Category Archives: Nature

GMO apples will begin the end of real food. Tell Feds NO.

wicked witch says trust me GMO apple is safeSubmit your comment to the US federal government saying why you stand against the approval of GMO apples. The time to act is now! Here’s some scientific background on GMO apples are so bad, even McDonalds and Gerber doesn’t want them. After you post your comment, please share it with us. Here’s mine:

Private companies cannot be allowed to put in claims to own nature or our food supply. It’s time to radically head off manufacturers of GMOs from attempts to take over society by stopping them from selling their products, ever. The US government must act immediately to make the GMO process and the sale of GMO seeds, illegal.

GMO products and patented seeds, are responsible for the killing of bees, natural ecosystems, and ring the death knoll for small farms around the world.

Our food system relies on bees for pollination. Ecosystems rely on a diversity of plant and animal life to thrive, much in the same way that human bodies do. Small farms are being seized and eradicated by GMO distributors through a variety of nefarious and underhanded moves.

GMO producers are dishonest and extremely dangerous.

You cannot allow them to continue harming the earth, our food supply and the people of the United States. GMO incursion is bad for people and the natural world that God created, which it is the fundamental and inalienable right of US citizens and all people, to enjoy.

The myth is being sold by self-serving producers of mono-culture crops that our societies will be better, or safer, if we allow them to take over the growing process, beginning with seed alteration and patenting, but this is the reverse of true. Mono-cultures are exactly the opposite of good, and the results GMO companies bring into the world are disastrous over both the long and short terms.

The approval of GMO apple seeds will open the door to other varieties of patented seeds being brought into the food supply chain. In the short run, family farmers and small farms will be ruined. In the long term, GMO producers want to make sure that only their eco-system destroying apples can be planted and sold. They want to make natural seeds illegal and own the growing process from start to finish.

GMO crops which contain pesticides also produce pesticides resistant super-insects that cannot be controlled by normal strength pesticides. The GMO crops are directly responsible for the super-insects wiping out natural crops (grown by family/small farmers) in regions where the GMO crops that create them are grown. We can only imagine how bad the pesticide-based crops will reveal themselves to be for human health.

GMO companies seek to replace good, healthy food grown by loving hands which shares a beneficial, symbiotic exchange with nature … with chemically altered food that destroys nature, ecosystems, the natural pollination process (and bees), health, family farms and world society as we know it.

They cannot be allowed to continue to operate in society. There must be NO place for them at all. Please, cast a vote for the wellbeing of United States residents and the world at large, by banning GMO seeds from entering the world.

At RCNJ on 12/11 Gas Infrastructure & Its Adverse Impacts: Implications for Communities across the Region

The Masters in Sustainability Studies and Environmental Studies Programs, Ramapo College of New Jersey in conjunction with the NJ Highlands Coalition, NJ Club, ClimateMama, and the Delaware Riverkeeper Network

Cordially Invite You to a Program on Gas Infrastructure and Its Adverse Impacts: Implications for Communities across the Region with Renowned Environmental Scientist and MacArthur Fellow

“>WILMA SUBRA on Gas Infrastructure
Wed 11 Dec 2013, 9:30-11:30am
RCNJ in Friends Hall

Rationale: The Ramapo Region now serves as a confluence for major gas infrastructure projects proliferating throughout the New York/New Jersey area. Beyond the other consequences of new gas pipelines, compressor stations, metering stations and gas- fired power plants, there is the question of whether natural gas is the clean source of energy it is billed as, particularly now that the gas traveling through our area is increasingly sourced from fracking of Marcellus Shale deposits.

Because of its position between the Shale fields of Pennsylvania and northeastern cities, the Ramapo region will likely remain at the crossroads of fracking infrastructure development. With these new drilling techniques and expanding infrastructure requirements we must ask, “How Hazardous is our reliance on Natural Gas?” This is a question of importance to community decision makers, parents, and other residents of the region seeking information upon which to base policy and personal decisions. Yet, there has been a paucity of information available.

Wilma Subra is a highly regarded environmental scientist and MacArthur Genius Award recipient who has devoted herself to approaching such challenging environmental health questions. Owner of a private environmental testing company in Louisiana, she has emerged as a strong voice for environmental justice and precautionary decisions regarding environmental hazards. She has served on numerous EPA commissions relating to environmental health and justice, played an important role in understanding the issues in post-Katrina Louisiana and has emerged as a key voice in cautioning about the proliferation of gas fracking and the resulting infrastructure projects because of potential adverse health effects and community impacts.

Please use this parking permit for the event.

Videos teach environmental and health impact of GMOs

farm fresh foodWhat could be wrong with family farming? Family farms, also known as traditional or small farms, produce good food with little or no pesticides … The farming methods they use keep both farm animals and the people eating the vegetables, dairy and meats produced on them, healthy and strong.

There’s the problem! For Big $, Big Ag, health insurance companies and Big Pharma, family farming is bad bad bad: because it leads to less need for hospitalization, insurance, pharmaceutics and erases the need for factory produced pesticides, fertilizers or seeds: in other words, major corporations can’t make a profit from family farming. So, they want to ban it. But for the real people of the world, people like you and me, family farming is good good good and we want more of it.

Check out the brilliant Food Revolution Europe video showing why GMOs and mono-crops are so bad for both people and the environment. Learn why we must say NO to GMOs, help spread the word about how bad they are and demand that governments halt their use.

We must also protect the family farmers of our world. Big Ag is using GMO crops to force small farmers out of business and steal their land, and we need to stop them. Their wellbeing and our health are irrevocably tied together.

In another video, Physicist Vandana Shiva tells why GMOs are the world’s death knell. OK, maybe Dr. Shiva is a bit serious, but she’s speaking relevant truths that all people should know. She also speaks as a native of India, where close to 300,000 cotton farmers have committed suicide because GMO seeds from Monsanto have bankrupted their farms, destroyed their families’ living and broken ties to land and homes they owned for generations.

A Truthout article shares more ugly facts about Monsanto:

Given Monsanto’s legacy as a producer of the lethal defoliant Agent Orange during the Vietnam War, Southeast Asian agriculture would presumably beg to differ with this characterization.

Sustainability is also not the first word that comes to mind when contemplating Monsanto’s policy of sowing the earth with genetically modified seeds that destroy soil and are designed with nonrenewable traits so as to require constant repurchase as well as acquisition of a variety of other company products like fertilizers and pesticides.

Nor would the term appear to define a situation in which nearly 300,000 Indian farmers have committed suicide since 1995 after being driven into insurmountable debt by neoliberal economics and the conquest of Indian farmland by Monsanto’s Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) cotton.

In tragic irony, many kill themselves by imbibing pesticides intended for their crops.

As for Monsanto’s shameless claim that one of its primary objectives is “to improve lives,” we might similarly conclude that butchers aim to improve the lives of cows and pigs and that two plus two is 86.

Sign your high school team up for Shore Bowl competition

To compete in the 2014 Shore Bowl you need a team, a coach and to sign up by November 30. Teams will be accepted on a first come, first served basis. Shore Bowl overview and registration link.

Shore BowlWhat Is Shore Bowl?
The Shore Bowl is a regional academic competition for high school students in NJ, NY, and PA that focuses on ocean-related topics. These topics include the biology, chemistry, physics and geology of the ocean, as well as navigation, geography, and related history and literature. The Shore Bowl will be one of 25 regional competitions hosted around the country. The winners of each regional competition will travel to Seattle, WA to compete in the National Ocean Sciences Bowl. Prizes will be awarded to the top teams at both the regional and national levels.

Shore Bowl happens

Saturday, February 1, 2014 | 7am – 6pm
Food Science Building
Rutgers University in New Brunswick, NJ.

Green Drinks celebrates World & US Food Days

Green Drinks celebrates Food Day
Green Drinks celebrated Food Day and World Food Day in November at our Paterson-Clifton gathering. We discussed the relationship between producers, consumers and the food that binds us together … and read stories of how sustainable ag lifts us up by creating economic opportunities, healthy lives and a sustainable planet.

Ari reading World Food Day brochure

November Green Drinks schedule & sustainable activities

Green Drinks Hackensack 1308

Green Drinks (Sustainability) chats monthly in 3 north Jersey cities

GreenDrink logo with wordsGreen Drinks are not a type of drink! They are informal gatherings that bring people together to chat over food and drinks about green and sustainable issues relevant to our lives and communities. Green Drinks meetings are open, everyone is welcome and there is no admission fee. Pay for the food and drinks you order at the restaurants where we meet – each location serves good food at moderate prices.
Green Drinks Newark 1st Mondays | 7-9pm
November: 04 Nov 2013
Rio Rodizio
1034 McCarter Highway, Newark, NJ
Green Drinks Hackensack 2nd Mondays | 7-9pm
November: 11 Nov 2013
Villa de Colombia
12 Mercer Street, Hackensack, NJ
If parking lot is full, park weekdays after 7 across the street in the jewelry business parking lot and on weekends park at the Salvation Army lot on the corner of Mercer and State Streets.
Green Drinks Clifton-Paterson (this location has no fixed monthly date for now)
November: Thursday, 21 Nov 2013 | 7-9pm

Sultan Restaurant
429 Crooks Avenue, Clifton NJ
Discussion themes this month: stormwater management, composting, climate change

Like us on Facebook!

Other green/sustainable activities & events

Stand Against Fracking at the Next DRBC Meeting
Tues 03 Dec | 12-1:30 pm
LOCATION TBD – Commissioners have not announced final meeting location
RSVP & look for carpool (as of 11/13, none from north Jersey yet, so feel free to add your own)
The Delaware River Basin Commission put plans on hold to allow drilling in this critical watershed two years ago. Now the executive director of the DRBC is talking about developing a strategy for drilling in the basin. Fracking will destroy this precious landscape and threaten the water that we all depend on. Their next meeting will be on December 3 — please join Food & Water Watch and our allies to celebrate two years of no drilling in the Delaware River Watershed and stand up for the only strategy we should be support: A Ban on Fracking!.

Fund Raising Campaign Kick Off Reception for the
MLK Jr. Bergen County Monument Committee

Tues 19 Nov 2013 | 6-9pm
Rothman Center at Fairleigh Dickinson University
140 University Avenue, Hackensack NJ
The public is welcome. Come out for the unveiling of the MLK Jr. monument, network, support the committee’s efforts.

Free Screening of A Place at the Table and Panel Discussion
Thu 21 Nov 2013 | 6:30pm
Bergen Community College
Technology Center Building Room TEC-128
400 Paramus Road, Paramus NJ
The Community FoodBank of New Jersey and Bergen Community College collaborate to screen this dramatic documentary about hunger and food insecurity in America. In Bergen County, 88,000 are hungry. There will be a panel discussion after the film and we invite you to come and take your place as part of the soluton. All are welcome, admission is free, and light refreshments will be served. For more info visit cfbnj.org/bcc or email driley@cfbnj.org.

Public Rally to shut down the compressor station
Sat 23 Nov 2013 | 12-1:30pm
621 Eagle Rock Avenue (Next to the Essex County Environmental Center), Roseland, NJ
There is widespread community concern in Roseland New Jersey that a new 30,000 horsepower gas compressor is being built right next to a major electric transmission terminal and both of these are within a major flood zone of the Passaic River. Star Ledger story about the Roseland Compressor station.

Sierra Club Trenton Environmental Lobby Day
Thu 19 Dec 2013 | Time TBA
This Lame Duck Session will have a huge impact on New Jersey’s environment and we need your help! Join us in Trenton for an Environmental Lobby Day focused on several important issues. The Lobby Day will include briefings on these important issues, meetings with our representatives, and a Rally in front of the Statehouse. Please Save the Date for now .. more details to come. Email Kate.Millsaps@sierraclub.org to RSVP

Sign to stop elephant slaughter
More than 30,000 elephants were slaughtered last year for their tusks, which are used to make ivory trinkets and carvings. They are sold in black markets around the world, including in the United States. But we’re working to stop this illegal trade.

Nearly six tons of elephant ivory will be crushed into gravel by the US Fish and Wildlife Service. It is the largest amount of seized ivory ever destroyed in the US. By destroying its store of seized ivory, the US government is sending a strong signal to the rest of the world that we need to end the demand that is fueling ivory trafficking and get serious now about saving elephants. Sign to show you care.

Your food is destroying my home.

A girl tells Strawberry the orangutan that she eats peanut butter. Its ingredients are peanuts, sugar, salt, palm oil. Strawberry looks sad, signs to girl, “Your food is destroying my home.” Palm oil is used in cookies and crackers (including Girl Scout Cookies), peanut butter and many other foods. Irreplaceable rainforests and orangutan habitat are being destroyed to produce it. Vote with your dollars – stop buying any products made with palm oil.

Girl Scouts Madi & Rhiannon have been fighting to rid Girl Scout Cookies of Palm Oil since 2007 when they were 11 years old.

Madi and Rhiannon’s inspiring story began catching on with articles appearing in online versions of AnnArbor.com, TIME and CNN. But it was the front-page coverage in the Wall Street Journal that launched the issue into primetime. This amazing piece was quickly followed by a whirlwind media tour that included live national television appearances on ABC, CBS and Fox News as well as a powerful blog post on Huffington Post by Josie Carothers, granddaughter of the inventor of Girl Scout cookies, titled “Why the Inventor of Girl Scout Cookies Would Be Ashamed Today.”

Girl Scouts against palm oil Madi & Rhiannon
Here are actions you can take to stop orangutan habitat and rainforest destruction:
1  Vote with your dollars – stop buying any products made with palm oil.
2  Post this message on Pepsi’s Facebook wall: Hey Pepsi, I’m standing with orangutans, and I can’t stand by brands that use Conflict Palm Oil. Demand responsible palm oil from your suppliers and eliminate Conflict Palm Oil from your products. The power is #InYourPalm.
3  Tweet at Pepsi: Hey @PepsiCo, I can’t stand by brands that use Conflict #PalmOil. The power is #InYourPalm.

Lawns and unsustainable urban buildout are destroying water, bees and us

Two important community issues involving water are the environmental dangers of lawns and the importance of storm drain stewardship.

Storm Drain Stewardship

Jersey City drains to your river
Jersey City storm drain marker drains to your river
Because storm drains in most communities carry stormwater out to natural bodies of water, it’s important to keep as much pollution as possible from entering them. Storm drain marker programs have been established in New Jersey and across the country to help make local residents aware of the environmental value of protecting storm drains and the waterways they are linked with.

What flows into storm drains doesn’t come only from roadway surfaces, though. Water runoff from buildings, walk and driveways and lawns washes into storm drains and watershed areas too and from them – right out into our rivers, streams lakes, estuaries and eventually, our oceans. The Milwaukee Riverkeeper defines watershed as, “…simply the area of land that catches rain and snow and drains or seeps into a marsh, stream, river, lake or groundwater.”

Lawn pesticides and fertilizers: A great health hazard

pesticide free zone ladybug signThe enormous quantity of pesticides and over-application of fertilizers on lawns makes them one of the great waterway – and therefor personal – health issues of our time. The Bayshore Regional Watershed Council has a 2007 newspaper article posted on its site cautioning about the health hazards of perfect lawns.

The shimmering green of the finely groomed Long Island lawn may trigger an owner’s pride and neighborhood envy, but it also could pose a serious health risk … Karen Joy Miller, founder of the Huntington Breast Cancer Action Coalition, said pesticides are particularly dangerous for small children who are low to the ground, often barefoot and likely to put things in their mouths. Miller, a breast cancer survivor, said she suspects her sickness was caused in part by exposure to pesticides.

Natural lawn walk
Natural lawn walk
Beyond Pesticides, an environmental education group, tells us about the hazards of pesticides in landscapes and lawns.

Of 30 commonly used lawn pesticides 19 have studies pointing toward carcinogens, 13 are linked with birth defects, 21 with reproductive effects, 15 with neurotoxicity, 26 with liver or kidney damage, 27 are sensitizers and/or irritants, and 11 have the potential to disrupt the endocrine (hormonal) system … A 2004 national survey reveals that 5 million homeowners use only organic lawn practices and products and 35 million people use both toxic and non-toxic materials.

Beyond Pesticides offers a toolkit for organizing your community against pesticides and tips for beginning to eliminate pesticides locally and offers this advice:

A growing body of evidence in scientific literature shows that pesticide exposure can adversely affect a child’s neurological, respiratory, immune, and endocrine system, even at low levels. Young children are particularly susceptible because of their rapid growth and decreased ability to detoxify toxins. Fortunately, there are proven safe, effective, and affordable ways to maintain attractive lawns and playable fields without the use of toxic pesticides.

The EPA also offers pesticide reduction tips. Their tips include recommendations to compost and use native plants.
bee pollinating flower

Food supply is being threatened by bee death due to pesticides

Pesticides are dangerous for a number of environmental and health reasons which include the death of bees which society needs to pollinate and grow fruits and vegetables. For the first time this year in California, there were not enough bees on site to pollinate the entire crop of almonds. Weakened immune systems and outright death of bees is being attributed to overuse of pesticides and the reduction of open growth areas in favor of manicured lawns and unsustainably planned cities.

Fertilizers: another big health hazard and their partial ban in New Jersey

Rutgers fertilizer restriction FAQWaterway health depends on the conservation of a delicately balanced ecosystem that must support aquatic plants, fish, seafood and insects as well as the watershed and beach areas surrounding them and the birds and wildlife they support. Over-fertilization of lawns with nitrogen and phosphorous has led to the destruction of waterway health around the country and in New Jersey, some of the nation’s toughest lawn fertilizer laws have been enacted. Rutgers University summarizes the laws in this FAQ. An nj.com article summarizes the reasons behind the laws.

Nitrogen and phosphorus, while important for plant growth, are harmful to the environment if they wind up in the water. Nitrogen is a greater threat to coastal water, while phosphorous is more harmful in fresh water. Nitrogen causes algae blooms that deprive water of oxygen and kill marine life, and in New Jersey, environmentalists and scientists said that nitrogen was the primary reason for the slow death of salt water bodies, especially the Barnegat Bay.

Fertilizers in New Jersey may no longer contain phosphorus, except in special circumstances when a soil test indicates need, or when establishing or re-establishing turf …

New Alliance heralds rapid destruction of rural Africa

rural agriculture in AfricaRural life and natural techniques of agriculture in Africa are in imminent danger of disappearing from this continent forever. Industrialized countries have run out of land and easily exploitable communities in their own countries and are now turning their attention to Africa, where they are teaming up with governments of African countries to seize land from villagers, create mono-culture plantation farms, export massive amounts of food. And to force the use of modified seeds, the free distribution and exchange of native seeds is being outlawed.

In plain English, African countries are required to change their trade and agriculture laws to include ending the free distribution of seeds, relax the tax system and national export controls, and open the doors wide for profit repatriation (allowing the money as well as the crops to be exported). In Mozambique, as elsewhere across the continent, local farmers have been evicted from their land under land sales agreements and, according to Guardian newspaper, the country “is now obliged to write new laws promoting what its agreement calls ‘partnerships’ of this kind”

…African nations are required to “change their seed laws, trade laws and land ownership in order to prioritize corporate profits over local food needs”.

…The New Alliance, according to the British prime minister, is “a great combination of promoting good governance and helping Africa to feed its people”. He and the rest of the G8, Friends of the Earth believes, “[pretend] to be tackling hunger and land grabbing in Africa while backing a scheme that will ruin the lives of hundreds of thousands of small farmers”. This new deal is “a pro-corporate assault on African nations”, providing “investment and support” opportunities for greedy investors looking to further expand their corporate assets with the support of participating governments.

…True investment in Africa is investment in the people of Africa: the smallholder farmers, the women and children, and the communities across the continent. It involves working collectively, consulting, encouraging participation and, crucially, sharing – sharing knowledge, experience, technology, land, food, water and minerals equitably among the people of Africa and indeed the wider world.

To date, 9 of 54 African nations have entered into “New Alliance” agreements, including

Ethiopia, where wide ranging human rights violations, including forced displacement and rapes, have reportedly accompanied land sales…

http://www.redressonline.com/2013/06/the-g8s-commercial-colonization-of-africa/

Monsanto responsible for Indian farmer suicidesIn India, farmers who find themselves embroiled in mounting debt from the use of GMO seeds commit suicide at the rate of one every 30 minutes. How will African farmers react when they discover the ramifications of the seed agreements being forced on them?

The only seeds available in India now are GMOs (genetically modified organisms), which require farmers to pay an annual royalty each time they are replanted. The GMOs need additional fertilizers, and as the seasons move forward, more insecticides and pesticides. The soil in which these seeds are planted requires more water. All of which means more and more money for the farmer to lay out.

… Another story weaving in and out of the film is that of a neighboring girl in college who has recently lost her father to suicide, an end claiming lives all over India’s farmlands. She wants to tell his story, along with the stories of all the other suicide victims in the area. Her research and intuition have shown her that at the root of these suicides are GMO seeds.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/zester-daily/bitter-seeds-film_b_1902221.html


Also see “Lack of conventional seeds enlarges Bt cotton area” and Bitter Seeds (the movie)

Green Drinks 1st & 2nd Mons 7-9pm + 3rd Tues Lunch

Green Drinks 3 logoEspañol hablantes siempre muy bién venidos. Visite greendrinks3.org por mayor información.

THIS MONTH AT GD Hackensack: How do the Senatorial candidates hoping to win Lautenberg’s seat look on environmental issues?
THIS MONTH AT GD Newark: Superstorm Sandy had a serious impact on Newark’s sewerage pant. Currently, its air permit is up for comment. There were also a lot of votes on environmental bills in the New Jersey Legislature recently; please bring your knowledge, and let’s compare notes from our collective research.

Green Drinks Monthly Meeting Schedule
(Address info at greendrinks3.org)
Newark 1st Mondays (01 JULY) 7-9 PM
Hackensack 2nd Mondays  (08 JULY) 7-9 PM
Paterson-Clifton Area Lunch 3rd Tuesdays (16 JULY) 12-1:30 PM

Green Drinks Hackensack 2nd Mondays
08 July 2013 7-9pm
Villa de Colombia
12 Mercer Street, Hackensack NJ

ORGANIZERS
Kimi Wei, Ivan Gomez Wei, Luis Ariel Lopez Wei and Sally Gellert

Visit greendrinks3.org for more info