Death's Door: Update on the Fukushima Meltdown and the Media Coverup

Before jumping into today's essay here is the latest news: Radioactive levels at Fukushima were about 250 times higher than a month before. TEPCO said the levels of caesium-134 and -137 increased about 250-fold and iodine-131 increased about 12 times compared with one month ago, after the accident had already happened.

The water level in the No. 4 reactor's turbine building rose by 20 centimeters in 10 days. TEPCO has detected 8,100 becquerels of caesium-137 and 7,800 becquerels of caesium-134 per cubic centimeter in the water in the turbine building's basement. The utility company said on Tuesday the 26th of April that the water level in the tunnel of the No. 3 reactor rose by 10 centimeters over three days.

Beyond that door is death. It's death's door and it has brought us a new hell on earth. What's behind this door and several others like it is so hot, in terms of death, that its effects can be seen 10,000 miles away. Though thanks to the media we almost forgot about this and other similar doors and the nuclear meltdowns that are occurring right here right now on planet earth.

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Drastically Decrease Your Exposure to BPA by Eating Less Packaged Food

One of the best ways to avoid exposure to the toxic plastics chemical bisphenol-A (BPA) might simply be to cut packaged foods from your diet, says a new study published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives. Plastic bags, containers, cups, wraps, and other types of food packaging often contain not only BPA, but other harmful plastics chemicals. But by eating only fresh, non-packaged foods, you can reduce your blood levels of these chemicals by up to 90 percent in just three days.

Scientists from both the Breast Cancer Fund and the Silent Spring Institute conducted their study on five families. The families were instructed to remove all packaged foods from their diets for three days, and instead eat only organic foods stored in glass or stainless steel containers. Measured before, during, and after the study, urinary BPA levels dropped an average of 60 percent after just three days. Those with the highest initial levels of BPA saw a 75 percent drop after just three days of non-exposure.

The team also evaluated levels of DEHP; a type of phthalate used in food packaging, and found that after three days of non-exposure, participants' levels dropped an average of 50 percent. Those with the highest initial levels of DEHP saw an astounding 90 percent drop, which indicates that simply removing packaged foods from one's diet, even for just a few days, can virtually eliminate some of these dangerous toxins from the body.

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Coke, BPA, and the Limits of 'Green Capitalism'

"Coca-Cola goes green," announced  a 2010 Forbes article. Indeed, the beverages giant maintains partnerships with Big Green groups like Conservation International and World Wildlife Fund. It recently even completed its takeover of Honest Tea, an organic bottled-tea company. It would clearly like to be seen as a paragon of "green capitalism" -- the idea that doing good and doing well go hand in hand.

Let's put aside questions over what can possibly be "green" about a business model geared to sucking in huge amounts of drinking water, blasting it with what are probably toxic sweeteners and other dodgy substances, and then packaging it in little aluminum cans and plastic bottles and sending them far and wide, to be chilled (using fossil energy) before consumption.

OK, so within those tight constraints, Coca-Cola says it wants to be a "green company." So ... WTF? Last week, Coca-Cola shareholders voted by a 3-to-1 margin to continue using BPA, a toxic industrial chemical, in the lining of its soft-drink cans.

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Will the Real Food Movement Please Stand Up?

Farmer Bob Comis recently suggested that the food movement is suffering from "multiple personality disorder." He argued that several vocal factions -- foodies, locavores, and "smallists" -- tend to dominate the food movement discussion, unrealistically distracting us from our ultimate objective: bringing affordable, organic food to all as part of a broader commitment to social justice.

For decades now, organic farmers and sustainable food activists of all stripes have been vexed by the question: Is this a movement? Can it scale and have meaningful impact?

At one eloquent and entrepreneurially-impeccably-credentialed end of the spectrum stands farmer Joel Salatin:

 Don't let them confuse you. Organic farming is not an industry. It is a movement. It is part of a movement that began when the first indigenous peoples fought against the Conquistadors. It is fighting back against the modern Conquistadors, the multinational corporations, those who would patent and genetically modify life and destroy diversity.

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Floating Into the Future: A Safer Generation of Airship

The notion that airships represent the future of air cargo is being revived by a new generation of entrepreneurs some 75 years after a catastrophic fireball brought the industry to a screeching halt.

Far safer than the Hindenburg, whose tragic 1937 docking remains an icon of aerospace gone wrong, these modern airships are a hybrid of lighter-than-air and fixed-wing aircraft. They can loft enormous payloads without requiring the acres of tarmac or miles of roadway necessary for conventional air and truck transport. And they do so at a fraction of the fuel and cost of aircraft.

Airships "give you access and much larger payloads at much lower costs," said Peter DeRobertis, project leader for commercial hybrid air vehicles at Lockheed Martin's Aeronautics and Skunk Works division in Fort Worth, Texas. "It's also a green aircraft; you're not polluting."

Today's airships could conceivably be used to transport everything from ripe pineapples to heavy industrial equipment direct to the customer. Shippers, for example, could roll tractors, backhoes, and road graders onto a 50-ton hybrid vehicle at a factory and roll them off at the job site, easing logistics and cost.

A handful of companies have prototypes under development. Lockheed has an airship in the works dubbed SkyTug that should be commercially available by late 2013 with a range of 1,000 nautical miles and a 20-ton payload. The 50-ton Skyfreighter is expected to follow in late 2014.

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Bill Gates Loves Nukes - Another Reason to Boycott Microsoft Products

Despite the trouble with Japan's Fukushima nuclear power plant following that country's devastating earthquake, Microsoft co-founder and Chairman Bill Gates still hasn't given up on nuclear power.

In a conversation with Wired Editor-in-Chief Chris Anderson today at the magazine's third annual Business Conference, Gates said that one of the best aspects of nuclear power at the moment is its lack of innovation thus far, which leaves it ripe for disruption in the coming years.

When it comes to Japan's current nuclear trouble, Gates pointed out that the Fukushima plant is an older second-generation reactor. Third-generation plants, as well as upcoming fourth-generation plants (which he's also invested in), can easily avoid most of Fukushima's problems - primarily because they have better ways of dealing with the afterheat that results after a nuclear plant shuts down. One third-gen design keeps a pool of water ready in the case of a plant shutdown, while fourth-gen designs have methods in place to avoid the afterheat problem completely.

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America's Environmental Garden Spot: Would You Believe Manhattan?

What's the greenest place in America? If you answered something like the granola-crunchy, Rocky Mountain-high town of Boulder, you'd be wrong. If you guessed the sea breezes and warm sunlight of Santa Barbara, you'd be wrong again. The greenest place in America is almost devoid of nature - the buildings outnumber the trees - and the air isn't all that great. But what it has is density and efficiency - the twin qualities that ultimately define green in the global warming era. Applying those standards, the greenest place in America is New York City - specifically, the overcrowded, overpriced and sometimes overwrought island of Manhattan, which has a per-capita greenhouse gas footprint less than 30% that of the national average.

It's that density - the sheer number of people living in such a small area, often literally on top of each other - that makes Manhattan, and New York City as a whole, so green. Manhattan's population density is 800 times the national average. Density comes with negatives, certainly - small living spaces, air pollution, lots and lots of concrete - but it also enables amazing efficiencies. More than 80% of Manhattanites travel to work by public transit, by bike or on foot - compared to an average of about 8% everywhere else in the country. The vertical apartment buildings that Manhattanites live in are far more energy-efficient than single-dwelling housing in the suburbs. "Most Americans, including most New Yorkers, think of New York City as an ecological nightmare, a wasteland of concrete and garbage and diesel fumes and traffic jams," wrote David Owen in his 2009 book Green Metropolis. "But in comparison with the rest of America it's a model of environmental responsibility."

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Codex to Consider Labeling for Genetically Engineered Foods

Next week, committee members of Codex, the UN-sponsored would-be global regulator, will be reviewing guidelines for genetically engineered (GE) foods. The US delegation to the committee says-surprise-that no labeling is needed! An URGENT new Action Alert -the deadline to send comments is TODAY.

The Codex Committee on Food Labeling will meet May 9-13 in Québec City, Canada, where members will review the Codex guidelines on labeling food. Among the items for review are the Codex labeling standards for genetically engineered foods.

The Codex Alimentarius (Latin for "Food Code") is a collection of internationally adopted food standards, guidelines, codes of practice, and other recommendations which supporters hope will become a global standard. The US is a Codex Committee member country.

In preparation of the upcoming meeting in Canada, the US delegates held a public meeting in Washington, DC, on April 25 to discuss their draft position that they will present in Québec. ANH-USA attended that meeting-and the US position is pretty dismal. The US draft position is open for public comment only through May 2, so we are sending this newsletter out a little early.

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The Xtremes: Subversive Recipes for Catastrophic Times

In just a few shortmonths, we’ve witnessed people power in action. From the Middle East to theMidwest, movements have risen up to overturn tired dogma and challengeentrenched power. Many of us were inspired by these events. And many of us weresurprised. Perhaps we were growing skeptical that people power could stillwork. Maybe we had forgotten a vital fact about our world: that bold citizens,united around a common mission, can still come together to create major changeagainst enormous odds.

-- 350.org

Even when people are willing to take action in concert toredistribute the pie, whether by Gandhian mobilization or use of force, this mayresonate falsely, for the pie is disintegrating. Its recipe and ingredients areobsolete. And freedom attained in harsh austerity, characterized by intensecompetition for food, will be doubtful or of little comfort.

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Prince Charles: Save the World with Organic Farming

Britain's crown prince has a message for America: You don't pay enough for your food. And the way you produce it is ruining the planet.

Fresh from his oldest son's wedding, Prince Charles came to Washington to slam today's conventional agricultural system as unsustainable because of its reliance on biotechnology and chemicals.

"The current model is simply not durable in the long term," he told a food-policy conference hosted Wednesday by Georgetown University.

The prince, who has long been a virulent opponent of biotechnology, has devoted some of the royal lands to organic farming. He ran through a list of the challenges facing the globe - growing populations, rising commodity prices, increased demand for meat as incomes grow, a changing climate, and limited water supplies. He offered organic farming as the answer to those challenges because of its ability to maintain soil fertility reliance on chemical inputs. 

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Eight Foods You Should Almost Never, Ever Eat

Most soybean, corn, cotton and canola crops in the U.S. are genetically altered. Some experts argue that these crops could pose serious health and environmental risks, but the scientific picture is currently incomplete -- deliberately so.

Agricultural corporations such as Monsanto and Syngenta have restricted independent research on the crops. They have refused to provide independent scientists with seeds, or else have set restrictive conditions that severely limit research.  This is legal because under U.S. law, genetically engineered crops are patentable.

The Los Angeles Times reports:

 "Agricultural companies defend their stonewalling by saying that unrestricted research could make them vulnerable to lawsuits if an experiment somehow leads to harm, or that it could give competitors unfair insight into their products. But it's likely that the companies fear something else as well: An experiment could reveal that a genetically engineered product is hazardous or doesn't perform as promised."

Even if you don't want to eat genetically engineered foods, you most likely already are doing so.  Corn and soy are two of the most common food ingredients, especially in processed foods, and over 90 percent of both these crops in the US are now from GM seeds.

Organic food companies and consumer groups are stepping up their efforts to get the government to exercise more oversight of engineered foods. Critics of current policy argue that the genetically modified (GM) seeds are often contaminating the nearby non-GM crops.

ABC News reports:

 "The U.S. government has insisted there's not enough difference between the genetically modified seeds its agencies have approved and natural seeds to cause concern. But Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, more so than his predecessors in previous administrations, has acknowledged the debate over the issue and a growing chorus of consumers concerned about what they are eating."

Sources:

Los Angeles Time February 13, 2011

ABC News February 28, 2011

 Dr. Mercola's Comments:

George Siemon, CEO of Organic Valley, the nation's largest organic farming cooperative, which had more than $600 million in sales last year, put it succinctly in the above article from ABC news.

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Missouri Floods Raise Concerns for the Gulf, Drinking Water

The Ohio and Mississippi River levels were falling Wednesday at the site where engineers blasted holes in a Missouri levee to relieve pressure. But unleashing torrents of water across 35 miles of farmland in what has already been a terrible flooding season could carry other consequences.

One risk, scientists cautioned, is fertilizer runoff from the flooded farm country along the Mississippi. As it moves downstream, they predicted it would contribute to the largest-ever summertime depletion of oxygen in the Gulf of Mexico, posing a substantial risk to marine life.

The concern is that the water is likely pulling up components of fertilizers-notably nitrogen and phosphorus-and washing them downstream toward the Gulf, helping slash oxygen to levels marine life can't survive, said Nancy Rabalais, a marine scientist who is executive director of the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium on the Gulf coast.

Those chemicals act as nutrients in the Gulf, intensifying the growth of microscopic plants. Microbes eat away at those plants. In the process, they consume oxygen, reducing it to levels that kill marine life.

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Via Organica Participates in Sustainability Workshops

Center for Appropriate Technology and Indigenous Sustainability
"To a hammer, the whole world looks like a nail."

In many development aid projects around the world, not-for-profits (NFPs) are doing valuable work solving problems for communities and regions.  Many of us who have done some sort of development aid work come to these communities with the NFP's focus area (for example, clean drinking water, sanitation, or agricultural projects) and a set of NFP aid workers who are trained in the NFP focus area. However, when we land on the ground, in real communities and regions, the problems don't necessarily stay contained within the narrow box of the NFP's focus or the expertise of it's workers.  "The real world of people living, eating and growing food, having shelters, dealing with sanitation, having clean drinking water, staying warm or cool, creating families and communities, all of this is a rich mixture, and its problems and solutions don't often fit into tiny neat boxes," says Jim Hallock, of Tierra Y Cal, who has experience building sustainable shettlers in Haiti, South and Central America, and Africa. "When I show up in Haiti to help build a school or a clinic I'm asked about how to grow a food garden or deal with drinking water contamination."

The conundrum so often experienced is that NFP workers are unprepared to deal with aspects of the larger community or regional problems outside the scope of their skills or the not-for-profit's focus.  Sometimes aid workers need a screwdriver, and all they have is a hammer.

It was a little over a year and half ago when a diverse group of people working in development aid, each with expertise in a varied set of skill from sustainable building, energy, water and agriculture, met in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico.  They came in part because some had experienced their limitations in development aid work just as Jim Hallock expressed. They came to talk about what each was doing and about collaboration.  What they discovered was that their whole was emerging into something that was greater than each of their individual parts.  They found that the "waste" from one person's work was often a very useful input or resource for someone else's. Take Dr. Robert Marquez for instance, a clay chemist and inventor, whose MK Kiln is transforming the unsustainable traditional firing method of clay bricks into a more profitable, fuel efficient, less atmospherically polluting activity.  "The 'waste' heat from the MK Kilns can be channeled into systems designed to harvest thermal energy and convert it to electricity, used locally within the brick makers' communities or fed and sold back into the grid," Dr. Marquez explains.  

"The heat, further 'degraded' to lower temperatures after electrical generation, could now be fed into farmers' greenhouses, potentially expanding their growing season into the colder winter months," added Doug Weatherbee, of SoilDoctor.org, who works with regenerative microbiology farming techniques.  In an ecological system, there is no waste.  The product of one process is the input of energy and materials for another, and so on.

The group recognized the potential to solve a major problem in development aid work.  Compartmentalization-silos of specialized skills and knowledge and experts that don't have ways to learn from one another and work collaboratively in development aid projects that require expertise in a wide variety of areas.  From this discussion and realization arose the Center for Appropriate Technologies and Indigenous Sustainability (CATIS).  CATIS is an organization that sees collaboration and sustainability as its focus; collaboration between experts in sustainable building, sanitation, agroecology, water, and energy; collaboration between the skills of aid workers and local people and organizations; identifying and promoting sustainable solutions that make sense, whether they are local or "from away."  

CATIS has a education and research Institute near San Miguel de Allende, Mexico called CATIS-Mexico.  This June several members of the CATIS team are teaching a wide range of sustainable building and agroecology workshops. "Building Systems for the Developing World" is a series of workshops will provide attendees with a deep understanding of sustainable earth block buildings and construction, from foundation to roof top.  The "Argo-ecology for the Developing World" series will provide attendees with a holistic set of regenerative agricultural skills for farming and ranching.  The two series are being held simultaneously over four weeks beginning June 6, 2011.  "The goal of having 4 weeks of two streams of building and agroecology workshops is two create collaborative dialogs between the all the instructors and students in both streams," states Jeff Rottler, CATIS Instructor of Sustainable Building techniques.  "Folks within either stream will be taught some incredible skills in sustainable aid work," says Biointensive Gardening instructor Jennifer Ungemach, of Via Organica.  "And, they'll be introduced to the other learning stream through evening presentations and onsite discussions throughout the weeks."  CATIS-Mexico is building a educational environment that is addressing the problem of compartmentalized knowledge in development work.

Attendees of the workshops can camp onsite at the CATIS-Mexico Institute which is a few minutes outside of San Miguel de Allende, Mexico or in nearby San Miguel de Allende.   San Miguel is an UNESCO World Heritage Site, a stunningly beautiful 400 year old Spanish colonial town, and a world renowned expat artist colony that is emerging as a center for sustainability in Mexico.


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