10/17 Tar Sands Action in NYC

Topics:

Biofuels, Blog

Wednesday, October 12th, 2011, 10:55 AM

A group of New York-based arrestees from the Tar Sands Action in Washington D.C. this summer are working to bring the energy and passion of the Tar Sands Action to our home here, in New York City.

On Monday, October 17th Anna joined them to visit the Obama for America office in Manhattan to demand that Obama stop extreme energy extraction, like the Keystone XL pipeline and fracking in the Delaware River Basin.

We hand delivered signed copies of this letter to the OFA office. Here we are in front of the Obama Headquarters in NYC:

If you have any questions or want more information about the action, email them at TarSandsActionNYC@gmail.com

Please help us stop these disastrous projects by signing the letter and joining the action.

If you don’t already know about the Keystone XL pipeline or fracking in the Delaware River Basin, here’s the rundown:

The Keystone XL pipeline, which would run from the Alberta tar sands in Canada to Texas, is the fuse to the largest carbon bomb in North America. According to NASA climate scientist James Hansen, if the oil in the Alberta tar sands is burned it’s “essentially game over” for the climate. As a coastal city, New York is directly threatened by the rising oceans and extreme weather caused by climate change.

Fracking, a novel method of natural gas extraction, also poses a dire threat to communities in New York City. Fracking permanently poisons the drinking water of nearby communities, releases cancer-causing emissions and creates radioactive waste. Fracking in the Delaware River Basin, which supplies water to New York City, Eastern Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware, could begin as early as this fall. The magnitude of this threat cannot be exaggerated: 15.6 million people get their water from the Delaware River.

President Obama does not need Congressional approval to block these projects. The State Department is responsible for approving or denying the Keystone XL pipeline permit and Obama can instruct the Army Corps of Engineers to vote against fracking in the Delaware River Basin.

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The Attack on Organic Agriculture–or the more things change, the more they stay the same

Topics:

Biofuels, Biotechnology, Blog, Organic Food & Farming

Tuesday, January 27th, 2009, 3:07 PM

As the new year turned, and Obama’s transition team developed their plan for the agriculture team, George McGovern and Marshall Matz, both now on the board of the World Food Program, weighed in with an op-ed in the Chicago Tribune, parroting many of the claims about industrial ag and its pseudo-benefits we’ve been hearing (and debunking) for years.

read their op-ed here and my response below. While my letter to the editor didn’t make it into print, one by George Naylor from the National Family Farming Coalition did.

Dear Editors:
Thank you for your coverage of the Agriculture Secretary nominee (“Agriculture’s next big challenge” January 4, 2009), but the authors mislead your readers about the real costs of the “commercial agriculture” they claim the new Secretary should celebrate.

Industrial agriculture will lessen–not improve–our ability to feed ourselves and foster sustainable rural communities, especially in the face of a climate unstable future. Organic agriculture, on the other hand, is proving to foster more resilient crops and to sequester greater levels of carbon in the soil.

The authors also claim that industrial agriculture is “key in our becoming less dependent on foreign oil,” while in reality this system of farming does the opposite: Because industrial agriculture is addicted to manmade fertilizers, which require significant natural gas to produce, we are increasingly dependent on imports from countries with natural gas reserves. Organic agriculture, on the other hand, releases us from our foreign oil dependence in the food sector by eliminating our addiction to petroleum-based chemicals and manmade fertilizer.

Finally, the authors perpetuate the myth that organic agriculture cannot feed the world, when new research, including a multi-year study from the University of Michigan, has shown that shifting toward organic agriculture can actually increase yields overall, while creating auxiliary benefits like cleaner water and safer fields for our farm workers and farmers.

Sincerely,
Anna Lappé
Oakland, California

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Who’s the (Ag) Man?

Topics:

Biofuels, Food Policy & Politics

Wednesday, January 14th, 2009, 5:50 PM

Sitting here listening to the confirmation hearings for Vilsack, Obama’s pick for Secretary of Agriculture. I’m only 68:00mins (by the video’s account) into the hearings (which are a total of 161 minutes long), but so far I’ve heard a lot of talk about the wonders of biofuels and corn-based ethanol to meet our renewable energy needs and boost the economy of rural America. The questions (so far at least) on biofuels have been softballs.

Check out the reports from Food First about biofuels folly. Renewable? Ha. Among the other realities of biofuels are the environmental costs of producing the water-thirsty and fertilizer-addicted corn crops, with huge amounts of natural gas required to produce the manmade fertilizer used on our fields.

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Oreo Cookies and Global Warning: What’s the Connection?

Topics:

Biofuels, Blog, Hunger & Food Crisis

Wednesday, October 29th, 2008, 11:27 AM

Oreo cookies, Cheez-It crackers, and other foods, soaps, and cosmetics, all contain palm oil–the demand for which has more than doubled in the past year, making palm oil the most widely-traded vegetable oil in the world.

The climate change connection? The push for palm is encroaching on some of the world’s most important rainforests. Most of the palm oil in the U.S. is importted from Indonesia and Malaysia, where burning of forests to make way for plantations is commonplace. This deforestation, and the release of stored carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, is one of the main reasons Indonesia is among the worst contributors to the manmade global warming effect.

The Rainforest Action Network, Greenpeace International, Friends of the Earth and the Center for Science in the Public Interest are all campaigning to increase public awareness of the environmental impact of current palm oil production.

Leila Salazar-Lopez, who leads Rainforest Action network’s agribusiness campaign says, “There’s currently no palm oil in the world that can be proven to be sustainable.”

These groups are building a coalition of concerned citizens and food companies to advocate for sustainable palm oil. Get involved!

Learn more about palm oil and how you are affected here.

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The BBC, Biofuels, and Advisory Council Member Corrina Steward

Topics:

Biofuels

Monday, February 25th, 2008, 12:10 PM

Check out Corrina’s news alert here.

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