Our World and Everything in It

Chimpanzees are being threatened in more ways than one. We like to think of Africa and point over there when it comes to the species closest to man, the little chimps that make us laugh and that everyone remarks are “so like us.” And they are. We’ve spent millions of dollars on the study of apes, on how much they are similar yet not exactly like us as we’ve come to find they have emotions, families, mates, tribes, and live life much like we do mourning death, being afraid, stressed, defensive, angry, happy, and depressed. Scientists have successfully taught large primates sign language, and they have conversed with humans too. There is only 1 percent difference in our DNA and their’s.

So to read the heart-wrenching stories of chimpanzees and other large primates used in research is depressing to say the least. What are we thinking spending millions to find out if a species is similar to humans, and when we do, use them as objects for research? The old cliché that “we have to do that to save human lives” is outdated and has been a crock for quite some time. Breeding research animals is big business. The medical community has been divided on the use of animals in research for years.  Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, NEAVS or New England Anti-Vivisection Society, In Defense of Animals, the Humane Society, Doris Day Animal League, and plenty of other organizations have been trying to get the message out in the mainstream that the use of animals for experimentation is no longer necessary. There are other and better alternatives.

How many times have we heard that a certain drug or procedure tested fine in animals, but not in humans? And we’re only lately seeing the results of what is known as a virus “jumping species.” When viruses jump species, from animal to human, dog to cat, etc., the virus usually becomes virulent or deadly to the new species host, i.e., the bird flu. So when the new human host of an animal virus passes that virus onto another human—look out. It could become a deadly epidemic. In this scenario, using animals for research should not be the norm, not to mention being outright inhumane? How inhumane are we? Read what Theodora Capaldo, president of NEAVS, and also a licensed psychologist with over 35 years of experience helping humans highlights in the NEAVS Newsletter about the lives of 3 different research chimps and their rescue into a sanctuary:

• Rachel [a chimp], raised in a home like a human child, was abandoned to a laboratory and spent the next eleven years in research. Even though she is now in sanctuary, her emotional breakdown left her prone to terrified screaming and attacking her own hand as if it were a stranger’s.
• Jeannie spent most of her life in a lab, being used in research that included cervical biopsies and HIV studies. She suffered what can only be described as a complete emotional collapse. She self-mutilated and screamed to the point that the lab considered euthanizing her. She was rescued and spent nine years in sanctuary before she died.
• Bill Jo endured repeated “knockdowns” during his 14 years in research, surrounded by groups of men while he was shot with darts of anesthesia. For years afterwards he couldn’t bear to have more than a few familiar people near his sanctuary enclosure. He died after nine years in sanctuary.

Theodora says that rescued research chimps display human symptoms of “trauma and abuse like hypervigilance, dissociation, depression, self-abuse, and relentless anxiety.”

This is just one misuse of primates that I’ve read about lately.  I also watched what happens to the chimpanzees and great apes imported for the express purpose of using them in shows, movies, even the circus. The TV special about entertainment primates aired on PBS not long ago. We think “Oh Hollywood is filled with rich people that are animal right’s activists,” and self assure ourselves the animals in show business are treated better than some human kids but that’s not the case. When the apes get older and unruly, they are simply shipped off in the most expedient manner to an immediate place, and by no means are they guaranteed a nice sanctuary somewhere.  Think about it. Young chimps are imported from the wild, and trained for a particular purpose in the entertainment industry. This means they get constant attention and stimulation from humans. They have names, are fed and taken care of, get medical attention, and bond with people. As they age, hormones kick in and many times the apes become erratic teenagers. This is when humans simply throw them away. They are discarded to all types of locations.

I watched a small, innocent chimp end up at a research facility that was no longer in use. There were a lot of cages and space available in buildings what looked to be out in the middle of nowhere. The little chimp was locked in a cage in a small room with little to no light, no other animal around, in dead silence, only to be given food once a day. There were no toys, no stimulus of any kind in that cage. The chimp was given a solitary confinement sentence for simply growing up.  He wasn’t cute or funny anymore, no use to humans. 

Hopefully since the series aired, he’s been given freedom at a sanctuary. Other entertainment apes won’t be as lucky. They’ll end up in research facilities going through what Rachel, Jeannie, and Billy Joe endured.  I’m surprised I haven’t found that some of these castaways ended up in a canned hunt in the U.S. somewhere–yet.

The practice of importing these apes for entertainment remains the same. It’s a cycle that needs to be broken. As fast as they are discarded, new apes are imported. Their lives are expended in order to achieve a little more laughter, a little more entertainment for humans. And it isn’t only chimps and apes that suffer this abuse.

Research and entertainment aren’t the only industries that are culprits in the abuse of the species that are the closest to human beings. The savagery of the illegal bushmeat trade is unbelievable. So unbelievable that I have to include the picture I received in a newsletter from the Jane Goodall Institute here:

The left half are what appear to be gorilla parts, the hands being a prized possession for a collector. Mind you, a gorilla named Suzie learned sign language and spoke with her human companion. That’s twisted irony.

The right half looks like cooked and/or dried chimpanzees.

People are starving. There is a world famine going on. These pictures are the result of both greed and starvation. Greed is an unordinary desire for wealth, whether for money or treasure. Starvation on the other hand, is the outcome of the unfulfilled basic human need for food. They are opposite on the spectrum of what is necessary, and what is outright wasteful and inhumane. We can do without both.

This is just a small snapshot to what is happening with many of our animal populations, animals we love, and have been aware of since we were children. Chimpanzees and apes are some of the biggest draws at the zoo, not by coincidence, but because they are so much like us. But we’re abusing them worldwide as we are each other, not only by fueling global warming, but also by our neglect for reverence for life, all life. It’s our world, our domain as humans and we’ve abused it to the point people are starving and eating anything. What’s next? I already did a blog on cannibalism as a next step. Tell me that in the picture above and on the right that it doesn’t look like a charred person lying there with an arm up near the head.

I’ve said all that to say this. There is a U.S. House Bill, H.R. 5852, the Great Ape Protection Act, that’s being considered in committee right now. This bill would end testing on chimpanzees, all breeding for invasive research on them, and retire chimpanzees currently in research to sanctuaries. It’s a brand new bill that I’m going to urge my rep to co-sponsor. Contact your rep to get this bill out of committee with few changes and onto the floor, or to co-sponsor it. 

We can do something immediate about research on apes. Great Britain, New Zealand, Austria, Sweden, and the Netherlands have already banned chimpanzee research.

Unfortunately, the greed and starvation causing the illegal death of chimpanzees and other apes have no immediate solution.  We need to practice the grandness of our humanity by being humane, not by the arrogance and unempathetic tendencies of which we are also capable to the detriment of our world and everything in it.

I saw a segment on the news this morning about a dozen wild dolphins that made a wrong turn and ended up in a river in Seabrite, NJ. There are 3 calves with the pack that are mesmerizing residents. Evidently they were following food and didn’t pay attention. The dolphins know where they need to exit to get back to the open sea but are deterred by the noise and vibration of a bridge they must go under. So they keep turning back. The worry is that the Fourth of July approaches and hundreds of boats are set to go up the river to a bay in celebration of the holiday. As one boater said, “They [the dolphins] don’t stand a chance.”

What’s wrong with this picture? I see a ridiculously bad attitude toward nature here. Boaters are willing to mow down a group of stranded dolphins with babies in order to celebrate. American’s are trying to get Canada to quit seal hunting, Japan to quit dolphin and whale hunting, and what to we do but offer another of our hypocritical bad examples.

If I was a Seabrite resident with a boat, I’d simply stay home. Have we finally become an overall mindless, unempathetic, feel good society, because if we have, it’s a good indicator of our overall decline that has nothing to do with politics or economy. It seems we suffer a selfishly bad attitude toward life besides our own . What would you do in this circumstance, stay home or mow down the dolphins?

In the meantime marine specialists are going to try and add predatory type negative vibrations to the water to drive the dolphins out to sea where they can be away from real harm, humans.

Yesterday both the House and Senate committees passed a comprehensive package of bills to prevent irresponsible water withdrawals from the Great Lakes. The bills were expected to move to both House and Senate floors for final passage.

This is only a small step toward comprehensive protection. Our Republican Senate backed lobbyists from industry and agriculture so groundwater failed to get public trust status. Gaining public trust for our groundwater has its detractors but in arguments for passage of these bills testimony from Cooley Law Professor Chris A. Shafer makes sense:

The basic tenet of the public trust doctrine is that certain natural resources, especially the waters and beds of the sea coast and navigable lakes and rivers, are of such importance to the public that they are incapable of purely private ownership and control. Legislatively extending the public trust to groundwater reinforces its importance and creates a mandatory duty for the MDEQ to consider this protection during regulatory procedures. For these reasons, all waters of the state must be protected to prevent excessive and unreasonable exploitation. Expanding public trust protections to include our groundwater must be clear and explicit in statute. Regarding concerns about private property rights, these bill packages specifically reserve riparian rights and property rights for lawful use of water. The ‘takings’ would actually occur when corporations divert water from local watersheds and affect the rights of riparian users. http://www.greatlakesgreatmichigan.org/Public_Trust.pdf

And considering groundwater makes up 79% of all of Lake Michigan’s water, I would have to agree. But groundwater as a public trust will have to come in another step. Michigan is taking too long and too many baby steps toward a clean future because we have too many politicians listening to industry lobbyists.

But on the bright side and according to a news release by Michigan’s Sierra Club the protections won in this package of bills include:

• Approval of the Great Lakes Compact, guarding against large-scale water diversions (Michigan will become the 7^th of the 8 states needed to approve it).
• Regulations ensuring that water users do not excessively harm aquatic resources by taking too much water.
• The adoption of conservation principles to be utilized by large water users.
• More public input into decisions about large-scale water uses that might impact local ecosystems.
• Overall, 75% of Michigan’s surface waters will be protected from harmful withdrawals. Use of the remaining waters will be subject to rules ensuring availability to all parties for reasonable use.

It’s the 25% that goes unprotected I’m concerned about. One quarter of our entire surface water falls under ambiguous rules and that will be enforced by whom? Right. And isn’t more public input into decisions about large-scale water uses that might impact local ecosystems just about equal to a public trust for groundwater anyway?  Geez.

Ford Motor Company is really reinventing itself. Ford is not just concentrating on delivering cars with greater mpg and lower emissions, but transportation in general for growing population centers.

Ford, in partnership with U of M, has been studying congested cities worldwide, tracking growing populations, and the migrations of these populations in order to offer solutions for metropolitan traffic. Their answer is a network of hubs within big metro cities that suffer the most traffic congestion. According to an article on world-wire:

By 2015, about two-thirds of the world will be living in urban areas, which will exacerbate traffic congestion and present major challenges to basic transportation and personal mobility.

“Ford Urban Mobility Networks” is a pilot program that is exploring how to coordinate a variety of transportation options and provide vital real-time information to individuals living in densely populated urban centers.

The program is the result of Ford’s ongoing collaborations with University of Michigan’s Sustainable Mobility and Accessibility Research and Transformation (SMART) initiative.

Ford’s Urban Mobility Network considers all types of transportation, buses, trains, taxis, car-share fleets, mopeds and bicycles. All or some of these modes of transportation transfer at the hubs. The hub idea looks to me like a way to converge and disperse smaller packs of people all over simultaneously, rather than allowing everyone to herd along in one big jam pile of traffic until individuals peel themselves out of the pack as they near his/her destination.

Well good luck with this one if our populations grow out of control that badly. The article said some 35 cities worldwide would have populations of over 10 million. In honor of George Carlin’s death, and his wonderful truths, I think he would say something like “wouldn’t a better solution be a little abstinence so we don’t have population explosions? I mean if we have to really gear up for all these people that are going to be born, wouldn’t it be a lot easier to forgo that big growth and just maintain for awhile. Afterall, population is something we can control.

And I would add,  if we can’t control our garbage, can’t sustain ourselves comfortably, can’t help ourselves let alone someone else, why are we still procreating like it’s 2,000 years ago?

Before I digress farther, the article is a good read to get a idea of what our transportation future might be: http://world-wire.com/news/0806110002.html.

Boy, am I slow. I just got around to putting a bunch of e-mail and newsletters together to figure out why wildlife, habitat, and our national parks have been under attack by the Bush administration. Well, at least the how. A group of wealthy hunters that comprise Safari Club International (SCI) are using their funds to permeate congress once again to allow hunting polar bears, and everything else on their exotic big game list of course, whether or not the animals are endangered, and to bring the carcasses back into the U.S. as trophies.

People all over the world are outraged about our treatment of polar bears already by not putting them on the endangered species list much sooner and continued threats to the bear’s environment by oil drills. And these guys want to hunt the bears. Is that not adding insult to injury that we civilized humans just dismiss a beautiful species and hundreds of other equally beautiful species already threatened by global warming as trophies? How utterly superficial. We fight the use of ivory, but condone canned hunts. Do we know what we’re doing half the time?

I read a little about SCI on Wikipedia, and Source Watch and how they direct their lobby money predominantly toward Republicans as their allies in congress. SCI also advertises that they donates money for the preservation of animal species and that they do not advocate canned hunts–except they do it. And they pretty much are interested in the preservation of species so they can hunt the animals they preserve. Got a crippled exotic, put it in a canned hunt. Got too many exotic offspring put them in a canned hunt. Nice, real sporting.

I just read my mail from the Humane Society Legislative Fund about canned hunts. I had no idea that 25 states still advocate them and the trend is growing via lobby money from SCI and others. America is hitting rock bottom on ethics/morals when it comes to money vs. our national parks, animals, and habitat lately. I couldn’t figure out how the wolf slaughter, the buffalo slaughter, the push to put guns in our National Parks and a lot of other abuse was happening with help from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service despite thousands of protests. It seems Dirk Kempthorne, as Secy. of the Interior isn’t the only hunting/gun advocate working too closely with wildlife and habitat.  Director of our U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Matt Hogan, is the former chief lobbyist for Safari Club International, and another Bush appointee. Figures. Talk about conflict of interest. I thought the EPA was bad!

Considering the plight of all of animals and humans due to global warming, there really should be a moratorium on big game hunting for trophy’s sake. The people in Gana Africa are eating exotics to just stay alive for Pete’s sake. Complain to you senators and reps about canned hunts and lobbyists like SCI.

I got an e-mail from Environmental Defense about brewing gasoline from yeast. That goes for diesel and jet fuel too.  Here’s the video about it on You Tube. I guess any type of fuel can be produced with a little genetic engineering. The nice part is the CO2 produced from this gasoline is the same CO2 used to make it, so there are no additional CO2 emissions.

http://edf.org/page.cfm?tagID=22627

I love this. Canadian citizens as part of an environmental group called Friends of Canada are suing their country for breech of the Kyoto Treaty. Out of 180 countries that signed the Kyoto Protocol, Canada is the first to be brought to court for neglecting its legal commitment to fight global warming.

Canada’s government is conservative right now and evidently playing to big business polluters. Sounds like the U.S. As the chief exec of Friends of Earth stated: ‘While other industrialized countries actively work to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and fight climate change, our government has offered pollution holidays for emitters for decades to come.’

So Canadians are taking their country to court over the environment. I wonder if they’re going to get specific and if it will affect Canada’s drilling for oil in the Great Lakes? The Friends of Canada exec said: ‘This government has broken the law [] and, as Canadian citizens, we have both a moral and legal imperative to insist on enforcement of our own laws on climate action.’

Geez, I wish Bush would have signed the Kyoto Treaty. He slid away from it with a promise to enforce our own environmental laws. We see what happened there.

This is going to be pretty interesting. It’s setting a precedent for one, and it could force the Canadian government to come up with detailed plans on how they plan to lower their emissions six percent below 1990 levels. This is legally binding but Canada says it cannot meet that goal. It seems to me the more a government monkeys around and stalls on actively and earnestly trying to produce alternative sources for energy the more impossible it is to meet specific goals that will curb catastrophic events down the line.

Mother Nature certainly isn’t going to wait around for us to figure out how to conserve. Look at the floods in corn country. It kinda puts a damper on massive ethanol production. We’re still not getting who is in charge here. The environment trumps just about everything. We absolutely need the cooperation of weather for so many things. Maybe gas prices are high to truck food to us, but without the cooperation of the climate, there simply won’t be any food to truck. There isn’t much we can do about Mother Nature. We can’t shoot missiles at her. We can’t blow her up. We can’t place embargos on her. There isn’t much we can do to Mother Nature except abuse or nurture her. If we decide to nurture, we make our own paradise where we live in harmony with our world and everything in it. Or we can continue the abuse until MN kills us out of self defense.

Read more: http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/jun2008/2008-06-18-02.asp

The floodwaters in the middle of our country may be dangerous. People are lining up for tetanus shots. If you figure this is America’s farm country, then figure there is a lot of animal dung, pesticides, and fertilizer floating around. Oh and some 55 gallon drums labeled, “corrosive,” are in the swill, like the raunchy flood waters needed any help. 

People returning to their flooded out homes are frightened because the smell is a mix of all the above along with the gas slick that appears on top of stagnant water. One man said he could hardly stand it. And another woman who had a gas mask on said she could still smell it. I’d be worried about someone lighting a match!

Water damage is one thing but to not really know what just traveled through everything in your house is a health hazard. That and the millions of mosquitoes that are spawning from all the standing water. I’m looking around to see if anyone is reporting what the water samples turned up.

Meanwhile, read more about this horrible disaster. Pray that the 27 questionable levees along the swelling Mississippi stay in place, and be thankful that we haven’t seen this kind of action here: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25198134

The Bush administration urged Congress today to lift the 27 year ban on offshore oil drilling. No one is surprised. It probably won’t pass, especially during an election year. I can’t believe McCain endorsed the idea knowing full well the price of gas will not go down for years from any drilling that takes place now. Crist a McCain pick for VP, also changed his tune toward oil. Somebody got greased or rather oiled. One article stated we wouldn’t be touching any of that offshore oil for at least 3 years. So using gas prices as an excuse is a pretty lame. That and the fact that oil companies are sitting on 68 million acres of FEDERAL lands that they’ve already leased and haven’t drilled.

Besides we don’t have enough refineries, and building new is not looking to a future free of fossil fuel. Considering we’ve got whole TV channels dedicated to showing people all the new green innovation out there, how long will it be before we catch on that we’re being lied to about a lot of it? We can get off the fossil-fuel-a-coaster but we need new management.  Think of the environment this election year and put an end to the oilarchy before Mother Nature puts an end to us.

I’m sure people that have lost everything to fires, tornadoes, and floods believe the weather is getting worse and we need to do something about it. President Bush admitted in 2002 that our use of oil and coal do have an impact on the environment. But he still pushes to lift a ban on offshore drilling during a year when the middle of our country is under water, and so many tornadoes have already hit the midsection, while fires rage in N. California.  The common sense here is to have some reverence for Mother Nature before we all end up to our necks in either water, wind, or fire, and without food and fresh water, but we just keep stalling.

http://edition.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/06/18/bush.offshore/?iref=mpstoryview

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=alQzmBT3sqbs&refer=home

I was watching Planet Green about solar energy, specifically residential solar panels, and found out answers to a lot of questions. An average 2000 sq. ft. home would need to use 24–3 X 5 ft. solar panels to supply 90 to 95 percent of all electricity to the home. The panels sit on a rail and install within hours. The current produced from the solar panels goes to an inverter box hooked to the home’s main electrical box. The inverter converts the direct current into the U.S. alternating current and that’s about it.

Now for the cost. Depending on the size of the house it would cost 15 to 25 thousand dollars for the solar panels. With federal rebates the cost is lowered to 12 to 20 thousand dollars. This is very affordable for many people, and for those that can’t afford to eat, let alone put panels on their roof, I don’t see why the U.S. doesn’t just supply the darn things.

I figure if there are 300 million people in the U.S., then there are more than likely 100 million homes. The average cost of 12 to 20 thousand dollars for solar panels is 16 thousand dollars. If the government can get trillions in debt over a made up war, and keep pork barrel spending in the millions, not to mention earmarks on bills that amount to millions, then why doesn’t Uncle Sam just bite the bullet and supply 100 million homes with solar panels? The total cost would be 1.6 billion dollars but over a 4 year time period, it would come to a paltry 400 million per year.

I say paltry because of all the stupid waste I’ve read about. If you read, you know. It’s as if there are two alternate worlds. One world is where our officials come from regarding the environment, which is totally disconnected from anything I’m watching on Planet Green lately. I’ve actually written to the offices of senators, the governor, and reps asking whether they have someone on the payroll to just watch all the latest innovations that are available because our leaders seem completely out of touch, and keep trying to feed us a bunch of bunk that we must drill for more gas, drill for more oil, fossil fuel, fossil fuel, fossil fuel. They’ve had their blinders on so long they fail to realize it’s the 21^st century, and we’re able to watch and see for ourselves that there are an awful lot of alternatives out there besides the same ole, same ole. I think it’s criminal the way we are blatantly lied to.

Just yesterday I watched as Gerald Brown, Great Britain’s new prime minister, and President Bush agreed that 1000 new nuclear plants will be built world wide in order to meet energy demands. This is the big alternative we’re being fed now. But why? Furnishing homes with solar panels is so much cheaper, and immediate. There is no 5 years of building a nuke plant, with the end result being no reduction in energy costs at all. Instead of paying big oil, we pay the nuclear industry, and still end up with radioactive waste that doesn’t dissipate for 1000 years.

Evidently helping consumers deal with global warming is one thing. Helping consumers deal realistically with global warming once and for all by getting homes off the grid will never happen because big utilities won’t be able to get a piece of the action. Heaven forbid we affect the monopolies of America in such a way they would no longer be viable, and therefore unable to gouge us at every turn. We should be feeling more and more like pawns everyday.