Getting away with murder: On June 21, 2019, activists gathered outside the Brazilian Consulate in San Francisco to protest the anti-environmental policies of Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro. In August, the United Nations high commissioner for human rights, Michelle Bachelet, called on Brazilian authorities to investigate the killing of Indigenous leader Emrya Wajãpi in an area known for illegal gold mining. Across the globe, killings of environmentalists have doubled over the past 15 years, reaching levels more commonly associated with war zones. (Photo credit: Peg Hunter/Flickr)
Care2: Ten Indigenous people—seven of them leaders of their communities in the Amazon rainforest—were murdered in 2019. It’s a sad, but unsurprising story. Brazil’s right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro has dramatically curtailed the rights of Indigenous people and allowed large companies to invade their lands to exploit resources for profit. This isn’t just exploitative, it’s deadly. What’s worse is that most of the murders have gone unsolved and the government has done little to find the killers. The message is clear: Businesses have a carte blanche to kill native people in Brazil. Fortunately, Bolsonaro isn’t a dictator yet. If the federal government won’t protect its citizens, local authorities can and must step in to bring justice for the victims and their grieving families. >>>Urge the military and civil police in Brazil’s state of Maranhão to investigate all killings of Indigenous people and prosecute their murderers.
MoveOn: The Trump administration recently announced changes to SNAP that will cause hundreds of thousands of people to lose access to their “food stamp” benefits. SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program commonly referred to as “food stamps,” is a federal nutrition program that’s critical for fighting hunger in the United States. According to Feeding America, “SNAP provides families with their basic nutritional needs to get them through temporary hard times. It helps people get back on their feet and on the road to a better life.” However, the Trump administration has been working for the last three years to undermine SNAP as part of their agenda to limit access to public assistance programs. The newly announced attack on SNAP is especially outrageous because Congress rejected these proposed changes to the program during the Farm Bill debate last year. The House rejected it in a bipartisan vote of 330-83, and the Senate voted down a similar amendment 68-30. But now, Sonny Perdue, Trump’s Secretary of Agriculture, is moving forward with these changes through an undemocratic “executive order” that targets very poor people struggling to work—many of whom are homeless, living in small towns and rural communities with little or no access to employment, or have health conditions that prevent them from working. >>>Urge the U.S. Department of Agriculture to stop the attacks on food assistance programs.
Horseracing Wrongs: Forty-two racehorses, including former Breeders’ Cup winner Battle of Midway, have died at California’s world-famous Santa Anita Park since December of 2018. And the number of horses dying goes up every few days. Still, what’s happening there is no anomaly. Over the past 11 years, Santa Anita has averaged 50 dead racehorses annually; every 12-month period but one (when “only” 37 died) saw at least 40 corpses. What’s more, Santa Anita can’t even claim it’s heading in the right direction as two of the three worst years were 2015-16 and 2016-17. Nationally, through FOIA reporting, more than 5,000 confirmed kills on U.S. tracks since 2014 have been documented; over 2,000 horses are estimated to have been killed racing or training across America every year. But there’s more: Each year, hundreds more die back in their stalls from things like colic and laminitis, or are simply “found dead” in the morning. And perhaps worst of all, the vast majority of racehorses are brutally bled-out and butchered at Canadian and Mexican slaughterhouses—some 12,000-15,000 thoroughbreds alone each year. In short, the American horse racing industry is engaged in wholesale carnage. >>>Urge Santa Anita to stop the senseless death of racehorses by closing down its track immediately.
Cause for concern…
Death by plastic: A seal trapped in plastic trash and discarded fishing gear. Pollution in marine ecosystems isn’t the only kind of pollution caused by plastic: The manufacturing of plastic is also a major contributor of greenhouse gas emissions. A proposed petrochemical plant near Baton Rouge, Louisiana, would be the industry’s biggest emitter of greenhouse gases in the United States. (Photo credit: Nels Israelson/Flickr)
Life plan: A small wild cat native to the southwestern United States, Mexico and Central and South America, the ocelot is listed as endangered by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The Center for Biological Diversity has unveiled a U.S.-focused plan to “save life on Earth,” calling for President Trump to declare the global extinction crisis a national emergency and establish 500 new national parks, wildlife refuges and marine sanctuaries. (Photo credit: ucumari/Flickr)
“What’s the use of a fine house if you haven’t got a tolerable planet to put it on?” —Henry David Thoreau
Earth | Food | Life (EFL) explores the critical and often interconnected issues facing the climate/environment, food/agriculture and nature/animal rights, and champions action; specifically, how responsible citizens, voters and consumers can help put society on an ethical path of sustainability that respects the rights of all species who call this planet home. EFL emphasizes the idea that everything is connected, so every decision matters.
Click here to support the work of EFL and the Independent Media Institute.
Questions, comments, suggestions, submissions? Contact EFL editor Reynard Loki at [email protected]. Follow EFL on Twitter @EarthFoodLife.
Clinging to life: The Australian wildfires have claimed the lives of an estimated 1 billion animals, among them the nation’s iconic koalas. The fires are just the latest human-caused menace threatening their existence: Overhunting for their pelts and habitat destruction through deforestation have already ravaged their population, which has plummeted by a shocking 95 percent since the late 18th century. Now, after the devastation wrought by the current wildfires season, experts warns that koalas are in danger of going extinct unless new government policies are implemented to save them. (Photo credit: Ninian Reid/Flickr)
Change: The horrific images of burnt and dying koalas from the recent bushfires all over the east coast of Australia have underlined a tragic reality: Koalas are in danger of becoming extinct. As the nation experiences record-breaking drought and bushfires, koala populations have shrunk along with their natural habitat. A third of koalas in Australia’s New South Wales region may have been killed in the deadly bushfires, but deforestation has meant that the koalas were already under threat before the fires. Koalas only live in Australia and rely on eucalyptus trees to survive. But these trees, which are the koalas’ only food source, are being destroyed at an alarming rate. Shockingly, koalas are in peril but are yet to be listed as an endangered species by the government. Koala populations in the states of New South Wales and Queensland fell 42 percent between 1990 and 2010, according to the Commonwealth Scientific Committee. Some experts say there will be no Koalas left by 2050. >>>Urge the Australian government to immediately list the koala as an endangered species so that they can receive the support they need to survive.
The Rainforest Site: Pigeon shoots have been banned in every part of the country except for the state of Pennsylvania, In 2014, a bill to end pigeon shoots in Pennsylvania was allowed to expire after the NRA stepped in at the 11th hour with their powerful lobbyists—though 75 percent Pennsylvanians are in favor of a law that would ban this inhumane “sport” and 83 percent believe it’s an unnecessary form of animal cruelty. “After each round of shots at the birds, participants—sometimes children—take to the field to collect wounded and dead animals,” according to the Humane Society of the United States. “If the suffering pigeon is still alive, the collector will sometimes snap the animal’s head off or slam her against the ground before tossing her into a barrel full of dead and dying pigeons.” Many of these birds are not even from Pennsylvania. Footage of people netting and stealing pigeons in New York City is believed to point to an illegal smuggling ring that transports the birds over state lines to provide the live targets for the merciless shoots. >>>Urge Pennsylvania lawmakers to ban pigeon shoots.
Lady Freethinker: In Agadir, Morocco, authorities are dumping street dogs in a hellish “pound” without access to any food or water. Left to starve, the desperate dogs have started to turn on one other, attacking and eating the weakest among them just to stay alive. In the dusty, bare compound, the ground is piled high with feces. Without vaccinations, healthcare or a sterilization program, sick dogs are giving birth to puppies in these appalling conditions. They have no chance of survival. Volunteers from Morocco Animal Aid (MAA) are doing everything possible to help these emaciated, dying animals. However, authorities are denying that these horrors are even happening and actively refusing MAA access to the site. In spite of restrictions, the charity rescues the sickest dogs when they can, but are already overloaded. When they are allowed access, they fill up water containers and clean up piles of filth, but it’s not enough. >>>Tell Ambassador of Morocco to the U.S. Lalla Joumala Alaoui to urge the Moroccan government to save these dogs and develop more humane ways to deal with strays in their country.
Cause for concern…
Roads destroy habitats: A sloth attempts to cross a road in Alajuela Province, Costa Rica. A staggering 85 percent of Earth’s land-based animals are now exposed to intense human pressure—including human population density, roads, railroads, agriculture, forestry, mining, dams and power infrastructure—according to a new analysis of more than 20,000 terrestrial vertebrate species. These animals “have nowhere to hide from human pressures ranging from pastureland and agriculture all the way to extreme urban conglomerates,” said the paper’s lead author, Christopher O’Bryan of the University of Queensland. (Photo credit: Ian D. Keating/Flickr)
Coal kills: A new study conducted by the University of California San Diego found that between 2005 and 2016, the shutdown of coal-fired plants saved more than 26,000 lives and 570 million bushels of corn, soybeans and wheat in their immediate vicinities. (Photo credit: Russ Walker/Flickr)
We don’t own the planet Earth, we belong to it. And we must share it with our wildlife. —Steve Irwin
Earth | Food | Life (EFL) explores the critical and often interconnected issues facing the climate/environment, food/agriculture and nature/animal rights, and champions action; specifically, how responsible citizens, voters and consumers can help put society on an ethical path of sustainability that respects the rights of all species who call this planet home. EFL emphasizes the idea that everything is connected, so every decision matters.
Click here to support the work of EFL and the Independent Media Institute.
Questions, comments, suggestions, submissions? Contact EFL editor Reynard Loki at [email protected]. Follow EFL on Twitter @EarthFoodLife.
It’s his home, not our gas station: “The Arctic Fox is one of the most endearing animals in the Tundra region,” according to UN Habitat, a team of nature and biological scientists at the United Nations, who warn that the fox “has been declining in numbers due to overhunting in some areas and the emergence of the large red fox in others … mainly due to the diminishing ice.” Now the Trump administration wants to open up this critical habitat to oil and gas development, which will further threaten the Arctic fox and several other endangered Arctic species, including polar bears, peregrine falcons, prairie pigeons, caribou and Pacific walrus. (Photo credit: Eric Kilby/Flickr)
Conservation Alliance: In the waning hours of 2017, Congress included a provision to open the Arctic Refuge to oil and gas development, without full and fair debate, as part of the Tax Reform Act of 2017. This is the first time the Refuge had been open to development in 50 years of protection. To make matters worse, this bill mandated two oil and gas lease sales in the next six years—even going so far as to add “oil and gas development” as a purpose of the Arctic Refuge, representing the first time this has ever been done in the history of the National Wildlife Refuge system. Since the bill passed, the Trump Administration has been working to further expedite auctioning off the Refuge Coastal Plain. Legislation (H.R. 1146) passed the House of Representatives to restore protections for the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in September 2019. Similar legislation to permanently protect the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge once and for all has been introduced in the Senate. >>>Urge your senators to work to pass the Arctic Refuge Protection Act (S.2461) during the current meeting of Congress.
Environmental Working Group: Chlorpyrifos, a neurotoxic pesticide that can harm children’s brains even in small doses, shouldn’t be on the produce we buy at our local grocery store. But it may well be. Trump’s EPA recently decided to protect this hazardous chemical and pesticide industry profits instead of children’s health. Chlorpyrifos can still legally be sprayed on kids’ favorite foods, like apples, peaches and grapes—despite the fact that the EPA’s own assessments found that the levels of chlorpyrifos found on produce are unsafe. Although the government may be solidly in Big Ag’s pocket, it’s not too late for grocery stores to do the right thing. >>>Urge grocery stores like Safeway, Kroger and Publix to ban produce sprayed with chlorpyrifos from their stores.
American Bird Conservancy: Birds are in crisis. With the loss of 3 billion birds over the past 50 years, we need Congress to act immediately to strengthen one of our nation’s oldest and strongest bird conservation laws—the Migratory Bird Treaty Act (MBTA)—to turn population declines around. The Trump administration has weakened enforcement of the MBTA and we need swift legislative action to restore migratory bird protections and create a much-needed permitting system to reduce preventable bird mortality from industrial and governmental developments. The best way to strengthen the MBTA is to support a new bill, H.R. 5552: the Migratory Birds Protection Act (MBPA). >>>Ask your members of Congress to co-sponsor H.R. 5552 to restore and strengthen protections for birds.
Cause for concern…
President of pollution: Last week, the Trump White House detailed a sweeping revamp of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), which mandates environmental reviews for major proposals, such as highways and pipelines, as well as for plans by polluters to discharge contaminants into the air or water. “The most vulnerable communities are going to pay with lives and their health. They always have,” said Mustafa Santiago Ali of the National Wildlife Federation, who served as a senior advisor for environmental justice at the Environmental Protection Agency. “Moving forward with this is reckless and will endanger the lives of black and brown communities and indigenous communities.” (Photo credit: Noah (ax0n)/Flickr)
Save species, save us: The new Global Deal for Nature, a draft Paris-style United Nations agreement, argues that nearly a third of Earth’s oceans and land must be protected by the end of the decade to prevent the planet’s sixth mass species extinction—a precipitous decline in biodiversity, caused by human activity—that puts humanity’s own survival at risk. (Photo credit: NOAA)
Ronnie Cummins, founder of the Organic Consumers Association, believes the solution to the climate crisis and related emergencies is right under our feet—and on our plates—through the transformation of our broken food system. His new book, Grassroots Rising: A Call to Action on Climate, Farming, Food, and a Green New Deal, presents a blueprint for building what he calls a “Regeneration Movement” based on consumer awareness, farmer innovation, political change and regenerative finance. “Regeneration calls for a transition from degenerative, climate-disrupting fossil fuels to renewable energy and from industrial food, farming, and land use to regenerative practices,” he writes. “In this way, through the miracle of plant photosynthesis, we can draw down billions of tons of excess carbon from the atmosphere into our soils, forests, and plants over the next few decades and thereby avert climate catastrophe. By mobilizing the grassroots power of a united body politic for survival and revival, we can head off climate chaos and build a new nation along the lines of a Green New Deal. At the same time, as our regeneration revolution spreads across borders, we can build a new global commonwealth of peace and justice.”
Parting thought…
“We cannot win this battle to save species and environments without forging an emotional bond between ourselves and nature as well—for we will not fight to save what we do not love.” —Stephen Jay Gould
Earth | Food | Life (EFL) explores the critical and often interconnected issues facing the climate/environment, food/agriculture and nature/animal rights, and champions action; specifically, how responsible citizens, voters and consumers can help put society on an ethical path of sustainability that respects the rights of all species who call this planet home. EFL emphasizes the idea that everything is connected, so every decision matters.
Click here to support the work of EFL and the Independent Media Institute.
Questions, comments, suggestions, submissions? Contact EFL editor Reynard Loki at [email protected]. Follow EFL on Twitter @EarthFoodLife.
In his new one-man show “The Truth Has Changed,” activist, director and writer Josh Fox is raising an alarm: The Democrats are ill-prepared for Trump’s oncoming misinformation campaign. (Image: Jared Rodriguez / Truthout via Flickr)
by Reynard Loki, Independent Media Institute
Josh Fox, the Emmy-winning and Oscar-nominated filmmaker behind “Gasland,” the documentary that started the global anti-fracking movement, is bringing a new message to audiences across the country with “The Truth Has Changed,” a live theater-based project that sounds the alarm on the right-wing disinformation campaign working to secure President Trump’s reelection. Commissioned by legendary documentary producer Sheila Nevins for HBO as a solo performance to inspire grassroots action, “The Truth Has Changed” traces Fox’s personal arc from 9/11 to present-day America to tell a story that is both a warning and a prescription to save our democracy—and the planet.
I talked to Fox about this new project and the dark forces working to spread lies and misinformation to influence the 2020 presidential election.
Reynard Loki: Your films have been about the environment, and the fight to save it from climate change, fracking, pipelines, the activists at Standing Rock. How has your previous work led you to your new live performance-based project, “The Truth Has Changed”?
Josh Fox: That’s a great question. It started with an intriguing proposal from HBO. They said, “We know you do theater. We know you’ve been on the road for 10 years bringing your films to people. And you in a live setting is a part of the show, right? It’s not just that people come out to see your films. They come to see you, so how about you do a one-man show that brings that reality to the people?” And that was an assignment from Sheila Nevins when she was at HBO. And I said, “Absolutely; I’ll try this.” And then I started to really think about it, and at first, it was kind of a reporter’s notebook, but to be honest, what I really zeroed in on was the fact that for the last 10 years, the oil and gas industry has made a huge effort to discredit my work and discredit all of the people who spoke about how bad fracking is. And this is very similar to the campaigns of climate denial, which hinge on widespread misinformation and then spreading disinformation and propaganda, smear and lies.
RL: Can you describe the effort to discredit your work?
JF: Big names in conservative smear campaigns were following me all around the country. [Steve] Bannon. Conservative commentator Andrew Breitbart. Filmmaker Phelim McAleer, whose pro-fracking documentary “FrackNation” attempted to refute my own documentary “Gasland.” Conservative activist James O’Keefe. GOP media strategist Fred Davis. These high-profile right-wing charlatans clearly did opposition research on me. They collected all this data on me and figured out how to attack me personally. They tried to get inside my psyche to unnerve me. And they did it in a very specific and deliberate kind of way.
RL: What exactly did they do?
JF: They created hate emails specifically designed for my personality. There were tweets threats; there were death threats on Twitter. They highlighted my life in the theater, my hairline, the fact that my family’s Jewish; they found out that I had quit smoking several years ago, but they found a picture of me with a cigarette in my hand online from the past, and they ran that as a pro-fracking TV ad in Ohio saying, “This environmentalist is a smoker.” They followed me around the country for years. They booked shadow tours of our films. They tapped into ethnic and regional stereotyping. And then they tried to paint me as some kind of rich, intellectual, New York City liberal, which is not the case. They flung all of these stereotypes at me. They gathered all this information about me—my background, my ethnicity, my age, my race, where I live, where I went to school, how much money I made, what I had done in my previous life before the films.
RL: Are you saying that those techniques used against you are similar to the current disinformation campaigns we’re seeing today? Could you have been a kind of beta test for this data-based approach to spread propaganda?
JF: Absolutely. Basically, what Steve Bannon did to me from 2010 to 2015, he did to the entire American electorate in 2016. In developing “The Truth Has Changed,” I made two startling realizations. One was that the people who ran those campaigns against me had a very strong hand in influencing the 2016 election: Steve Bannon, who was running Breitbart when all these attacks were happening against me, took over the Trump campaign and his team profiled the electorate in the exact same way. This connection led me down two trails in my own life. The first looked back to my own personal history as a grandson of Holocaust survivors. I have an intimate knowledge of how white supremacy works, how the Nazi playbook operates, and feel a sense of intergenerational trauma. The second trail looks to the present time and the future, to how the same techniques that were used in a smear campaign against an individual through Google, Facebook, data collection, [and] addressable ad technology, which enables advertisers to selectively segment audiences to serve different ads, are used to influence a massive amount of people. And instead of just following one person around and knowing one person’s data—mine—now they know the personal data of tens of millions of people, and they use that information to create highly personalized ads according to different personality types.
RL: How important was big data to Trump’s victory in 2016?
JF: During the 2016 election, CNN called political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica “Donald Trump’s mind readers” and his “secret weapon.” They gathered up to 5,000 data points on more than 220 million Americans. And they used that data to tailor ads specifically toward people’s personality types to influence their thinking. The same folks are currently rallying white supremacists all across the world and are making a bid to get Trump reelected in 2020. Their digital campaign created 5.9 million different ad variations in 2016, versus just 66,000 ads created by Hillary Clinton’s campaign. It was so key to Trump’s victory that Trump’s digital campaign manager Brad Parscale is now his campaign manager.
RL: So in “The Truth Is Changed,” you’re connecting big oil and white supremacy to big data—and how these forces are working together to influence the 2020 election.
JF: Yes, we’re talking about Bannon and the white supremacy movement. We’re talking about Trump’s former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who, before that, was the head of ExxonMobil and the oil and gas industry, which has brazenly taken over the government. We’re talking about Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and their collection of the personal data of billions of people around the globe. Together, they have created a situation in which big data, big oil and white supremacists powerfully influence the way the United States government operates. And certainly, in the 2020 election cycle, we’re going to have a very hard time figuring out what is true. I think we’re going to see the largest smear, misinformation and disinformation campaigns in the history of any election. So in “The Truth Has Changed,” I’m taking a deep dive not only into the smear techniques of big oil and how they work from a new technology perspective, from psychographics to addressable ad technology, but going into how that is now how we run elections in America, and then we’ve entered the age of misinformation because right now it’s very hard for people to tell what’s true.
RL: Do disinformation campaigns rely on gullibility?
JF: No, I wouldn’t say that at all, not with the state of our education system right now. This entire project starts with a high school girl in the front row of one of my films putting her hand up and asking me, “Josh, how do we know what’s true?” She said, “You say all these things about how fracking is bad, and climate change is real, but then we can look online, and we see that people are saying that the opposite of this is true. So how do we know?” She’s not gullible. She’s trying, but can’t figure out the difference between a persuasive argument that is true, and a persuasive argument that is false.
Friends of mine send me fake things all the time because it appeals to them. I’ve sent fake things out accidentally because they appeal for my sensibility. And it’s not only that these ads say things like, vote for Donald Trump, he’s a nice guy, or he’s a tough guy, or he’s a strong guy, or he’s a compassionate guy. It’s often taking people who are upset with the Democratic Party and funneling them toward, for example, Jill Stein, when they might otherwise vote for Hillary Clinton. And a lot of people will get really mad at me and say, “No, no, no, Jill Stein represents what I believe in.” But if you’re in Pennsylvania and you’re voting against the Democratic platform, which Bill McKibben, Cornel West and I helped write and which has real progress in it, and that vote then gets siphoned away to put Donald Trump in office, then you’ve been manipulated. These disinformation campaigns often take the most deep-seated things that are really important to you and turn that into their own political gain. People are assuming that there is some kind of standard for truth because there always used to be. But last year, when Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified to Congress and declared that political candidates no longer had to abide by any kind of standards of truth, they abandoned a century’s worth of journalistic integrity. And they are arguably the largest news publisher in the world.
RL: In the face of all of this, what can we do to suss out truth from lies?
JF: We always have to check for accuracy. The pursuit of the truth is not something that can be done easily, and it never has been. However, we are now seeing the standard-bearers of journalism consistently undermined, and they themselves also make mistakes and who are also subject to manipulation. The New York Times publishes things directly from State Department press releases constantly; it’s maddening. Today, people need to work harder to get to the truth. But beyond that, we must control and own our own data, because if someone knows you really well, it’s really easy for them to manipulate you.
Take, for example, the 1988 presidential election that pitted incumbent GOP Vice President George H.W. Bush against Democratic Governor Michael Dukakis. [Those who are old enough] probably remember the Willie Horton ad, a racist ad put out by the Republican campaign against Michael Dukakis, and it obviously caused a huge wave of controversy and anger because it was racist. But it only caused that level of controversy because it was visible to everyone. Now you can run 1,000 Willie Horton ads. You can run 10,000 Willie Horton ads. You can run a Willie Horton ad supposedly put out there by a fake Black Lives Matter page, and no one would ever know. So if you put out a racist ad and only racists can see it, it causes absolutely no controversy, but it’s deeply effective in rallying people. And a lot of the times people don’t even know that they’re racist. So you might have things happening to folks on an unconscious level, on a deep psychological level that they’re not aware of. But the internet knows. If you’ve got 5,000 data points on somebody, you know them on a very intimate level, you know their psychology, you know what they’re afraid of, you know their sexual orientation, you know their medical history, their age, their race. So your campaign to win them over becomes very effective.
JF: There have to be laws, and those laws have to be in line with the current technology. We’re currently working with the New York State Senate to create a new slate of laws. There’s a privacy law in California that’s just recently been passed, but there’s some dispute as to how companies are supposed to comply. And so there have to be laws about data privacy that we can campaign for, but the Democrat campaigns must also address this issue. The New York Times recently reported that the Democrats have no strategy to stop this wave of misinformation. But they need to understand that how they handle misinformation is going to be the difference between tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of votes in battleground states like Michigan and Pennsylvania and Florida. So the Democrats have to get really serious about this issue—and they have to address it really fast. I’ve appealed to the Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and other campaigns, saying that this is really serious because it’s about to happen—and it’s going to happen worse than it’s ever happened before.
RL: Should we be allowed to sell our data?
JF: That is a fascinating question. I don’t know if I have a real clear answer. I mean, it’s being collected by your action, right? Everything you buy, everywhere you go, everything you search for, all things you know and all the things you don’t know, all that data goes in, and the algorithm learns what you personally crave and what you personally lack and what you really want in life, so that’s a digital map of your dreams, your insecurities, your life. And it is sort of like you’re on the road, right? It’s your digital biography. Do you own your movements in the world? It’s a very interesting question. I imagine there are some benefits. So, for example, if you’re on Instagram and you’re a man, and you’re constantly getting ads for feminine hygiene products, they’re an annoyance; they’re not useful to you. So perhaps you want to get ads that are more tailored to you. And of course, the way the news works these days is the news gives you back things that you agree with and that you want to see and that you want to read because there’s so much information out there. This does backfire upon you because, at that point, you end up being manipulated by the fact that now interests that are foreign to you and nefarious to you and harmful to you can start to target you.
RL: How has the truth crisis impacted the climate crisis?
JF: They go hand-in-hand. We get our terrestrial proof from the Earth. The planet is empirical data. Climate change deniers are saying that the empirical data that’s coming from the Earth is not true. Where do they say that? Principally, they say that online, which is its own “planet,” the cybersphere. It’s a planet that doesn’t exist on Earth. It exists by its own rules and has its own set of priorities. And if you leave terrestrial Earth, yeah, you can make it wherever you want. So when you’re in that cybersphere, it reigns true whenever you feel like on that particular day, for whomever is willing to pay for it.
The tobacco industry originally started doing this. They started to say things like, “Smoking is good for you.” And they created all this bogus science and fake reports that said, “These cigarettes are fine.” And what they were trying to do is sow confusion in people and stave off regulation. The exact same technique has been used by the oil industry.
RL: Why is the truth crisis such an urgent matter?
JF: It’s so important because the further we get away from the terrestrial planet as our source of empirical reality, the closer we come to being evicted from the planet like climate change, and that is those same forces, the oil industry and the conservatives that are forcing us to an unlivable world. This is an emergency because of the climate. It’s also an emergency because we’re seeing right now the reemergence of white supremacists and Nazis on this planet, and they are taking over. Right-wing authoritarian governments are sweeping elections across the earth, and they’re doing so primarily by using Facebook and WhatsApp and by lying directly to the public. Sixty-eight thousand fake Twitter accounts helped push the recent Bolivian coup. In the UK, Boris Johnson’s recent election, 88 percent of the conservative parties’ advertisements were misleading. In Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro was elected with the help of fake news messages sent via WhatsApp, a messaging app used by 120 million Brazilians, saying that his opponent was a criminal. Obviously, there’s Donald Trump, who had 5.9 million ad variations using Cambridge Analytica. There’s also Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines. Narendra Modi in India. There are dozens of examples. So you’re seeing right-wing, authoritarian, racist regimes cropping up all over the world. And in 2019, Steve Bannon raised $100 million for his white supremacist project in Europe. So what is really dangerous about all of this is the two-headed monster of the rise of white supremacy, Nazism and racism on the one hand and on the other hand, climate change denial and the fossil fuel industry. And these are linked, and these are linked in the persona and in many actions by the Trump administration. In 2017, Rex Tillerson, former CEO of ExxonMobil turned Secretary of State, created a contract between the State Department and Cambridge Analytica, and their mission was to influence elections all across the world. Big data and big oil running American diplomacy. And that continues to this day.
RL: Why should people see “The Truth Has Changed”?
At every single performance of “The Truth Has Changed,” there will be activists in the room who are campaigning on these issues, and that’s what we need to do. We need to set the record straight. We need to say climate change is real. We need to say fracking is bad, we need to see Donald Trump as a racist and say that is not who we are as a nation. So we have to take our country back, and this is our effort to try to fight back against this wave of lies, smear and misinformation.
“The Truth Has Changed” opens at New York’s Public Theater this January, and will tour across the United States. For more information, visit internationalwow.com/tthc.php.
The show must not go on: Tilikum (above), a captive orca who spent most of his 35-year-long life (1981-2017) performing at SeaWorld Orlando, was heavily featured in the 2013 documentary “Blackfish,” which galvanized both public opinion and legislation against orca captivity. In 2015, following declining attendance, SeaWorld announced it would end its orca breeding program and phase out all live performances using these highly intelligent and emotional marine mammals. But orcas are still trapped at the amusement park. (Photo credit: BrandyKregel/Flickr)
PETA: It’s been years since the release of the documentary “Blackfish”—whose “star,” Tilikum, died after 33 years in a concrete tank—but orcas at SeaWorld are still swimming in endless circles and breaking their teeth by gnawing in frustration on the concrete corners and metal bars of their cramped tanks. Other dolphins are still being impregnated, sometimes forcibly after being drugged, and 140 of them are packed into just seven tanks. Trainers use them as surfboards, riding on their backs and standing on their faces in cruel and demeaning circus-style shows. Facing mounting criticism, SeaWorld ended its sordid orca-breeding program—but this does nothing for the 20 orcas and hundreds of other dolphins, whales, and other animals who are suffering in the company’s tanks right now. SeaWorld must open its tanks and release the long-suffering animals into seaside sanctuaries—where they would live in large areas of the ocean while benefiting from human care for as long as they might need—so that they can have a life outside prison tanks. >>>Urge SeaWorld to send orcas and other marine mammals to sea sanctuaries and end its use of animals.
Care2: There seems to be no end to the story of the Trump children using politics to get what they want in their personal lives. Now there’s a new chapter in this saga: Donald Trump Jr. killed an endangered argali sheep, a Mongolian national treasure. Once Don Jr. was back in the U.S., he was granted a permit to hunt the argali sheep retroactively. Experts think it is likely that Don Jr.’s meeting with President Khaltmaagiin Battulga, the details of which are entirely secret, had something to do with that. This is only further supported by Mongolian scientist and argali researcher Amgalanbaatar Sukh, who says the hunting permit processes in Mongolia are political and most often arranged by high-level government officials. Between 1985 and 2009, the number of argali in Mongolia plummeted from 50,000 to just 18,000. >>>Urge the Mongolian government to make Trump Jr. the last hunter to get away with this, and to stop permitting argali hunting altogether.
Lady Freethinker: Every year, tens of thousands of birds are victimized in southeastern France by a cruel hunting method called glue-trapping, which involves attracting songbirds to branches covered in glue in order to cage the birds to sell as pets. As birds try desperately to free themselves, they become increasingly stuck, resulting in a painful, prolonged struggle that can lead to injury or death. After this initial stage of torture, hunters spray birds with toxic chemicals and separate them from the glue, often causing further injury and fatal consequences, including feather loss, which can render birds unable to fly. Birds who are deemed “undesirable” are carelessly tossed aside and left to suffer with any untreated injuries they may have. The rest are exploited for profit, sold into a lifetime of misery in captivity or used as bait in future glue-trapping hunts after spending unnatural periods of time—sometimes months—in pitch-black darkness. This causes them to sing frantically once they see daylight, unknowingly luring other birds toward the traps. A warning from the EU, which banned glue-trapping decades ago, and numerous court cases calling on French officials to outlaw the practice have fallen on deaf ears. In addition to the needless suffering glue-trapping causes to birds, the perpetuation of this government-sanctioned cruelty puts steeply-declining bird populations, including endangered species, further in jeopardy. >>>Urge Ambassador of France to the U.S. Philippe Etienne to push for a nationwide ban on inhumane glue traps that torture and kill helpless birds.
Cause for concern…
Death down under: Millions of Australia’s native fauna, including koalas, kangaroos, dingoes, wombats, emus, flying foxes and more, have perished in the nation’s devastating, ongoing bushfires. Many of these species have already been struggling in the face of habitat loss, poaching and climate change. With bushfire season still not over—Prime Minister Scott Morrison warned that the wildfires could continue to burn for months—and with another coming next year, Professor John Woinarski of Charles Darwin University said that the horrific scenes emerging out from down under forecast “an even more bleak future ahead.” (Photo credit: NSW Koala Country)
Helping pups: In 2019, several states passed laws enhancing or broadening protections for dogs in pet stores or puppy mills, commercial breeding operations in which purebred dogs are raised in large numbers in poor conditions, resulting in generations of dogs suffering from hereditary defects. (Photo credit: Crazybananas/Flickr)
“Only after I became active in women’s issues did I realize that my veganism was related to those very issues. Dairy and eggs don’t just come from cows and chickens—they come from female cows and female chickens. We’re exploiting female bodies and abusing the magic of female animals to create eggs and milk.” —Natalie Portman
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.
Death by plastic: All the plastic waste shown in the picture above came from the stomach of a single bird. Plastic found in the stomachs of dead marine animals, like whales, dolphins, fish and seabirds, reveals the extent to which humanity has polluted the world’s oceans with trash that can take hundreds of years to decompose. Some estimates suggest that plastic pollution kills at least 100 million marine mammals each year. Add fish and birds and the numbers are staggering. So it makes no sense that Disney, which announced last year that it would eliminate all single-use plastic straws and stirrers from its facilities, is now mass-producing unrecyclable plastic toys associated with the film “Frozen 2,” which itself has a pro-environment theme. (Photo credit: Tim Zim/Flickr)
Care2: Disney’s new film “Frozen 2” has already made almost a billion dollars at the box office. These numbers should be good news to environmental activists, since the plot of Frozen’s sequel deftly combines successful children’s entertainment with an eco-friendly theme. But unfortunately that’s where Disney’s efforts stop, since they have already begun mass-producing unrecyclable plastic toys associated with the film. In the film, protagonists Elsa and Anna must battle with unstable and dangerous natural elements in order to bring peace to their world. Many have applauded the obvious connection to the fight against climate change, noting that Elsa and Anna’s stewardship of their fictional world will inform the way children interact with our own dying planet. Sadly, Disney would rather appear environmentally conscious than take any real action. It’s clear their bottom line is more pressing than saving the Earth. >>>Urge Disney to halt the production of unrecyclable plastic toys.
Last Chance for Animals: Introduced on December 2 by Ontario’s Minister of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs Ernie Hardeman, Bill 156 seeks to limit access to farms, slaughterhouses and tranpsort trucks, and would make it a crime to uncover and report the truth about how farm animals are treated. Undercover footage routinely shows farm animals subjected to abuse and neglect. However, instead of imposing welfare standards or ensuring the proper treatment of farm animals, the Ontario government is looking to conceal animal cruelty by preventing whistleblowers and journalists from reporting animal cruelty and neglect. It’s a moral obligation to report any crimes of cruelty and neglect. If passed, Bill 156 will severely undermine Ontario’s animal welfare laws and will allow companies and individuals to continue business as usual. >>>Urge Ontario Premier Doug Ford to oppose Bill 156.
PETA: Investigations of angora farms show workers twisting and pulling terrified rabbits into unnatural positions in order to pluck the hair from all over their bodies, including their genitals, as they scream out in pain. They’re forced to endure this terror up to four times a year. After two to three years, the animals who survive this repeated ordeal are hung upside down and their throats are slit. As American Vintage continues to sell angora, despite knowing that rabbits are abused on angora farms, we need to ramp up the pressure on the brand to ditch the cruelly obtained fiber. >>>Urge American Vintage to follow the lead of over 340 other retailers worldwide and ban angora.
Cause for concern…
Indefensible: Donald Trump Jr. was retroactively granted a rare permit from the Mongolian government to kill an endangered argali sheep (above, in Kazakhstan’s Karkaraly National Park) during his trip to Mongolia this past summer. “It’s obvious why the trophy hunting portion of Donald Trump Jr.’s summer trip to Mongolia wasn’t shared, and why the relevant federal agencies have no comment on it now,” said Kitty Block, president and CEO of the Humane Society of the United States. “The trophy hunting of argali sheep, an animal listed under the Endangered Species Act and whose numbers are dwindling, is indefensible, and the hasty process of after-the-fact permitting is downright deceitful.” (Photo credit: S. Reznichenko/Wikimedia Commons)
The kid is alright: For inspiring a generation to fight the climate crisis, 16-year-old vegan climate activist Greta Thunberg has become TIME’s youngest “Person of the Year,” taking the title held since 1927 by then-25-year-old aviator Charles Lindbergh. (Photo credit: appaloosa/Flickr)
“Until one has loved an animal, a part of one’s soul remains unawakened.” —Anatole France
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.
He’d love more room to roam: A mule deer near the Webb Lake Ranger Station in Montana’s Scapegoat Wilderness. Congress designated the Scapegoat in 1972 with 240,000 acres. Now a new bill seeks to increase this and other wilderness areas in the Blackfoot River watershed. (Photo credit: U.S. Forest Service Northern Region/Flickr)
Conservation Alliance: Efforts to permanently protect the iconic Blackfoot River watershed in Montana began in 2005 when two groups who don’t traditionally see eye to eye—snowmobilers and wilderness advocates—came together to create a proposal to provide new opportunities for winter recreation and add key pieces of habitat to the existing wilderness. The Blackfoot Clearwater Stewardship Act (BCSA) is the result of this decades-long, multi-stakeholder collaboration. The bill offers something for everyone. The BCSA would designate 78,000 acres of wilderness with the expansions to the Bob Marshall, Scapegoat and Mission Mountain Wilderness Areas, and establish two new recreation areas: the 2,000-acre Otatsy Recreation Area, a popular snowmobiling area, and the Spread Mountain Recreation Area, preserving prized mountain biking access to Spread Mountain, Center Ridge and Camp Pass. Additionally, the bill will give the U.S. Forest Service more tools to actively manage forests on the Seeley Ranger District. Sustainable timber harvest is crucial to the local economy and the bill’s collaborative approach has resulted in coordination with and endorsement from Pyramid Lumber—one of the area’s largest employers. >>>Urge Montana’s congressional leaders to pass the Blackfoot Clearwater Stewardship Act.
Change: Hunters in Alaska can now track and kill hibernating bears thanks to a U.S. House and Senate resolution rolling back Obama-era regulations against the practice passed over a year ago. President Donald Trump signed the bill into law in April, effectively rolling back Alaska’s ban on killing the vulnerable bears, along with, shockingly, wolf cubs in dens. It also allows for hunters to target the animals from helicopters. The Republican-sponsored legislation impacts 76.8 million acres of federally protected national preserves across Alaska. Something must be done to protect these innocent animals while they hibernate. They are causing no harm to anyone during these times and, in fact, have no need to ever be hunted. >>>Urge Congress to protect hibernating bears from hunters.
PETA: It’s no secret that mice and rats feel pain, fear, loneliness and joy—just as humans do. These highly social animals become emotionally attached to one another, love their families, and easily bond with human guardians. Rats even express empathy when another rat or a human they know is in distress—and some will even put themselves in harm’s way rather than allowing another rat to suffer. Right now, tens of millions of mice and rats are being used in painful and ineffective experiments. Others experience excruciating deaths while stuck to deadly glue traps. In crowded breeding mills that supply small animals to big-box pet stores, they’re denied water and adequate veterinary care. These intelligent and emotional animals need more protections, and taxpayers certainly should not be paying for cruel and ineffective tests on them. >>>Urge the National Institutes of Health to stop funding worthless sepsis experiments on mice.
Cause for concern…
Extreme living: “The past decade is almost certain to be the hottest on record, weather experts warned … painting a bleak picture of vanishing sea ice, devastating heatwaves and encroaching seas,” writes Matthew Green for Reuters, reporting on the World Meteorological Organization’s annual assessment of the Earth’s climate. In addition, atmospheric scientist Michael Mann, co-author of a disturbing new report examining the climate impacts on the polar regions, said that “the dramatic warming and melting of Arctic ice is impacting the jet stream in a way that gives us more persistent and damaging weather extremes.” (Photo credit: Tim Ellis/Flickr)
No joke: Actor and animal rights activist Joaquin Phoenix, an ethical vegan since the age of three, is the producer of the “The Animal People,” a new film that opens nationwide on December 10. Fifteen years in the making, the documentary tells the story of six animal advocates—targeted as terrorists by the U.S. government—seeking to expose the largest animal-testing lab in the world, and the inhumane industry trying to stop them. (Photo credit: eLENA tUBARO/Flickr)
Move On: Google recently released a list of the organizations it sponsors, and it includes groups that consistently deny climate change. Google claims to be an advocate for climate change policy, but the company has made generous donations to organizations like CEI that were instrumental in pushing the U.S. to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement and reverse Obama-era environmental protections. In addition, Google has contributed to groups like State Policy Network, an umbrella organization including the Heartland Institute, a known anti-science think tank. Google employees upset by the company’s behavior have even criticized Google for reportedly funding 111 members of Congress who voted against climate legislation 90 percent of the time. >>>Urge Google CEO Sundar Pichai to stop funding organizations that deny climate change.
CREDO Action: The bald eagle, beluga whale, whooping crane and American grey wolf: All could be a distant memory if the Trump administration’s heartless and greedy extinction plan remains in effect. Earlier this year, despite massive public opposition, Trump and his minions pushed through dangerous regulations to gut the Endangered Species Act, open up protected areas to fossil fuel development and line the pockets of big polluters. Progressive champion Rep. Raul Grijalva recently introduced critical legislation called the PAW and FIN Conservation Act of 2019 that would repeal these rule changes. Congress should immediately pass this bill to stop Trump’s handout to the oil and gas industry and protect and recover precious, threatened wildlife. >>>Tell Congress to save the Endangered Species Act.
Humane Society International: Every five years, the world’s largest animal sacrifice takes place at the Gadhimai Temple in the Bara district of Nepal. On December 3, following a month-long celebration or “mela,” the festival culminates in the ritual slaughter of tens of thousands of animals, including water buffalo, goats, chickens, pigs, pigeons, ducks and rats, who are decapitated with blunt metal tools. At its height in 2009, around half a million animals were slaughtered. In 2015, animal sacrifice was banned at this festival following negotiations and campaigning by HSI, Animal Welfare Network Nepal and People for Animals. But public pressure is still needed to enforce this ban. >>>Urge Nepalese Prime Minister Khadga Prasad Sharma Oli to end this killing once and for all.
Cause for concern…
Grim outlook: In many regions across the world, the hottest years over the last century have occurred in the last decade. At the global level, the past four years were the hottest in the last 139 years. “Unprecedented cuts in greenhouse gas emissions offer the only hope of averting an ever-intensifying cascade of consequences,” reports Brady Dennis for the Washington Post. A majority of Americans believe that the government isn’t doing enough to protect the climate, according to a new Pew Research Center survey. (Graphic: NOAA via United Nations).
Youth leader: Greta Thunberg addresses climate strikers at Civic Center Park in Denver on October 12, 2019. The 16-year-old Swedish climate activist started skipping classes in August 2018 to campaign for action on the climate crisis. Within months, her grassroots movement went global. (Photo credit: Andy Bosselman, Streetsblog Denver/Flickr)
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.
Road to extinction: The endangered marbled murrelet, a small seabird, nests on moss-covered trees in the Tongass National Forest in southeast Alaska, which has become a target of the Trump administration for more aggressive logging by changing the Roadless Rule. Such a move would not only permit logging activities, but would also open previously pristine wildlife habitat to mining, hydropower and recreation, imperiling the survival of several threatened species. (Photo credit: Tom Benson/Flickr)
Audubon: For nearly two decades, the federal Roadless Rule has prohibited road-building and logging on nearly 60 million acres of the country’s most pristine national forest land. The Roadless Rule currently protects more than half of the nearly 17-million-acre Tongass National Forest in Alaska. Part of the largest remaining temperate rainforest on Earth, the Tongass hosts the Prince of Wales Spruce Grouse and the Queen Charlotte Goshawk, a subspecies of Northern Goshawk that hunts and breeds exclusively in old-growth forests. These wild areas are in jeopardy: the U.S. Forest Service has proposed a new rule that would open these old-growth woods in Alaska to clearcutting. The agency is accepting public comments on this misguided plan through December 17. >>>Urge the U.S. Forest Service not to gut forest protections in the wild roadless areas of the Tongass National Forest.
Animal Welfare Institute: In a move that threatens to undermine a host of legal protections guaranteed to marine mammals in the United States and Canada, Mystic Aquarium in Connecticut has applied for a permit to import five captive-born beluga whales from Marineland in Canada. If the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) grants this permit, these animals would be on public display at Mystic Aquarium and likely Georgia Aquarium in Atlanta, and possibly other facilities throughout the United States. All five of these whales are descended from the Sakhalin Bay-Nikolaya Bay-Amur River stock of beluga whales—the same stock that NMFS designated as depleted in 2016. The U.S. Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA) prohibits the import of marine mammals from depleted populations—and their descendants—for public display. In Mystic’s permit application to NMFS, it seeks to circumvent this legal prohibition by claiming that “incidental” public display is allowed when a marine mammal from a depleted population is to be imported for research. This is not so. Allowing this import would create a massive loophole in the MMPA’s prohibition against the import of depleted marine mammals for public display. >>>Urge the NMFS to deny Mystic Aquarium’s request to import beluga whales from Canada.
Change: While all countries contribute to the oceans’ dire plastic pollution problem, Indonesia is one of the biggest culprits. After China, Indonesia is the largest contributor of plastics to our oceans. The country sends 3.22 million metric tons of the material into our oceans each year alone. That fact became even more apparent after a dead 31-foot sperm whale washed ashore at the Wakatobi National Park in Indonesia. Experts discovered that the whale was stuffed full of plastic debris. All in all, the whale had 115 drinking cups, four plastic bottles, 25 plastic bags and two flip-flops in its stomach. In recent years, Indonesia’s attempts to curtail plastic use have been relatively toothless. Their $0.02 plastic bag tax and proposed excise tax against plastic producers have both been discontinued. These policy failures make it highly unlikely the country will meet their goal of reducing plastic waste by 70 percent in less than 10 years. In reality, there is already a model that works. If Indonesia wants to get serious about dumping their plastic addiction, they need to look no further than countries like Kenya and Rwanda, which have banned single-use plastic bags completely. In those countries, breaking the ban can get the offender in real trouble. Serious fines and jail time and have worked so well, they won Kigali—Rwanda’s capital—the title of “the cleanest city in Africa.” >>>Urge Indonesian President Joko Widodo to implement a complete and total ban on single-use plastics.
Cause for concern…
The worst is yet to come: The Pine Bend oil refinery in Rosemount, Minnesota, run by Flint Hills Resources, a subsidiary of Koch Industries. A report published on November 20 by the United Nations Environment Program has found that the emission reduction pledges made by the 188 nations that signed the 2015 Paris climate agreement are not enough to avoid the worst impacts of the climate crisis, concluding that “exceeding the 1.5°C goal can no longer be avoided.” To make matters worse, even the current pledges will most likely not be achieved. The report’s authors blame continuing governmental support of the oil and gas industry, including ongoing fossil fuel subsidies and lack of appropriate carbon pricing schemes. (Photo credit: Tony Webster/Flickr)
For the win: The Game Changers, a Netflix documentary produced by Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jackie Chan, Lewis Hamilton, James Cameron and Novak Djokovic (above), finds that the ideal diet for human performance and health is plant-based. The film is having a significant impact, with many viewers going vegan after watching it. Even Roger Whiteside, the chief executive of Gregg’s, a U.K. food company famous for their meat-filled pastries, went vegan after seeing it. (Photo credit: mirsasha/Flickr)
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.
A bridge too far: “If this construction is allowed to go ahead, I am left in no doubt that the bridge will have significant negative effects on the region’s wildlife, the Kinabatangan’s thriving tourism industry and on the image of Sabah as a whole,” wrote famed naturalist and ‘Planet Earth’ narrator Sir David Attenborough, about an infrastructure project in Borneo that will threaten several species, including endangered pygmy elephants (above). (Photo credit: Andrea Schieber/Flickr)
Rainforest Rescue: Around 350 endangered pygmy elephants live in Sabah, Borneo, near the Kinabatangan River. Until recently, their forest was so remote that poaching was all but unknown, and the elephants lived in peace. But over the last decade, criminals have discovered the region. Poachers are not only seeking ivory, but also elephant skin and other body parts for the Chinese market. In 2017, following international protest, the government backed off a plan to build a bridge across the river and roads into the forest–which would have made life much easier for poachers and illegal settlers and fragmented the elephants’ habitat. But now a new government has taken power in Sabah and the project is back in action, putting pygmy elephants and other wildlife in immediate danger. >>>Urge Sabah Prime Minister Tun Mahathir bin Mohamad to scrap this project.
Mercy for Animals: Venezuelan actress María Gabriela de Faría narrates new video footage captured by undercover investigators that reveals—for the seventh time—the appalling treatment of animals that continues inside slaughterhouses across Mexico. Cows have been repeatedly shot, kicked, cut open and left to bleed—all while conscious and able to feel pain. One cow was shot in the head four times and ultimately hit in the head with an ax, but remained conscious and able to feel pain as she was slaughtered. Even more shocking, other cows have been killed while pregnant. Animal activists were instrumental in securing a unanimous point of agreement in Mexico’s senate that encourages the country’s Department of Agriculture to implement supervision and inspections of Mexican slaughterhouses—and shut down establishments that engage in such extreme acts of cruelty. Now it’s time for the government to take action. >>Demand that the Mexican Department of Agriculture end this extreme cruelty immediately.
Care2: The war on destructive plastic pollution ratcheted up in 2019, and activist efforts are working. Major companies like Starbucks have ditched plastic straws. As of this year, more than 400 cities and states have banned single-use plastic bags. These steps make a difference, but for the biggest change, the biggest polluters must act. This year on World Clean Up Day—a day when tens of thousands of people clean up plastic litter—volunteers dug through the trash they picked up to figure out where it came from. Unsurprisingly, Coca-Cola, Pepsi and Nestlé products made up such a huge amount of the haul that they were dubbed 2019’s top polluters. We know how bad plastic is for the environment. It leaches into our water, poisoning wildlife and people alike with dangerous chemicals. It chokes marine animals who mistake tiny pieces of plastic for food. These three companies know all of this too. Yet their core products are still packaged in non-biodegradable plastic that will continue to damage our planet for centuries to come. It’s time for these industry leaders to actually lead the industry toward a more sustainable future. >>>Urge Pepsi, Coca-Cola and Nestlé to reduce their plastic pollution now.
Cause for concern…
Dairy’s terrible cost: The mothers of the calves shown in the video above of a “family farm” are dairy cows, whose children are taken away from them, and who are kept continually pregnant so that their milk—which is meant for their calves—can supply the dairy industry. “Yes, a dairy cow’s life ends in slaughter, just as the beef cow’s does. So in the end, the dairy cow is slaughtered too,” notes Rachel Curit on One Green Planet. “Given how much longer the dairy cow lives, and that cows raised for beef do not have their babies stolen from them every year: it would seem, in fact, there is more cruelty in a glass of milk.” (Image via @herbivore_club/Twitter)
Pumping pause: The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has voluntarily suspended 130 oil and gas leases after being sued by advocacy groups claiming the federal agency failed to properly assess the climate impact of oil and gas drilling and extraction as required by law. “It is potentially a BLM-wide issue,” said Jayni Hein, natural resources director at the Institute for Policy Integrity at NYU School of Law. “It could have the effect of suspending even more leases across the West, and not just for oil and gas, for coal as well.” (Photo credit: BLM)
“It’s not just climate change; it’s sheer space, places to grow food for this enormous horde. Either we limit our population growth or the natural world will do it for us, and the natural world is doing it for us right now.” —Sir David Attenborough
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