viet Nam’s independence and prosperity. According to the legend passed from one generation to the next, this giant golden turtle emerged from the Hoan Kiem Lake to reclaim a magic sword used by the Le Loi King to defeat Chinese Ming forces in the 15th century. The lake was renamed Hoan Kiem Lake or Lake of the Returned Sword based on this legend.
But despite the Rafetus swinhoei being revered, it is also extremely threatened. For two decades it has been listed as “Critically Endangered” on the Red List maintained by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. Since 2013, the Rafetus swinhoei has also been listed in Appendix II of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora.
When two of the last remaining Swinhoe’s softshell turtles died without producing any known offspring between 2016 and 2019, this species became the most endangered turtle in the world. In response, conservationists and veterinary experts from Viet Nam, along with global partners, made the recovery of this turtle one of their highest priorities. Swinhoe’s softshell turtles were also included in the five-year conservation plan of Ha Noi People’s Committee in 2018 and added to the committee’s 2030 vision plan.
The confirmation of Swinhoe’s softshell turtle in Ha Noi’s Dong Mo Lake means there is now a female in addition to a male, who is at the Suzhou Zoo in China. Authorities believe there are at least one more of these turtles in Dong Mo Lake and another in nearby Xuan Khanh Lake. Conservationists hope to capture and determine the sex of the other turtles in the coming months.
Going back home: Releasing the female Swinhoe’s softshell turtle back to her home in the lake. In a year full of bad news and sadness across the globe, the discovery of this female can offer all some hope that this species will be given another chance to survive. (Video credit: WCS Viet Nam)
Ultimately, conservationists aim to help at least one male and female to breed to ensure that this species can return from the brink of extinction. The race to save this flagship species in Ha Noi highlights the importance of working in partnership to mobilize resources and address issues like water pollution, safer habitat, and more sustainable resource management. It also helps to replicate that success to save other species.
Task forces have been established to provide both the daily monitoring of turtles and the capture and preparation of other Swinhoe’s softshell turtles for a captive breeding program. Local fishermen have been engaged to monitor and capture the turtles, and have played a significant role and made a key contribution to Rafetus swinhoei conservation work.
At the same time, scientists are working to better understand the ecological role of this species. Researchers like Jeffrey Lovich of the U.S. Geological Society have highlighted their importance to the seafloor biosystem, where they contribute by enriching soil nutrients and facilitating seed dispersion. The way in which river turtles—and specifically the Rafetus swinhoei—add value to their own ecosystems is an area that needs further study.
As WCS has worked to locate more Rafetus swinhoei individuals in the wild, we have come to better understand the ways in which habitat destruction has helped to push this turtle species to the edge of extinction: from water pollution to riverbed abrasion, to overexploitation for food and illegal trade.
A communication task force is now working with local communities to transition from harmful hook and electrical shock fishing methods to safer practices, and to rethink the way in which trash and pesticides are disposed into the sewage system, which eventually empties into the Dong Mo Lake, to help improve the quality of the lake water—especially during the low rain season. More work must be done to curb pollution from dump sites and golf courses into local waterways.
In Viet Nam, with the leadership of the Ha Noi People’s Committee, we are determined to take responsibility to give this cultural icon another chance. While overhunting and habitat destruction have contributed to its demise, our work confirms that the Hoan Kiem turtle and the centuries old legend lives on.
With bad news and sadness from COVID-19, we feel hope by giving this species another chance to survive and to pass the symbol of prosperity to future generations in Viet Nam and around the globe.
Nowhere left to roam: Just a century ago some 50,000 to 80,000 tigers roamed India. But today, due to habitat destruction, human population growth and demand for tiger parts have pushed the tiger to the brink of extinction, with only 3,500 tigers remaining in the wild. (Photo credit: Joe Milmoe, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service)
Tell you members of Congress:
“Right now, wildlife is experiencing an acute crisis. We’re in the middle of the biggest mass extinction event since the dinosaurs. Elephants, cheetahs, gorillas, and other wildlife have never been closer to disappearing forever. Saving these and so many other species will require your continued commitment to effective wildlife conservation policies… And global conservation is just common sense. Poaching and trafficking not only threaten wildlife but they fuel terrorist and militant groups and harm local communities. Strong enforcement and well managed parks benefit wildlife and local community development, and drive sustainable growth and economic development. For these reasons and more I stand for wildlife. As you continue to work through the legislative priorities before Congress, I urge you to do the same.”
Urge Congress to prioritize global wildlife conservation.
Letter to the editor…
Carbon bomb: More than four-fifths of the global economy is powered by fossil fuels. (Photo credit: Damian Bakarcic/Flickr)
“Your contention that consumption is destroying our planet is accurate. But consumption goes hand in hand with financial expansion, and that is the real problem. Finance works on the unsustainable premise of perpetual and limitless growth, the antithesis of physical reality. The world must adopt a means of providing access to goods and services in sync with the finite resources of the planet. We cannot do it by continuing the present value system of acquisition. But we can do it with objective science.” —Stephen L. Doll, Member, Board of Directors, Technocracy, Inc.
Cause for concern…
Good intentions: Recycling at the Treefort Music Fest in Boise, Idaho, 2019. (Photo credit: Treefort Music Fest/Flickr)
“In early 2018, residents of Boise, Idaho were told by city officials that a breakthrough technology could transform their hard-to-recycle plastic waste into low-polluting fuel,” write Joe Brock, Valerie Volcovici and John Geddie in a Reuters special report. “Within a year, however, that effort ground to a halt. The project’s failure, detailed for the first time by Reuters, shows the enormous obstacles confronting advanced recycling, a set of reprocessing technologies that the plastics industry is touting as an environmental savior—and sees as key to its own continued growth amid mounting global pressure to curb the use of plastic.”
Friends, not food: Spending time with a rescued pig at Farm Sanctuary, the largest farm animal rescue organization in the United States. (Photo credit: Jo-Anne McArthur/WeAnimals)
“Why are pork producers constantly trying to overturn laws relating to cruelty to animals?” asked Josh Balk, who leads farm animal protection efforts at the Humane Society of the United States, about an animal welfare proposition approved overwhelmingly by California voters in 2018 that requires more space for breeding pigs, egg-laying chickens and veal calves. “It says something about the pork industry when it seems its business operandi is to lose at the ballot when they try to defend the practices and then when animal cruelty laws are passed, to try to overturn them.”
Back to nature: A father and child at the Mundurukú occupation of the Sao Manoel Hydroelectric Dam site in Brazil. (Photo credit: Caio Mota)
“At long last, the world’s largest dam removal is finally happening,” write EFL contributors Deborah Moore, Michael Simon and Darryl Knudsen on Truthout (“Damming Rivers Is Terrible for Human Rights, Ecosystems and Food Security,” February 22, 2021). “The landmark agreement, which was finalized in November 2020 between farmers, tribes and dam owners, will finally bring down four aging, inefficient dams along the Klamath River in the Pacific Northwest. This is an important step in restoring historic salmon runs, which have drastically declined in recent years since the dams were constructed. It’s also an incredible win for the Karuk and Yurok tribes, who for untold generations have relied on the salmon runs for both sustenance and spiritual well-being.”
Parting thought…
Life’s a breeze: There are an estimated 3.04 trillion trees in the world. (Photo credit: Sam Cox/Flickr)
“The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing which stands in the way… As a man is, so he sees.” —William Blake
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.
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Cruel circus: Betty the elephant, owned by Carden Circus, is made to stand on her face with her feet up in the air while the circus performer has her feet tucked in a strap that is tied tightly around the elephant’s jaw and behind her ears, which are very sensitive areas. This is a very unnatural movement for an elephant and causes much distress. (Photo credit: Gigi Glendinning)
Performing elephants are denied all that is natural to them and are forced to endure beatings, electric shock, food and water deprivation and intimidation.
By Dee Gaug, Independent Media Institute
9 min read
No matter what political views or affiliations people in the United States might have, most of them would agree that animal abuse is just plain wrong. Animals who are kept in captivity or are forced to perform in circuses are subjected to some of the worst kinds of abuse. Among all these animals, however, elephants suffer the most in captivity as they are highly intelligent and social beings, according to experts, and have complex physical and social needs that cannot be met in any circus or zoo environment.
“Elephants who are kept in small enclosures are in increased danger of developing chronic foot disease and arthritis, both of which lead to frequent instances of death for captive elephants,” according to Dr. Toni Frohoff, a biologist and behavioral ethologist. “In fact, the most common reason for premature death of captive elephants is lack of space and standing on hard and/or otherwise inappropriate surfaces.”
Many people are unaware that circuses are still part of the American culture. The closing of the infamous Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus in May 2017 did not mark the end of cruelty perpetrated on elephants, who are forced into captivity and made to perform in circuses. Between 25 and 30 traveling circuses, which include caged wild animals, continue to travel and operate in the United States. There are currently more than 60 elephants and hundreds of other animals still being used for human entertainment. Circus animal cruelty and exploitation are rampant. Some operators like Loomis Bros. Circus and Carson & Barnes Circus continued operating throughout the worst of the U.S. COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and were once again advertising their show schedules for the spring and summer season in 2021. Currently, Carden Circus, Loomis Bros. Circus, Carson & Barnes Circus, Tarzan Zerbini Circus, and others are back on the road with elephants and other wild exotic animals.
Performing elephants are deprived of all that is natural to them. The methods used to train a wild animal into submission include beatings, electric shock (hot shots), food and water deprivation, and brutal intimidation. Elephants do not stand on their heads, sit on stools, stand on their hind legs, or give rides to humans on their backs because they want to; they do it because they are forced to with brutal training methods, as exemplified in undercover videos that can be found on YouTube.
While the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) has been tasked by Congress to enforce the Animal Welfare Act (AWA), which was signed into law in 1966 and is the primary federal law that regulates the treatment of animals in research, exhibition and transport, the AWA provides only minimum acceptable standards and historically has rarely been enforced. A prime example of this lack of enforcement is the story of Nosey the elephant. Nosey was captured in Zimbabwe when she was two years of age in 1984 and was brought to a Florida ranch with 62 other young elephants. About two years later, she ended up in the hands of former circus clown Hugo Liebel. Liebel used Nosey to perform in his circus and dragged her all over the country in a filthy, dilapidated trailer for more than 30 years.
Over the course of the next three decades, Liebel would rack up about 200 violations of the AWA for things like chaining Nosey so tightly by both her front and hind legs that she could hardly move, failure to provide adequate veterinary care, and failure to have sufficient barriers to protect the public. Yet year after year, the USDA rubber-stamped his annual renewal license. Though Liebel was fined several times, these fines were so minimal that they hardly made a difference and were seen as a small price to pay to keep the circus operational.
Finally, in November 2017, authorities in Lawrence County, Alabama, seized Nosey after Liebel’s truck had broken down. She was subsequently placed at the Elephant Sanctuary in Tennessee where she has been receiving much-needed veterinary care for the plethora of ailments she is suffering from as a result of her life on the road and in the care of her owners. She remains in the sanctuary and is thriving there.
Nosey’s story is unfortunately not unique. In fact, it is the norm. Many, if not all, circuses that are currently on the road have extensive histories of federal animal welfare violations related to the handling of their elephants. The USDA inaction makes them complicit in the neglect and abuse of captive elephants. As a result, captive elephants continue to suffer every day that USDA inspectors refrain from doing their jobs, either because they do not care or due to internal pressure that prevents them from doing so. “It feels like your hands are tied behind your back,” says veterinarian Denise Sofranko, who spent 20 years as an inspector, and was quoted in an article on the website of the nonprofit Lady Freethinker. “You can’t do many things you’re supposed to when it comes to protecting animals. You’re seeing inspectors so frustrated they’re walking out the door.”
Used and abused: Bo, the rare bull elephant who performs in circuses, has been castrated in order to minimize his aggressive behavior that is natural for male elephants. Bo is owned by Carden Circus, which has numerous violations against the Animal Welfare Act but yet they still hold a USDA license that allows them to own and use Bo in circuses. Bo was chained up here on hard concrete flooring behind the circus curtain because he was not permitted to perform for an unknown reason. Bo has often been put in this situation because of health and/or aggression issues. (Photo credit: Gigi Glendinning)
Animal advocates have long demanded a change to the USDA’s policy of rubber-stamping annual renewal licenses for chronic AWA violators. Up until November 2020, exhibitors seeking an annual renewal license would sign a self-certification form stating that they were complying with the AWA. Even if the USDA had actual knowledge of noncompliance—such as recent inspections that revealed violations of the AWA—the USDA would still renew the license.
The USDA’s Animal Care division is responsible for inspecting more than 12,000 facilities and exhibitors, including circuses and zoos, to ensure these license holders are operating in compliance with the AWA. Unfortunately, the USDA appears to be more concerned with not burdening license holders than with protecting animals and the public. So pervasive is this problem that on April 4, 2019, more than 140 congressional members from both sides of the aisle signed a 16-page letter to Sanford Bishop, chairman of the Subcommittee on Agriculture, Rural Development, FDA, and Related Agencies, expressing concern that the “USDA is treating these regulated industries as customers, giving deference to those who can’t comply with the AWA’s modest requirements while giving short shrift to the animals and the taxpaying public.”
In fact, a February 2019 article in the Washington Post said that “USDA inspectors documented 60 percent fewer violations at animal facilities in 2018 from the previous year.” The number of animal welfare citations issued by the USDA fell markedly under the Trump administration, from 4,944 citations in 2016 to 1,716 in 2018, according to another article in the Washington Post published in August 2019.
It is not a stretch to say that the USDA is complicit in perpetuating animal cruelty. In February 2017, the USDA, without warning, removed animal welfare records from its website, according to an article in the Washington Post, prompting large animal welfare organizations such as the Humane Society of the United States, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and the Animal Legal Defense Fund—along with other animal rights groups—to file separate federal lawsuits for violating a prior congressional directive and obliterating all transparency. TheUSDA purged from its website the searchable database of AWA inspection reports and enforcement records on thousands of licensed facilities and operators that use animals without providing any explanations, leaving the public in the dark—a public who, along with animal protection organizations, relies on this information to monitor and expose potential animal abuse at these facilities. Critics of this move stated that this was an attempt to keep the USDA’s complacency a secret from the taxpaying public, who pay for the salaries of the USDA employees and for other ancillary expenses related to the operation of the agency, and avoid accountability for enforcing the Animal Welfare Act.
This purge sent chronic AWA violators a clear message that there would be no accountability for providing not only substandard care but also outright abuse of their animals. No longer would chronic violators fear public scrutiny.
Fortunately, in December 2019, Congress enacted a provision in the fiscal year 2020 appropriations bill issuing a clear mandate to the USDA to fully reinstate its searchable database, giving the public access to all the agency’s records. The bill, signed into law in December 2019, required the agency to restore the purged records on its website within 60 days of the bill’s enactment, and continue posting such records moving forward. The records are being restored, albeit very slowly.
In response to pressure from animal protection organizations and the public, in March 2019, the USDA sought public comments on proposed updates to its current licensing procedures and received a staggering 110,000 comments. After decades, this pressure finally prompted the USDA to amend its licensing requirements to eliminate automatic renewals. A May 2020 USDA press release stated, “With this change, licensees have to demonstrate compliance with the AWA and show that the animals in their possession are adequately cared for in order to obtain a license.” Under the new rule, which went into effect in November 2020, licenses are valid for three years and applicants must demonstrate compliance before obtaining a license. This does not necessarily raise the bar set almost 55 years ago. This simply means that if a previous licensee, with a history of repeat noncompliances, wishes to obtain a new license, they would need to demonstrate that they are in compliance with the AWA regulations on the day(s) the USDA inspector is present and before a license is to be issued. It is noteworthy that the AWA’s antiquated standards are much less stringent than those of the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, the preeminent accreditation body in the United States. USDA inspectors will now conduct pre-licensing inspections since there will be no more renewal licenses. Under these new rules, “an applicant who fails the first inspection may request up to two reinspections to demonstrate compliance.”
Despite this development, the proverbial fox is still guarding the henhouse, and only time will tell if these new rules will have the desired effect of affording greater protection for captive elephants. Real change will come only with public awareness and legislation. What can be done? You can contact your senators and representatives and urge them to support the Traveling Exotic Animal and Public Safety Protection Act, TEAPSPA, which, if passed, will effectively end traveling acts nationwide that use exotic animals. In addition, you can make the choice to boycott circuses and zoos that use exotic animals. As journalist and former editor for Vanity Fair magazine Graydon Carter once remarked, “We admire elephants in part because they demonstrate what we consider the finest of human traits: Empathy, self-awareness, and social intelligence. But the way we treat them puts on display the very worst of human behavior.”
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Dee Gaug is co-founder and vice president of Free All Captive Elephants (FACE). Prior to her involvement with FACE, Dee worked as a trial attorney for 15 years. She has done pro bono legal work in both Massachusetts and Florida including for the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. Dee received her BA in psychology from the University of New Hampshire and her doctorate in law from Massachusetts School of Law. In 2018, she was a panelist at both the Free the Oregon Zoo Elephants Conference and the Performing Animal Welfare Society’s International Captive Wildlife Conference. She has gone undercover on numerous occasions to document the living conditions of captive elephants in both circuses and zoos.
Take action…
Freedom fighters: Animal rights activists protesting Ringling Bros. Circus in Chicago in 2010. (Photo credit: Jovan J/Flickr)
The Traveling Exotic Animal and Public Safety Protection Act (TEAPSPA, H.R. 2863), introduced into Congress by Representatives Raúl Grijalva (D-AZ) and David Schweikert (R-AZ), would amend the Animal Welfare Act to prohibit the use of exotic and wild animals in traveling performances. A companion bill, S. 2121, was introduced in the Senate by Senator Bob Menéndez (D-NJ) and cosponsored by Senators Cory Booker (D-NJ) and Richard Blumenthal (D-CT).
Urge your senators and representatives to support TEAPSPA to help end wild animal suffering in traveling acts across the United States.
“This is a demonstration of the control the Ag-chemical companies have over our government. I lived in Iowa for decades and these companies ran the state. Even though during the 1960s and 1970s it was demonstrated that a farmer’s income would not drop—just his yields, without the use of most chemicals—the ag-chem groups keep pushing their poison. Hence, Iowa has some of the nation’s worst water quality. We knew then that killing Iowa’s waterways was not necessary but the chemical companies are powerful. I would love to see an agency set up who would put the citizenry first, not the corporations, as the EPA currently does.” —Larry Schlatter, Gambier, Ohio
Cause for concern…
Helping hand: Vital Batubilema, head of the World Food Program field office in Ampanihy, Madagascar, visits a food distribution site in 2018. The southern portion of the country has been drastically affected by climate change, gripped by the worst drought in four decades. (Photo credit: Kalu Institute/Flickr)
“We used to see our brothers and sisters in the Sahel leaving because of conflict and looking for better economic opportunities, but now it is climate change that is becoming one of the major drivers, pushing out people who can no longer cultivate their land,” said Landry Ninteretse, the Africa director for climate advocacy organization 350.org. “This is not only going to impact Africa, but also Europe, Asia, and America as well, as people seek safer places where they can live.”
Friends, not food: Hanging out with a rescued pig at Farm Sanctuary, the largest farm animal rescue organization in the United States. (Photo credit: Jo-Anne McArthur/We Animals Media)
“We have found, in our domestic and global advocacy and nutrition work, that for millions of people the suffering of animals in intensive confinement systems is a main driver of dietary shifts that are good for us, good for the planet and good for our fellow creatures,” writes Kitty Block, the president and CEO of the Humane Society of the United States and CEO of Humane Society International.
“When people see that pregnant pigs are confined in ‘gestation crates’ for months, unable to even turn around, trying to relieve stress by chewing on the bars of their crates until their mouths bleed, they can’t help but reexamine the true cost of their pork products. Both the marketplace and the public policy sector are already responding to consumer demand for healthier and more humane food choices. Giants in the food industry are diversifying their product lines and menus with plant-based offerings and a dozen states have passed laws that ban the intensive confinement systems responsible for so much animal misery.”
Imperiled: Human activity in the form of ivory poaching and habitat destruction has driven down populations of African forest elephants by more than 80% in the last 93 years. (Photo credit: Brett Hartl/Center for Biological Diversity)
“Just like our own ancestors, the precursors of today’s elephants originated in Africa. But while Homo sapiens evolved from their predecessors between 200,000 and 300,000 years ago, modern elephants first arrived on the evolutionary map much earlier: 56 million years ago. Our arrival ultimately presented these majestic animals with their gravest threat, as we have killed them in great numbers for their ivory and destroyed their prehistoric habitats to make room for a host of human activities, from agriculture and logging to urbanization and other forms of land development. Now a new assessment of the pachyderms has revealed a stark reality and a turning point, something that conservationists have been worrying about for the past few decades: If poaching doesn’t subside soon and humans don’t stop encroaching on their ecosystems, wild elephants in Africa could become extinct in our lifetime.”
“Animals should not require our permission to live on Earth. Animals were given the right to be here long before we arrived.” —Anthony Douglas Williams
Reynard Loki is a writing fellow at the Independent Media Institute, where he serves as the editor and chief correspondent for Earth | Food | Life. He previously served as the environment, food and animal rights editor at AlterNet and as a reporter for Justmeans/3BL Media covering sustainability and corporate social responsibility. He was named one of FilterBuy’s Top 50 Health & Environmental Journalists to Follow in 2016. His work has been published by Yes! Magazine, Salon, Truthout, BillMoyers.com, Counterpunch, EcoWatch and Truthdig, among others.
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.
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