Our Global Water Crisis Is Here and Now

Water Drop (Photo credit: Isolino)

By Kristie Brown

For too many years people have been exploiting the environment, and now that it's time to take steps to correct all the problems we have created, people are turning a deaf ear. It's like when the government talks about cuts and everyone says, "That's a good idea, but don't cut anything that affects me!"

Every year we pour millions of gallons of waste products into our existing fresh water resources and, if we think about it at all, we consider it the "other guy's" problem. No one seems to comprehend how serious the situation is to everything that is living on this planet. We all need to do what we can to change, and we need to do it now.

The amount of waste that is infiltrating our water is growing proportionately with the increasing population. The Water World Assessment Program estimates that people worldwide dump 2 million tons of waste into our water each day. At least 70% of industrial wastes are drained into the water in developing nations where they don't yet have anti-pollution precautions and laws in place.

Here in the United States, we have a major problem in that agricultural waste products, from such things as fertilizer run-offs and hog confinements, and the wastes we pump into our water are being carried into the lakes, rivers, and oceans. In the 1970s, the United States banned the use of DDT, yet 40 years later, traces of the substance are still being found in our oceans.

We live in a country filled with plenty, and there are those who believe that our water can never run out; however, 20% of the people in the world have no access to clean, safe drinking water. When you hear 20%, do you know how many people are being affected by water shortages? That's a whopping 1,200 million.

The problem is so drastic in some areas that it has become the major cause of death for children under the age of five in some areas of the world, and scientists are saying that within the next few decades this same thing could happen to us unless we initiate measures as soon as possible.

Obviously, we don't want this to happen to us. Imagine watching your child wither and die of dehydration because they can't get adequate water to drink, and there's nothing at all you can do about it. Don't depend on laws passed by the government to take care of the problem, because that alone can't begin to conquer the crisis. If we all do our part, together we can make a difference.

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VIDEO: Yes, the Climate is Changing: People Around the World Show How Climate Change is Already Affecting Their Lives

from Yes! magazine: http://www.yesmagazine.org/planet/connect-the-dots-on-climate-change?utm_source=wkly20120511&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=titleaharbinDots
 

The effects of climate change come in many guises: increasingly intense storms, too much snow, not enough snow, heat waves, droughts, floods.

We have to start seeing the climatic connections between these weather events, says advocacy group 350.org. Only then will we realize how much of what we hold dear is threatened by climate change - and react accordingly.

On May 5, 2012 people around the world "connected the dots" and combined the images they created to illustrate how profoundly climate change is already affecting us.

A Worldwide Effort to Make Climate Change Visible - Bill McKibben: It’s Time for Each of Us to Get Involved in the Full-On Fight Between Misinformation and Truth

Storm surge from Hurricane Irene in Greenwich, Connecticut (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

by Bill McKibben, Yes! magazine: http://www.yesmagazine.org

The Williams River was so languid and lovely last Saturday morning that it was almost impossible to imagine the violence with which it must have been running on August 28, 2011.

And yet the evidence was all around: sand piled high on its banks, trees still scattered as if by a giant’s fist, and most obvious of all, a utilitarian temporary bridge where for 140 years a graceful covered bridge had spanned the water.

The YouTube video of that bridge crashing into the raging river was Vermont’s iconic image from its worst disaster in memory, the record flooding that followed Hurricane Irene’s rampage through the state in August 2011. It claimed dozens of lives, as it cut more than a billion-dollar swath of destruction across the eastern United States.

I watched it on TV in Washington just after emerging from jail, having been arrested at the White House during mass protests of the Keystone XL pipeline. Since Vermont’s my home, it took the theoretical - the ever more turbulent, erratic, and dangerous weather that the tar sands pipeline from Canada would help ensure - and made it all too concrete. It shook me bad. And I’m not the only one.

New data released last month by researchers at Yale and George Mason universities show that a lot of Americans are growing far more concerned about climate change, precisely because they’re drawing the links between freaky weather, a climate kicked off-kilter by a fossil-fuel guzzling civilization, and their own lives.

After a year with a record number of multi-billion dollar weather disasters, seven in ten Americans now believe that “global warming is affecting the weather.” No less striking, 35% of the respondents reported that extreme weather had affected them personally in 2011. As Yale’s Anthony Laiserowitz told the New York Times, “People are starting to connect the dots.”

Climate change is actually the biggest thing that’s going on every single day. If we could only see that pattern we’d have a fighting chance. Which is what we must do. As long as this remains one abstract problem in the long list of problems, we’ll never get to it.

There will always be something going on each day that’s more important, including, if you’re facing flood or drought, the immediate danger.

To read further, go to: http://www.yesmagazine.org/planet/bill-mckibben-connecting-the-climate-dots?utm_source=wkly20120504&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=titleMcKibben

GMO Alert: Top 10 Genetically Modified Foods to Avoid Eating

GENETICALLY MODIFIED ORGANISM (Photo credit: live w mcs)

by Aurora Geib, Natural News: http://www.naturalnews.com

There is a conspiracy of selling out happening in America. Politics and personal interest it would seem determine government policies over and above health and safety issues.

When President Obama appointed Michael Taylor in 2009 as senior adviser for the FDA, a fierce protest ensued from consumer groups and environmentalists. Why?

Taylor used to be vice president for Monsanto, a multinational interested in marketing genetically modified (GM) food. It was during his term that GMO’s were approved in the US without undergoing tests to determine if they were safe for human consumption.

The danger of GMO’s

The question of whether or not genetically modified foods (GMO’s) are safe for human consumption is an ongoing debate that does not seem to see any resolution except in the arena of public opinion.

Due to lack of labeling, Americans are still left at a loss as to whether or not what is on the table is genetically modified. This lack of information makes the avoiding and tracking of GM foods an exercise in futility. Below are just some of the food products popularly identified to be genetically modified:

1. Corn

Corn has been modified to create its own insecticide. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has declared that tons of genetically modified corn has been introduced for human consumption. Monsanto has revealed that half of the US’s sweet corn farms are planted with genetically modified seed. Mice fed with GM corn were discovered to have smaller offspring and fertility problems.

2. Soy

Soy has also been genetically modified to resist herbicides. Soy products include soy flour, tofu, soy beverages, soybean oil and other products that may include pastries, baked products and edible oil. Hamsters fed with GM soy were unable to have offspring and suffered a high mortality rate.

3. Cotton

Like corn and soy, cotton has been designed to resist pesticides. It is considered food because its oil can be consumed. Its introduction in Chinese agriculture has produced a chemical that kills cotton bollworm, reducing the incidences of pests not only in cotton crops but also in neighboring fields of soybeans and corn. Incidentally, thousands of Indian farmers suffered severe rashes upon exposure to BT cotton.

4. Papaya

The virus-resistant variety of papaya was commercially introduced in Hawaii in 1999. Transgenic papayas comprised three-fourths of the total Hawaiian papaya crop. Monsanto bestowed upon Tamil Nadu Agricultural University in Coimbatore technology for developing papaya resistant to the ringspot virus in India.

5. Rice

This staple food from South East Asia has now been genetically modified to contain a high amount of vitamin A. Allegedly, there are reports of rice varieties containing human genes to be grown in the US. The rice will create human proteins useful for dealing with infant diarrhea in the 3rd world. China Daily, an online journal, reported potential serious public health and environment problems with genetically modified rice considering its tendency to cause allergic reactions with the concurrent possibility of gene transfers.

6. Tomatoes

Tomatoes have now been genetically engineered for longer shelf life, preventing them from easily rotting and degrading. In a test conducted to determine the safety of GM tomatoes, some animal subjects died within a few weeks after consuming GM tomatoes.

7. Rapeseed

In Canada, this crop was renamed canola to differentiate it from non-edible rapeseed. Food stuff produced from rapeseed includes rapeseed oil (canola oil) used to process cooking oil and margarine. Honey can also be produced from GM rapeseed. German food surveillance authorities discovered as much as a third of the total pollen present in Canadian honey may be from GM pollen. In fact, some honey products from Canada were also discovered to have pollen from GM rapeseed.

8. Dairy products

It has been discovered that 22 percent of cows in the U.S. were injected with recombinant (genetically modified) bovine growth hormone (rbGH). This Monsanto created hormone artificially forces cows to increase their milk production by 15 percent. Milk from cows treated with this milk inducing hormone contains increased levels of IGF-1 (insulin growth factors-1). Humans also have IGF-1 in their system. Scientists have expressed concerns that increased levels of IGF-1 in humans have been associated with colon and breast cancer.

9. Potatoes

Mice fed with potatoes engineered with Bacillus thuringiensis var. Kurstaki Cry 1 were found to have toxins in their system. Despite claims to the contrary, this shows that Cry1 toxin was stable in the mouse gut. When the health risks were revealed, it sparked a debate.

10. Peas

Peas that have been genetically modified have been found to cause immune responses in mice and possibly even in humans. A gene from kidney beans was inserted into the peas creating a protein that functions as a pesticide.

To read further, go to: http://www.naturalnews.com/035734_GMOs_foods_dangers.html