Our World and Everything in It

A lot of us wonder how the candidates are going to come up with all the money to fund their promises. I know the war takes billions so ending that will bring money our way again. And cutting out loopholes in tax laws will garner millions too but I caught a small segment on CNN Money about walking and biking.

The CNN reporter said road trips have been reduced by 10% nationwide, and that most of those trips are less than 3 miles from home. People are opting to walk and bicycle instead. By raising that percentage just 3% more across America, we would collectively save $10 billion dollars per year. WOW.

The reporter went on to say that more biking paths need to be created and that the results of walking and biking to save economically pays off big in the health department also. City planners are slow to add more biking paths but financially speaking hundreds of miles of biking paths could be constructed for the same amount (around $50 million) that a one-mile stretch of 4-lane highway would cost to replace.

I live out here in Berlin Twp. It’s the boonies but still I walk my road for exercise everyday, as do my neighbors. The bonus: I have a party store/market at the end of my road. I have no excuse when I run out of something and have no transportation. I can exercise and pick up what I need about a half of a mile away.

I’m not saying it doesn’t take practice to walk half of a mile for a can of something, when I could jump in the car zip down there and back but… This is the type of sacrifice we all might need to make for the future. It’s not without immediate merit like drilling for oil. Walking and biking melt off the pounds–quick.

I’ve been wondering how long it would take for religious communities to recognize the cruelty of animal farming; how extremely opposite it is from the idea of kosher where animals are tended with kindness and the ” method of slaughter is a quick, deep stroke across the throat with a perfectly sharp blade with no nicks or unevenness. This method is painless, causes unconsciousness within two seconds, and is widely recognized as the most humane method of slaughter possible.” A condition under which the meat is further processed is supposed to be extremely sanitary.

This is hardly the definition of a CAFO, where animals are so depressed and frustrated, they chew on the metal bars of their confinement. I’ve written so many blogs about CAFO’s and animal farms. That’s why I was so happy to read an article in the Summer publication of All Animals, by the Humane Society of the U.S., about America’s churches stepping forward to start a grassroots endeavor to restore humane farming.

Methodists support totally natural systems of farming. Jewish rabbis recommend that humans strive to prevent animal suffering. While many other denominations condemn factory farms altogether.

HSUS’s “All Creatures Great and Small” campaign plans to call on the religious, I like to say spiritual, individuals to only purchase cage-free eggs. The article says that “participants can make an on line pledge to do so and pass it along to friends as a form of networking. It also said, “They can then download materials to use in youth groups, Sunday schools, sermons, and bulletins.” There is also a documentary from “people whose religion inspired them to make dietary changes.” This particular campaign will be this October during the monthlong feast of St. Francis of Assisi, saint to all animals.

This one small pledge is designed to spread grassroots style and hopefully bring awareness to the spiritually minded about the guidelines in the bible as to what and how we eat. People can argue that the guidelines are in the Old Testament that we’re living the New Testament now. Yet we cannot simply disregard the entire part of the bible that tells us where we came from can we? Without it, we would have no heritage.

At very least, in America, where spiritualism seems to abound these days, it might make us pay better attention to not only what we eat but how it was raised. It could make a big difference in our health and diminish the amount of pollution we unleash into the environment from factory farms. Not bad by-products for a little extra awareness about what we eat.   

The sun is getting brighter and hotter. We’ll feel it again on Friday when the temperature is supposed to hit 89. To stand with bare skin in the sun really burns hot regardless of a breeze. So we’re told to wear sunscreen, lots of sunscreen, and try to stay out of it.   

I do use it, but wondered why my face felt like I have gravel under my skin whenever I applied sunscreen, especially the really good stuff. And I get darker and darker anyway. I’ve got a pretty good tan considering I wear 45 SPF, a big hat, and long sleeve men’s shirts for yard work. I’ve been telling my doctor for years that I do apply sunscreen, lots of it, but I tan anyway. Now I read this article that the FDA was warned to provide more information about sunscreen.

 According to the article on World Wire:

Sunscreens pose scientifically well-documented risks. While well known for over a decade, they remain unregulated by the FDA, and ignored by the industry.

Sunscreens are based on six ingredients, some of which actively penetrate the skin, accumulate in the body, and have been identified in urine and breast milk. More ominously, these ingredients have toxic hormonal effects, known technically as “endocrine disruptive.” Evidence for these effects has been well documented over the last decade. This includes stimulation of human breast cancer cells in test tube experiments, and increased uterine growth in immature female rats following skin painting or feeding.

Of major concern, and still ignored by the FDA, is the increasing addition to sunscreens of unlabeled atom or molecule size zinc oxide or titanium dioxide particles. Technically known as nanoparticles, they increase the durability and effectiveness of these products. However, as reported in over two dozen scientific publications since 2003, including those by an Environmental Protection Agency research team and the International Center for Technology Assessment, nanoparticles can penetrate the skin, invade blood vessels, and produce devastating distant toxic effects.

I think I’ll stick to just the big and big shirt until this mess gets straightened out.

Read more: http://world-wire.com/news/0808070001.html

WXYZ posted new safety guidelines for eating fish caught in Michigan. I knew that no one is supposed to eat catfish or carp from in or around the Detroit River, but I didn’t know that all other fish was to be limited to one meal per MONTH? That’s been a rule for 20 years.

The new rules state that kids under 15 or child bearing women should never eat any small mouth bass or walleye over 18 inches. And do not eat carp, catfish, or white bass from the Saginaw Bay and River and Tittabawassee River.

I went to the Fish Advisory website at michigan.gov and read about how lake fish should be cooked:

Cut off all the fat.

Remove or poke holes in the fish’s skin before cooking. This will help the fat and chemicals to drain off the fish.

Bake, broil, or grill the fish on a rack. Throw away the drippings.

Do not eat the guts, head, skin, bones, or dark fatty areas.

Do not re-use the oil that was used to deep or pan fry the fish.

Sorry, but these directions remind me of a label on a bottle of pesticide where it says to use gloves, do not get on skin, in eyes, or mouth, wash everything thoroughly, do not use sprayer for anything else, etc.

The most important thing I did read was: Mercury stays in the filet of the fish and cannot be cut or cooked away. Use the MDCH guides to choose fish that are low in mercury.

After reading this all I could think of is my husband’s friend, an avid fisherman, who tossed mercury off as something that can just be cut away. I didn’t think so, but you can’t talk to a fisherman. This one happens to be single, so at least he’s not taking it home to the kids.

http://www.wxyz.com/alnews/local/story.aspx?content_id=7d15f21b-a073-4604-afc5-4d09431d1952

http://www.michigan.gov/documents/FishAdvisory03_67354_7.pdf

The Coast Guard has shut down 98 miles of the Mississippi due to an oil spill by a Liberian barge with an apprentice pilot at the helm of the tug pulling it. Almost 420,000 gallons of industrial oil was dumped. The oil is “widely used as marine fuel, is heavier than diesel but lighter than crude, and it is likely to stick to rocks, trees and wildlife,” according to a CNN article.

We’re supposed to feel reassured that “the spill is much smaller than the ones that followed Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Let’s hope so. The Coast Guard estimated that more than 7 million gallons of oil were dumped into the Mississippi and nearby waterways then.”  Considering the biggest oil spill of all, the The Exxon Valdez spill with more than 11 million gallons of crude oil, Katrina’s oil spill was worse than we know. 

The CNN article went on to say that,  “Wilma Subra, a chemist who advises the Louisiana Environmental Action Network, said the oil could endanger wildlife and eventually harm those residents who fish for a living.” No kidding.

If you want to view the number of oil spills by year and area, a great interactive tool can be found at: http://www.incidentnews.gov/map. You simply zone in on the parts of the world you want to check, and select the year. The map will pinpoint all of the oil spills.

We think everything is under control with oil spills that we have all this new technology to clean them up, but the fact is oil spills churn up for years to come and don’t affect certain marine life until years later either. Read about it at: http://www.endangeredspecieshandbook.org/aquatic_oil.php.

Continued dependence on any oil is not good for our future. Drilling now will not help us for at least 4 years. So what exactly is the intent to drill? In 4 years time surely we will have other means of sustaining our energy if we can be encouraged, not stymied, to innovate in an environmental direction. If and when we replace some of our existing source of fuel over the next fours years with wind and solar power and find that we can go without oil altogether, what will we do with all the oil we drilled for in 2008, sell it at high dollar to an under developed country that is not concerned with environmental issues as much as staying alive?

Or, is there some sort of push to allow those with oil leases in the Arctic to drill now without rhyme or reason to reap the current top dollar for that oil, and then sell off before alternatives actually become a reality? All oil companies have vested interest in alternatives now, even Exxon Mobil. Wouldn’t that be something new to see, an oil stock sell off?

When we think of environmental problems we think of giant melting glaciers, huge hurricanes and tsunamis, but it’s the little things that can get us too like bacteria. There is a new germ that’s arrived in the U.S. from Iraq and although it’s deadly, it’s not a terrorist threat. It arrived here innocently enough with our wounded soldiers. It seems to be following the evacuation route of the wounded all the way back to the U.S.

If you haven’t seen the Nova presentation about this new bacteria called Baumannii or IraqiBacter, you should. Everyone should be aware of this potential danger.

Baumannii is highly drug resistant. It hangs around in places like doorknobs and pillowcases for weeks. It’s been exposed to our most powerful antibiotics but keeps morphing or conjugating its way out of death. By conjugating, I mean Baumannii bacteria likes to practice horizontal gene transfer with any old germ it comes in contact with. If it contacts pneumonia germs, bingo, the next generation of Baumannii carries pneumonia genes. One strain was found to have 46 different or foreign genes in just one sector of its DNA. One of the genes was Legionaire’s disease.

Watch the video: Nova Video about Baumannii. Just click under watch the segment.

I read in the Union of Concerned Scientists newsletter, Volume 10, Number 3, Summer 2008, that the U.S. Senate approved bipartisan legislation in March to improve the effectiveness of the Consumer Product Safety Commission. Good idea after last summer’s tainted spinach, tainted lettuce, beef recalls, and toxic toys went unchecked.

It seems there has been political interference in the work of CPSC employees like statisticians, psychologists, chemists, and engineers. The legislation is meant to keep science independent of political tactics to ensure consumers remain safe. There are whistle blower protections built in to the legislation that extends to other employees of companies regulated by the CPSC. The agency must also accept anonymous complaints via the Internet.

The Union of Concerned Scientists worked with doctor’s and consumer groups to put this Senate Bill together and encouraged scientists to speak up if they have had political interference in the past.

There is a House Bill that addresses the same problems but lacks the whistle blower protections. The idea now is to combine the bills to become the strongest legislation possible.

I’m certainly glad this is happening, but does it occur to anyone that we are now in the habit of writing legislation to keep the Bush administration’s mitts out of most things scientific, that we’ve had to use the supreme court and federal court judges to get the EPA to act on our behalf relative to the environment, and to get the Dept. of the Interior to move on putting polar bears on the endangered list?

If the agencies that are in existence to keep the public, environment, wildlife and habitat, food, and imports safe are being kept from doing their respective jobs by interference from politicians, then instead of doing this round about and creating new legislation, on top of legislation that already exists, wouldn’t it just be easier to get rid of the politicians affecting the problems? Remember to vote for a heck of a lot more than president this November, like voting out of office those that interfere with our safety, the earth’s safety, and wildlife looking to survive in a safe haven. 

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.

My 85-year-old mother asked me why there aren’t as many stars at night? I told her; to begin with, it has to be a clear night to see a bunch of stars. She said it seems when she was young there were a lot of starry nights. She’s intently watching the skies over Monroe to see if we have any clear nights, and how many stars are visible.

She thinks there aren’t as many clear nights because of pollution. My mother also remarked that some of her friend’s children were down from northern Michigan for a visit and it was quite noticeable to them that our skies are different, not as clear, even in the daytime.

I’m still wondering when the EPA is going to release reports about all types of things in our air, water, and land mass. It’s the same old stall or obstruction used by the Bush Administration against the environment for 8 years. I witnessed the put-off again on the news today when President Bush, during his talks in Britain with Gerald Brown, said that the U.S. would embrace environmentalism when China and India agree to the same pact or “whatever the U.S. does just won’t be affective.”

What a crock. First of all the U.S. only has 300 million citizens compared to both China and India with over one billion citizens each, yet the U.S. holds its own creating one quarter of earth’s total pollution. I think we could make quite a big dent in cleaning up the environment without China and India along for the ride. Has this administration ever heard the term, leading by example? Besides India is making huge strides by using their pollution for methane production to fuel their cooking and lighting needs. Bio Tech India has both a portable and permanent models of residential bio mass digesters. Just feed the digester food scraps and it produces methane gas to burn. Bio Tech India is also working on incorporating human waste into the works. India is already using the cow dung from its sacred cows for methane and energy production. Just think of all the fuel we could get from doggy parks, and litter boxes.

So it’s the same old song and dance from Bush. I really didn’t expect much more from his regime, but then I read an article on ENS website that congress is wondering about the big stall on reports about clean air, water, and land too, and what it’s costing us health wise.  It seems Congress “questioned the health effects of a new White House policy that delays the completion and release of chemical assessments into a public database maintained by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.”

There it is, the purposeful stall from the Bush regime that delays the release of assessments that inevitably affect our health in a bad way, but no doubt help some big polluter down the line. I’m starting to feel like a Polar Bear more and more all the time.

http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/jun2008/2008-06-12-093.asp

I wrote about riding bikes to save on gas and get in shape before, but the biking business is really taking off now with high gas prices. I participated in a survey by an environmental group that listed all types of things that can help ease global warming and the bicycle was number one by 34 percent. Prophylactics were second at 19%, but I digress.

It seems the bicycling trend is really picking up. There has been a 100 percent rise in cycling since 1985. There are 3.2 million people that bicycle to work at least once a week. Burning one gallon of gas equals 20 lbs. of CO2 released into the atmosphere.  I would guesstimate the average car used to get about 20 mpg. My old car does anyway. If the average distance to work is 5 miles one way, then two days of biking by just one bicyclist to and from work would equal one gallon of gas and save 20 lbs. of CO2 from being released into the atmosphere. One day would save 10 lbs. of CO2 per bicyclist. Never underestimate the power of one. Never say your individual actions don’t account for much, because other people are doing that same action too. 

One bicyclist times 3.2 million bicyclists cycling an average 10 miles round trip for work saves 32 million lbs. of CO2 from entering the atmosphere IN ONE DAY!  The results are pretty staggering, not to mention those American bicyclists are getting in shape at the same time. It’s healthy for the individual, and healthy for the earth.

My husband just said if work was just a little closer he would bike. We used to bike together. It’s unbelievable how far a person can bike quite easily. I know I did plenty of biking in my day. I used to stash my bike in the trunk of my car and drive my car to get serviced. I’d simply take the bike out and ride it home until the car service called to pick up my car. It was about 5 miles one way. 5 miles on a ten speed is a breeze. I think we are just conditioned to catching a ride everywhere, instead of peddling ourselves. We would do it more if we just thought about it. Well, we have to own a bike too.

Read more statistics about biking in America: http://www.solutions-site.org/artman/publish/article_395.shtml.