Record snowfall in Japan

Trucks and cars are stranded by heavy snow on a national road in Karuizawa in this Feb. 16, 2014.

(Photo: Kyodo via NBC)

With wishes for safety to all in Japan, sharing Martin Frid's Kurashi report on the record snowfall that has trapped up to 9,000+ (many elders) in their homes; killed 19 people, and injured hundreds; disabled utilities; and stranded travelers:

The second deluge we got here on Friday was worse than the previous one. Still on Monday, several thousands of people northwest of Tokyo are isolated or trapped in their homes, with meter-high snow covering roads and roofs. Kofu in Yamansahi prefecture got some 120 cm, more than ever. My town and Chichibu to the northwest was/is cut off from all communication.

Travel news site, Wunderground.com, details travel nightmares, and predicts more snow ahead:

 In Tokyo, at least 800 cars were stuck for nearly a day in traffic jams on highways, prompting transportation officials to deliver food and portable toilets...

Weather historian Christopher C. Burt of Weather Underground said Sendai and Ishinomaki, northern cities hard hit by the 2011 tsunami, received their heaviest or deepest snowfalls since the 1930s.

The Japan Meteorological Agency said Sunday that the low pressure system was traveling north, dumping more snow after passing the Tokyo region...

Another storm system is expected to pass south of Japan Wednesday and Thursday, bringing snow again to the country's Pacific coast. The snowfall could be enough to push Tokyo past its modern record monthly snowfall of 22 inches set in January 1984.

Severn Cullis-Suzuki "Love is the Movement" Japan Tour • Simultaneous screenings of Velcrow Ripper's Occupy Love

"If you can’t fix the environment, please stop breaking it!” Severn said to the world leaders at the Earth Summit in Rio in 1992. She was only twelve years old. A video of her speech presenting environmental issues from a youth perspective went viral, and Severn Cullis-Suzuki became known around the world as “The Girl Who Silenced the World for 5 Minutes." 

Severn, daughter of Japanese Canadian scientist and environmentalist David Suzuki, is now 34-years-old and an environmental activist, speaker, television host and author. She has spoken around the world about environmental issues, urging listeners to define their values, act with the future in mind, and take individual responsibility. 

For the first time in six years, Severn returns to Japan for “Love is the Movement” – a series of talks about the future of the human race in the face of global environmental crisis. Issues covered include the localization movement, the fair trade movement, and other movements that focus on quality of life for our children and future generations. 

Severn Suzuki will be at Kyoto's Ryukoku University on February 21st.

Details (in Japanese) here: http://kokucheese.com/event/index/141937/

Other stops include Tokyo, Nagoya, Kyoto, Fukuoka, and Shiga. 

Simultaneous screening of Canadian filmmaker Velcrow Ripper's Occupy Love, the third film in the inspirational "Fierce Love" trilogy about global grassroots nonviolent environmental and democratic movements. 

Schedule (Japanese):  http://unitedpeople.jp/occupy/jouei. 

Details on the "Love is the Movement" Tour (in Japanese) here: http://www.sloth.gr.jp/events/sev2014/

All about Severn Suzuki here: http://severncullissuzuki.com/bio

"Love is the Movement" on Facebook (in Japanese): https://www.facebook.com/sev2014. 

Thich Nhat Hanh: "You carry Mother Earth within you."

You carry Mother Earth within you. She is not outside of you. Mother Earth is not just your environment. In that insight of inter-being, it is possible to have real communication with the Earth, which is the highest form of prayer. In that kind of relationship you have enough love, strength and awakening in order to change your life.

Changing is not just changing the things outside of us. First of all we need the right view that transcends all notions including of being and non-being, creator and creature, mind and spirit. That kind of insight is crucial for transformation and healing.

Fear, separation, hate and anger come from the wrong view that you and the earth are two separate entities, the Earth is only the environment. You are in the centre and you want to do something for the Earth in order for you to survive. That is a dualistic way of seeing.

So to breathe in and be aware of your body and look deeply into it and realise you are the Earth and your consciousness is also the consciousness of the earth. Not to cut the tree not to pollute the water, that is not enough.

~ Thich Nhat Hanh, "Beyond Environment: Falling Back in Love with Mother Earth", Guardian

"Banks that broke the economy also lead on financing coal plants"

Sustainablebusiness.com via Reuters: "Banks that broke the economy also lead on financing coal plants":

The top three banks that finance coal plants and thus are major contributors to climate change [and the destruction of entire ecosystems] are:

- JP Morgan Chase: $22 billion.

- Citi: $18.27 billion

- Bank of America: $16.79 billion

They are followed by Morgan Stanley, Barclays, Deutsche Bank, and Royal Bank of Scotland

The top 20 coal financing banks are from the US, UK, Germany, France, Switzerland, China [Bank of China], Italy and Japan [Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group]. Since 2005, the 93 banks analyzed in a study have financed coal to the tune of $309 billion.

"Bankrolling Climate Change," released at the Climate Summit in Durban, South Africa, examines commercial bank lending practices in the coal industry. It was produced by several NGOs - urgewald (Germany), groundwork and Earthlife Africa Johannesburg (South Africa) and international network, BankTrack.

Read the entire report at Banktrack.org.

Not only China and India, but the United States provides examples of the devastation that coal production and burning wrought upon the natural environment. Southeastern Appalachia is reminscent of western Tohoku's breathtaking mountainous landscape and deep traditional culture. This beautiful region, similarly to Tohoku, has become a "national sacrifice zone."

To produce a tiny percentage (around 4%) of U.S. energy output, coal companies have bombed nearly 500 of the oldest mountains in North America encompassing 800,000 acres. Entire ecosystems and centuries-old small farming communities have been obliterated. As in Tohoku, war-like destructive assaults upon nature and people by dirty energy companies have been met with political, social, and media activist resistance by the people of the entire region and their worldwide supporters.

For more information, please see I Love Mountains: End Mountaintop Removal Coal Mining, United Mountain Defense, Plundering Appalachia: A National Sacrifice Zone, Appalachian Voices, Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, and 40 Days of Prayer for the Mountains.

For more background on coal in Asia, see "Grassroots Asians part of interconnected worldwide coal-free movement: Coal is not the answer for post-3.11 Japan" (TTT, July 11, 2011)

PM Noda did not enter into TPP negotiations

(A Via Campesina (family farmer cross-border network) conference convened in Chiba, Japan earlier in the fall to address the TPP threat to small farmers in Japan and other Asian countries)

Many thanks to Martin Frid at Kurushii for his nuanced and sensitive analysis of PM Noda's ambiguous ("To join or not to join") remarks re whether the Japanese government will or won't enter into Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiations.

Headlines in the North American media made much ado about nothing: giving the impression that Noda had announced that Japan had formally joined the TPP talks. Martin's post quotes a variety of sources, rendering a multi-dimensional picture from Japanese (and other Asian) perspectives

Asahi Shinbun had somewhat better coverage of the TPP debacle. They quoted coalition partner Shizuka Kamei of the People's New Party, who has experience as a trade negotiator, and is against the TPP:

The TPP concept originated from trade rules established by Singapore and other small countries. The United States is seeking to use them to govern the Pacific Rim free trade zone. If Japan gets involved in TPP rulemaking, it would amount to being unfair to China, South Korea and Indonesia, which are all major trading partners for Japan and not parties to the TPP regime.

Asahi also had this analysis of how difficult it might be for Japan to get serious about negotiations, as different ministries are responsible for different sectors of talks, with opposite goals...

My conclusion is that Noda's announcement, for whatever it is worth, amounts to little of substance. This is how opponents of TPP look at it, according to Asahi's analysis:

DPJ members opposed to Japan's participation in the TPP negotiations watched Noda's televised news conference at a room in the Diet. "I was relieved," said Masahiko Yamada, former agriculture minister who is a staunch opponent of the TPP. "(Noda) did not go as far as to announce Japan's participation in the TPP talks, but stopped at entering consultations."

The archipelago's traditional culture of family farms is a starting point for Japan's transition into a sustainable future. Localized food production on small farms (the only energy-efficient method of food production) is an essential strategy to slow climate change and protect our natural environment and biodiversity.

Among food and climate change experts are calling for the localization of food production. Olivier De Schutter, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, an advocate for sustainable, small-scale agriculture ("Agroecology"), explains:

International trade only concerns nine to 10 percent of the food that is produced globally, yet it has had decisive influence on the way decisions are made on the way infrastructure develops and on how farmers are being supported...

Governments have generally supported export-led agriculture, supported global supply chains, and under-invested in local and regional markets.

Instead of going backwards (shutting down family farms and increasing imports of fossil-fuel intensive, emissions-based, GMO, pesticide-laden food products—that must be transported over long distances—from state-subsidized industrial factory farms and plantations), the Japanese government would be undertaking a domestic and global public service if it would further support and share its countrypeople's ethos of simplicity, sustainability and food security with the world.

"The Indigenous Call: Take Back Our Future"

Brenda Norrell: Native Americans and First Nations were arrested Friday, Sept. 2, 2011, at the White House to send a message for President Obama to say "No!" to the Keystone XL Pipeline.

In the video, Gitz Crazyboy, First Nation Dene/Pikini (Blackfoot), Alberta, Canada, describes the threat of the tar sands for generations to come. The video includes images of Native Americans and First Nations arrested at the White House sit-in.

The pipeline would go across the heartland, and the massive Oglalla aquifer, from Canada to Texas, endangering the environment and generations to come. Already the Alberta tar sands are destroying the homeland of First Nations in Alberta.

Velcrow Ripper's Evolve Love: Love in a Time of Climate Crisis holds a sustainable (& healing, empowering) answer for post-3.11 Japan

Here's the new blog and the old blog for Velcrow Ripper's upcoming Evolve Love: Love in a Time of Climate Change with video interviews.

Ripper's film focuses on planetary climate change activism but also resonates with the love and vision fueling overlapping grassroots cross-border dialogue and action of people worldwide (Okinawa, Jeju Island, Guam) who are trying to save their sacred places, parks, and eco-systems from military, nuclear, and extraction industry destruction.

In "Love to the People," Nnimmo Bassey of Friends of the Earth International shares with filmmaker Velcrow Ripper at the 2010 World People’s Summit on Climate Change, in Cochabamba, Bolivia:

Love means respect for one another...In Bolivia, I see this as a big gift to humanity...

The coming together of peoples from around the world, to sit down together to talk about their pains, to talk about their anxieties, to talk about their hopes and their feelings and dreams of a future.

These are the ingredients of a great love story, what we're doing for nature, for Mother Earth We are, together, telling ourselves to recall the memory of who we are and why we're here.

In another episode in the film, "Love versus the G20,"  Judy Rebick explains that compassionate activism is about becoming conscious of and building affirmative relationships with each other, all life, and our planet:

What we have to show the world is that we're here because we love the planet; we love the people on the planet, and we want to protect them from the forces of destruction...It will become a great love story if the people of the earth come together to change the system of greed and stand up against whatever pressure and intimidation there is. If we could find ways to express that and connect with each other, it would be the greatest love story ever told.

Rebick, the author of Transforming Power: From the Personal to the Political and founding publisher of the Canadian progressive news site rabble.ca cites indigenous peoples as emerging planetary leaders. Her June 15 blog post:

It is time to stop talking about what went wrong with the left that was so effective in the 20th century and identify the forces that are leading change in the 21st century. Primary among these, in my view, are indigenous peoples and movements.

Grassroots Asians part of interconnected worldwide coal-free movement: Coal is not the answer for post-3.11 Japan

China's example demonstrates that coal is not an answer to energy production. (Image: Sierra Club)

Congratulations to locals in Sabah, Malaysia and their global supporters in prevailing against a coal company 

that wanted to destroy this beautiful coast! (Image: Sierra Club)

Last month scientists reported that Pacific marine life passed into the Atlantic Ocean for the first time in thousands of years because global warming has melted ice cover in the Arctic. This month we've seen a flurry of news stories stating China's coal burning has "halted" global warming. Responsible media outlets like Reuters and Discover qualified the finding with pronouncements from climate change scientists who stressed that, over the long term, sulfur dioxide emissions from coal would increase global warming. Anyone who has been to China (or the Appalachian region of the United States) already knows coal is not an answer to energy production. The coal industry is as destructive as the oil and nuclear energy industries: causing permanent ruin of entire eco-systems and communities worldwide.

Even before 3.11, Japanese electricity producers were, together, the world's #1 coal importer and had planned or had under construction several new major coal-fired power stations in Japan:

Tepco previously said it expected two new coal-fired units to start operations in late 2013—a 1 GW plant at Hitachinaka and the 600 MW Hiromo No. 6 unit northeast of Tokyo, and J-Power has several plans for new coal-fired generating stations.

In past years, Japanese energy companies clashed with the Environment Ministry over emissions. Coal energy concerns now are using the Fukushima catastrophe to push through previously rejected projects and pursue growth. Owners of a mine project (20% owned by Japanese; 20% owned by South Koreans) in Vancouver, British Columbia want to produce coal for export to Asia over the objections of local residents. Itochu, a Japanese trading group, paid US$1.52 billion to acquire a 20% stake in Drummond International’s Colombian coal mining operation. The agreement gives Itochu “rights” to sell Colombian coal in Japan. The conglomerate, a major uranium supplier, used to buy most of its coal from Australian companies and has investments in Canada, Indonesia, and China. Two days ago, Mitsui bought a 49% share of Australia's Cockatoo coal project.

In Asia (and elsewhere), coal companies have seized farm land and destroyed villages, rendering entire populations homeless. The Sierra Club details this pattern of destruction, attempted destruction, and local resistance by rural people who want to save their ancestral homes and natural environments in "Down With Coal! The Grassroots Anti-Coal Movement Goes Global":

While China struggles with the enormity of the pollution burden from its world-leading annual coal consumption, it is not the only hotbed of future coal-plant construction. Activists in India, for example, report that regulators gave the green light to at least 173 coal projects during 2010 -- nearly one plant every other day. In Southeast Asia, large Chinese utilities such as China Huadian are setting up shop to finance and build a slew of new coal plants. Meanwhile, new coal mines are being proposed in Australia and Indonesia, overwhelmingly for export sales. Countries from Mozambique to Mongolia, which have had little domestic need for coal, are now being hyped as the next big players in the global coal rush. (Photo: A 2,000-MW coal plant in Madhya Pradesh, India.)

In the fertile farming areas that support large rural populations in much of Asia, the new coal boom spells civil conflict, as fields are seized, villages are ordered to pack up and leave, and communities resist. For the U.S. coal movement, the 2,500 people who turned out to protest the Capitol Power Plant was a large number. In India or Bangladesh, marches and demonstrations of more than 10,000 people are not uncommon.

The dominant international narrative focuses on the need to build large numbers of new coal plants across the developing world to spur economic progress. However, the assertion that development can only be achieved through a massive expansion of coal use is being met with increasingly fierce resistance by those asked to bear the most toxic and destructive burdens of this expansion: the people living next to coal projects.

Local populations are resisting private and public-sector pressure to dramatically expand coal-fired power because these projects are not intended for their benefit. While local people face displacement and the destruction of their livelihoods, electricity is often exported to urban centers. Communities are calling for a more sustainable model of energy development that prioritizes access to energy services for all, environmental sustainability, and human health. Their efforts to halt coal-plant construction have placed them front and center in the struggle over energy and development in the 21st century.

In the past, most communities struggling to take on ill-conceived projects have done so largely on their own, but that's starting to change. International coalitions are beginning to develop to bring publicity and support to front-line efforts. Here are a dozen places around the world where people are uniting to halt coal projects, increasingly with international support.

•  Sabah, Malaysia

In April, 1,500 people convened on a beach in Malaysia to savor a victory that had been judged impossible just two years earlier: the defeat of a 300-MW coal plant in the Malaysian state of Sabah, located on the northeast side of the island of Borneo. Celebrations were also underway 7,500 miles away, in California, among a group of activists who had helped draw international publicity to the issue -- including a Time magazine article entitled "A Coal Plant in Paradise."

• Phulbari, Bangladesh

Bangladesh's high population density (more than 164 million people in a country the size of Iowa) and rich agricultural land make coal mining a destructive proposition. In the township of Phulbari, as many as 220,000 people would be displaced by a proposed 15-million-ton-per-year coal mine and a 500-MW coal plant. Community opposition reached a crescendo in 2006, when paramilitary forces fired on a protest rally of as many as 70,000 people, killing three people and injuring 200. In the wake of these deaths, nationwide protests and strikes closed down the country for four days... During recent demonstrations, the Bangladeshi government has deployed its Rapid Action Battalion, notorious for torture and for the deaths of persons in its custody. The repression has failed.

• Andhra Pradesh, India

This coastal state of eastern India is experiencing a coal-plant construction boom, including the 4,000-MW Krishnapatnam Ultra Mega Power Project, one of nine such massive projects in planning or under construction across the country...The 2,640-MW Sompeta plant proposed by Nagarjuna Construction Company and the 2,640-MW Bhavanapadu plant proposed by East Coast Energy have both provoked large nonviolent protests that have ended in police attacks, including four deaths of local residents. Following coverage of the police action on Indian television, investigations revealed a pattern of "crony capitalism" among the permitting agencies and corporate sponsors. As of May 2011, the Sompeta plant had been cancelled and the Bhavanapadu plant had been placed on hold by officials, with corruption investigations continuing...

• Dawei, Burma

In Dawei, on the beautiful southern peninsula coast of Burma, Italian-Thai Development Plc signed a deal in Nov. 2010 to build a 4,000-to-6,000-MW coal plant, the largest in Southeast Asia and possibly the world. Within weeks of the signing, 19 villages had received orders to move. Dawei is 10 miles from Maungmagan, a scenic beach and rich fishing district...

• Nakhon Si Thammarat Province, Thailand - On Feb. 24, 2011, 10,000 people formed a human chain in this province in Thailand to protest a coal-fired power plant planned by Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand...

• Konkan Coast of Maharashtra, India

Home to 112 million people, this state in western India is building a concentration of large coal plants on a tiny sliver of land south of Mumbai known as the Konkan Coast (dubbed "the California of Maharashtra")...Concerned by the pollution and displacement entailed by the massive proposals, farmers have targeted some of the largest projects. One of these is the 4,000-MW Girye Ultra Mega Power Project, which prompted mango farmers and others to stage marches, hunger strikes, and other nonviolent actions. They successfully forced the project to seek a new location [PDF] as protests barred the government from acquiring the needed land.

• Orissa, India

In this state on the eastern coast of India, the scale of coal-plant development is staggering... In March, activists from across India converged on Orissa for a national conclave to plan a response to the coal boom, as well as the related issues of energy use and climate change. The mobilization includes the National Alliance for People's Movements, Focus Odisha, and numerous other groups.

• Madhya Pradesh, India

Since 1977, when the World Bank financed the first coal-fired plant in the region, the Singrauli district of this state in central India has been notorious for roughshod development and population displacement. Now more massive coal plants are being built or planned... The concentration of power generation in an agricultural area has left local communities reeling. The Sasan Ultra Mega Power Project, for example, has displaced 6,000 people. One man is benefiting: Mukesh Ambani, the controlling owner of India-based Reliance Power, whose reported net worth of $27 billion makes him one of the world's five richest individuals.

• Queensland and New South Wales, Australia

On a tonnage basis, Australia already leads the world in coal exports, and that lead may widen significantly if several massive mines are allowed to move forward in the eastern coal-mining states of Queensland and New South Wales... Farmers and ranchers are fighting back with a concerted effort to protect rich agricultural lands and precious water resources from mining operations...

•  Victoria, Australia

While the low-quality coal in this state in southeastern Australia is not suitable for export, it provides 91 percent of the fuel used for power generation in Victoria itself...

• Colombia

One of the oldest examples of citizens working across national boundaries on coal issues is the coalition of human rights and labor organizations that has brought attention to the massive mines in Colombia, such as the 35-by-5-mile Cerrejón coal mine, operated by Cerrejón Coal Company, and the mines operated by Drummond. The expansion of these mines has been marked by paramilitary violence, high numbers of deaths in mining accidents, and displacement of entire communities, including Tabaco, a 700-person Afro-Colombian village that was razed in 2001. Witness for Peace has brought members of Kentuckians for the Commonwealth to visit the mines, as well as people who live near the Salem Power Station in Massachusetts, which uses coal from Colombia.

• Sarangani Province, the Philippines

In the Philippines, grassroots protests against new coal plants and open-pit coal mining have taken place across the country...At a separate demonstration, students at Mindanao State University dressed as Na'vi from the film Avatar marched on the fenced property of the proposed plant site...

The co-authors (collaborative activists worldwide) conclude:

As grassroots resistance grows in countries around the globe, a nascent, interconnected, worldwide anti-coal movement is emerging. In an increasingly globalized world, local campaigns can quickly reach a global audience and tap into previously unimagined support networks. While the participants in this new movement are diverse, some of the patterns are becoming clear: sustained and passionate grassroots activism is challenging the idea that fossil fuels are the only option. Many governments have backtracked or shelved plans in response to political pressure or legal actions. Some banks, investors, and even energy companies are growing increasingly wary of further supporting coal.

But it's still too early to write the obituary for King Coal. The industry is now attempting to wrap itself in the cloak of "development," justifying dirty energy projects in the name of providing energy access for some of the world's most economically poor countries. While many coal projects have encountered strong opposition, too many others are proceeding without challenge.

...Like tobacco, coal insinuated its way into our lives delivering a cheap, short-term energy high, but leaving a bitter long-term aftertaste -- in the case of coal, ruined rivers and lands, lives wrecked and cut short, abandoned communities, and an increasingly polluted and potentially unlivable atmosphere.

We need clean energy alternatives, not the continuation of dirty energy that destroys people's health, livelihoods, and resources. Will you join the growing global movement to move away from coal?

(24 February 2011 - Thailand. Children join Greenpeace & thousands of other people from Nakhon Si Thammarat to protest plans for a new coal-fired power station to be built in their province by the Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand (EGAT). The protesters call for EGAT to immediately withdraw its coal project due to projected serious economic, social and environmental impacts. Photo: Greenpeace Int.)

Dolphin Dance Film Screening @Kyoto Fri 1.21

Cranes over Umekoji Park- courtesy of Deep Kyoto

Think "Kyoto." Imagine the ancient capital with its elegant temples. Now, picture dolphins soaring through the crisp Kyoto air. This image just doesn't work, does it?

Well, Orix Corporation (a Tokyo and Osaka-based financial company) is working behind closed doors with Kyoto City officials to impose an aquarium featuring a dolphin show on Umekoji Park. This sanctuary in the center of the urban city was dedicated to the 1200th anniversary of Kyoto's ascension as the imperial capital of Japan and is meant to be a park to "last for hundreds years." City officials seem to have other plans as it distribute the public land at discounted prices to private corporation, ignoring the overwhelming voices of opposition from local residents.

This Friday evening at Urban Guild in Kyoto (Voices for Umekoji event), Kyotoites and their supporters will gather in opposition to the aquarium plans for a night of song, dance, and discussion (in English and Japanese). The home of the Kyoto Protocol on climate change, Kyoto is an inland city with no links to the sea. It is an unsuitable location for an aquarium that will add an estimated 5400 tons of CO2 to the atmosphere per year while destroying one of the few carbon sinks and outdoor recreational areas in the city.

Visitors are attracted to Kyoto by its pristine temples, it's well-preserved architecture, and it's strong sense of tradition. People will not make the trip to Kyoto just to see dolphins. Tax-payer yen would be best spent on restoring the city and beautifying its parks, especially since Kyoto has the smallest amount of green space per capita for a city of its size. What more, Japan has more aquariums than any country in the world, measured in pure amount and per capita. Why build another one in a city with no marine links whatsoever?

Even worse, the exploitation of wild animals for entertainment purposes only serves to reinforce existing forms of domination over nature. The work of the Dolphin Dance Project to raise awareness of the beautiful lifestyle of wild dolphins and the man-made threats to them, including their unjust capture for aquariums, cannot be more relevant at this time. Michael Lambe of Deep Kyoto reports:

Watching this video, what’s really amazing to me is the incredibly trusting nature of these dolphins. I wonder why they don’t consider the boat and the humans in it as potential predators? There’s something amazing and quite moving about this trust, but it is also quite sad when you think how easily and how often this trust is betrayed.

One of the many arguments against the building of the Kyoto Aquarium is the issue of cruelty to animals, specifically dolphins. The building of a dolphinarium for “edutainment purposes” is a central aspect of the building plans and having seen those plans I can tell you that the space allotted for the dolphins is clearly both constrictive and cruel. Research has proven that dolphins are both intelligent animals capable of self-awareness, abstract thought, and creativity. They are also emotional animals that exhibit profound familial and social bonds. Some scientists have even suggested they should be considered “non-human persons” and afforded rights equivalent to our own. In other words, we ought to treat them better than taking them out of their natural habitat, confining them in pools and using them purely for our own entertainment.

Many of the postcards designed by Kawagoe Yoshio-san for the anti-aquarium campaign, depict dolphins, and frequently with a message that reads “君とは海で会いたい!” – I want to meet you in the ocean! This message that we should encounter wild creatures such as dolphins in their natural habitat and not in an entirely artificial environment is a strong one. So it seemed serendipitous that Chisa Hidaka the director of the Dolphin Dance Project should offer to show her short movie “Together” at the “Voices for Umekoji” event on Friday. The message is essentially the same.

Dancer and choreographer, Chisa Hidaka, initiated the Dolphin Dance Project in order to promote inter-species understanding. Having encountered dolphins in the wild, Chisa became intrigued by the similarities between dolphin play and human dance and began a project of filming inter-species improvised dance as a means of profound communication. The debut film, ‘Together: Dancing with Spinner Dolphins,’ won ‘Best Experimental Film’ at its world premiere at the Big Apple Film Festival. This film shows a human dancer and a wild spinner dolphin dancing playfully together beneath the waves. Though short, it is beautiful to watch and leaves you wanting more. Happily ‘Together’ is but a pilot for a longer film to be shot in 2011. ‘Sharing the Dance’ will be a full-length documentary about the making of a group dance with several human dancers and a pod of wild dolphins.

We are very proud to be showing the movie “Together” at our event on Friday!

Korean farmers win latest against U.S. industrial agriculture (a/k/a "Food, Inc."); How about Japanese farmers?

Koreans say "No" to U.S. industrial agriculture (a/k/a "Food, Inc.")

 (Photo: No Base Stories of Korea)

Martin Frid at Kurashi has posted on the Obama White House's latest attempts to put Japanese and Korean farmers out of business so U.S. industrial agriculture (a/k/a "Food, Inc.") can move in:

The U.S. wants more free trade to export its beef and cars to Asia. Yonhap, the official South Korean news channel says, there is no deal, as Obama fails to get Korea to agree.

Meanwhile, Japan is up in arms against the so-called Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP), another badly-thought-out deal, that would make it impossible for Japanese farmers to compete with cheap imports from the U.S.

We know that beef and cars are the main culprits that cause climate change and environmental havoc, and we have noted that the U.S. Officially Do Not Care (C). Case in point, the Obama administration is not even thinking about joining international efforts like protecting biological diversity on this beautiful planet. He will also not visit Hiroshima or Nagasaki when he arrives in Japan this fall.

We do know that there are a lot of intelligent and socially aware citizens in that country who would like to combat climate change and stop the madness, be it nuclear or biocidal. We just wish they would stand up and join the fight against so-called free trade agreements (there are actually clauses that are worse than the WTO TRIPS agreement, to impose strict patent rules on stuff like DNA, that the U.S. Department of Justice has just told courts to be null and invalid).

Note that this is all Orwellian speech: there is nothing "free" about trade for countries that sign up to these rules. Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan said the risk was of "competitive devaluation of currencies reminiscent of the Great Depression" - according to a good sum-up of the G20 talks in Seoul by Yahoo/AFP: Currency disputes dominate G20 summit.

The TPP is a Free Trade Agreement in disguise, pushed by a government that is now printing paper money (600 billion dollars as we blog) while trying to get Korea and Japan and others to sign up to its so-called policy of "Quanitative Easing" which you have to explain to me. "Easing?" What is so "quantitative" about it...

More beef (pumped up with artificial growth hormones, force-fed with patented GMO feed) and cars? If you can even call them cars. Just how will this solve the global economic pain?

No thanks...

Mainichi: "Japan will have tough time protecting farmers from trade liberalization under TPP"

Japan has already come under mounting pressure from the United States and other countries involved in the TPP to eliminate import tariffs on beef and these countries will not likely agree to exempt rice from trade liberalization, as Japan has demanded during past international trade negotiations.

"Far more effective measures to protect domestic farmers are necessary in preparation to participate in the TPP than those taken when Japan signed the 1993 trade agreement in the Uruguay Round of multilateral trade talks in 1993, under which Japan partially liberalized rice imports," says a high-ranking government official.

Over the next few days we will find out if great countries like South Korea and Japan with a long history will abandon all the efforts to seriously deal with real global issues like peak oil, climate change, and food security. I hope they have a better plan. Stay tuned.

See Martin Frid's entire post here.

To find out more about GMO and pesticide-dependent industrial agriculture, see Food, Inc.":

Approximately 10 billion animals (chickens, cattle, hogs, ducks, turkeys, lambs and sheep) are raised and killed in the U.S. annually. Nearly all of them are raised on factory farms under inhumane conditions. These industrial farms are also dangerous for their workers, pollute surrounding communities, are unsafe to our food system and contribute significantly to global warming...


Some of our (U.S.) most important staple foods have been fundamentally altered, and genetically engineered meat and produce have already invaded our (U.S.) grocery stores and our (U.S.) kitchen pantries...

In January 2008, the FDA approved the sale of meat and milk from cloned livestock, despite the fact that Congress voted twice in 2007 to delay FDA's decision on cloned animals until additional safety and economic studies could be completed...

Cancers, autism and neurological disorders are associated with the use of pesticides especially amongst farm workers and their communities...

Approximately 1 billion people worldwide do not have secure access to food, including 36 million in the US. National and international food and agricultural policies have helped to create the global food crisis but can also help to fix the system.

Eric Johnston: "COP10 to take on genetic, indigenous issues"

Great context and analysis from Eric Johnston of the Japan Times: "COP10 to take on genetic, indigenous issues":

From Oct. 18 to 29, the 10th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations' Convention on Biological Diversity, known as COP10, takes place in Nagoya.

Billed by some NGOs and Japanese government officials as the conference that will sign a "Kyoto Protocol for all living things," COP10 has a number of goals, including setting targets to conserve biodiversity systems over the next decade and creating a new body of experts to advise the U.N. on biodiversity.

Most controversially, it will seek to establish a new global agreement on how to more equitably share the benefits of genetic resources, often found on indigenous people's lands, that are used by pharmaceutical companies and others.

What's the Convention on Biodiversity, and what is it supposed to do?

The Convention on Biodiversity (CBD), along with the United Nations Framework on Climate Change Convention, was born at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, where it was recognized that, although the two issues were related, a separate negotiation regime was needed to deal with biodiversity loss and preservation.

The Convention has three main objectives: to conserve biological diversity; to use biological diversity, i.e. ecosystems and their related components, in a sustainable manner; and to share the benefits of biological diversity fairly and equitably. To date, there are 193 parties to the convention.

In May 2002, at the CBD's COP6 meeting, it was agreed to work to make a significant reduction of the current state of biodiversity loss at the global, regional and national level by 2010. There were several problems with this goal, however.

The first and most obvious is that it failed to commit states to specific numerical goals, leaving each party to determine politically rather than scientifically what was meant by a "significant reduction."

Another problem was that, unlike climate change, there was no one international body of scientific experts advising the U.N. at the time with the political clout enjoyed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Without such a body, forging an agreement on specific numbers was all the more difficult.

Given this background, it's not surprising that the U.N. recently concluded that, far from achieving significant reductions by 2010, the situation is growing much worse.

How much worse?

To give just a few examples the U.N. cites, 70 percent of the world's coral reefs, which nearly a half a billion people depend on for their lives and livelihoods, are threatened or have already been destroyed.

Of the world's 5,490 mammals, 79 are extinct, 188 are critically endangered, 449 are endangered, and 505 are vulnerable to extinction if current trends continue.

And 1,895 of the world's 6,285 known amphibians are in danger of extinction. Scientists have advised the U.N. the world is facing the greatest extinction crisis since the end of the age of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago.

Will COP10 also deal with preventing the extinction of these species?

In practice, what has the CBD done, and has it met its goals?

Read the rest of this important article here.

Global Work Party: Tree Planting with Electric Vehicles in Hakodate, Japan

Over 7,347 events were held in 188 countries across the planet to encourage governments and communities to take action to reverse climate change as a part 350.org's Global Work Party.

Circle 10/10/10 on your calendar. That’s the date. The place is wherever you live. And the point is to do something that will help deal with global warming in your city or community.

We’re calling it a Global Work Party, with emphasis on both 'work' and 'party'. In Auckland, New Zealand, they’re having a giant bike fix-up day, to get every bicycle in the city back on the road. In the Maldives, they’re putting up solar panels on the President’s office. In Kampala, Uganda, they're going to plant thousands of trees, and in Bolivia they’re installing solar stoves for a massive carbon neutral picnic.

Campaigners from 350.org have convinced the Obama administration to reinstall solar panels on the White House after rejecting 350.org's first proposal. The Reagan Administration removed solar panels erected on the White House by former climate-minded U.S. President Jimmy Carter. The Mexican government has also agreed to reduce CO2 emissions by 10%.

With October 10th being just a little over a week before the tenth ordinary meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (COP10) being held in Nagoya which will cover the adverse effects of climate change on biodiversity, actions in Japan were organized to urge the Japanese government to make stronger commitments to reducing CO2 emissions by transitioning to greener technologies. The tree planters in the photo above used electric vehicles to plant 100 beech trees on Mt. Kijihiki. Organizer Peter Howlett describes the solidarity event:

Our tree planting began by first meeting at Oshima-Ohno Station. (This will be the new Shinkansen Hakodate Station in 2015.) Planters were shuttled from here in Mitsubishi's new electric vehicle; i-MiEV up to the top of Mt. Kijihiki where we planted 100 beech trees. This photo was taken mid-planting. We chose Mt. Kijihiki because we are proposing the installing of a community wind farm (10-15 2000Kw turbines) on this mountaintop to power a Ride-the-Wind shuttle train to connect New Hakodate Station with old Hakodate Station (18km).

If such a delicate and difficult task as planting trees on a mountaintop can be achieved with the use of renewable energy-based technologies , surely with the proper sense of commitment and urgency, these technologies can be adapted in all aspects of our daily lives.

350. org organized a similar event last year to raise awareness of global CO2 emissions in October 2009 where 5,200 simultaneous demonstrations took place in 181 countries. CNN called it "the most widespread day of political action in the planet's history." With almost 7,350 events this year, it is clear that the movement to protect our earth from climate disaster is only growing stronger and stronger.

-Jen Teeter

Hands Across Sand calls for end to offshore drilling around the world

Photos from Hands Across the Sand, Yokohama, Japan

On February 13, 2010, over 10,000 concerned people in Florida, USA joined hands on nearly 100 beaches along the entire state coastline to demand an end to the dangerous, contaminating practice of coastal oil drilling.

Two months later, in one of the worst disasters in recent history, the entire southern U.S. Gulf Coast was threatened by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill--a catastrophe whose full extent is still unfolding.

Aiming to prevent future similar disasters, the Florida organizers put out a call for a similar event to take place worldwide this past June 26th. From the official Hands Across the Sand website:

The Deepwater Horizon disaster is a wake up call. Even as the Gulf disaster grows, British Petroleum and other oil companies continue to push for new offshore drilling anywhere oil might be found regardless of the risks they pose. The offshore oil industry is a dirty, dangerous business and no one industry should be able to place entire coastal economies and marine environments at risk.

America could be, should be the world leader in expanding cleaner energy sources yet our political process is paralyzed by oil money. It is time for our leaders to take bold, courageous steps and open the door to clean energy and renewables and free our country from its addiction to oil.

Footprints on the Path to Clean Energy, the official blog of the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, reports:

On Saturday, June 26th tens of thousands of people gathered at more than 900 locations in 39 countries to be part of an event called Hands Across the Sand. The message was simple, clear and powerful: NO to offshore drilling and YES to a clean energy future that will end our addiction to oil and other fossil fuels. This worldwide event transcended social and political lines to become one of the biggest grassroots phenomenona since the first Earth Day in 1970.

The 26th of June marked the 68th day since the world’s most technologically-advanced deepwater drilling rig exploded, killing 11 people and injuring others. After burning for two days, the rig sank on April 22nd, ironically the 40th anniversary of Earth Day. Since then, tens of millions of gallons of oil have spewed into the Gulf of Mexico and there is no definitive relief in sight. Thousands of square miles of ocean are devastated, shorelines and marshes are covered in tar and sludge, precious wildlife are dead and coastal communities, still recovering from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005, are economically crippled.

The full report may be read here.

An interactive map from the Hands Across the Sand website shows the worldwide locations where events were held. Three took place in Japan, including one in Yokohama, where participant Cylinda Marquart had the following inspiring message to share:



"Most of us were strangers before we met up on the beach, and yet there was a powerful energy that seemed to run through our chain of linked hands," Marquart also commented. "It felt hopeful, somehow. For fifteen minutes I held the tiny hand of a two-year old that I had met only moments before, and he just beamed this amazing smile out at the ocean. I couldn't stop wondering what he was thinking."

The Hands Across the Sand event in San Francisco happened to coincide with a previously organized event titled Slash Oil, where more than 500 participants (including members of the antiwar group Code Pink) gathered for a creative human formation spelling out the event's name. Photos are available at the event website here. Event organizer Brad Newsham is a San Francisco-based taxi driver who organized several "Beach Impeach" events during the presidency of George W. Bush, and who blogs on the fascinating interactions that ensue when he offers one free ride to a taxi customer every day. His website is here.

Videos and photos from other events taking place worldwide are available on the Hands Across the Sand gallery page, as well as the up-to-the-minute Facebook page.

Naomi Klein's "Gulf Oil Spill: A Hole in the World", published recently in the Guardian, is the latest example of her masterful probe into the destructive forces of the neoliberal capitalist mindset that allowed the Deepwater Horizon disaster to occur.

Recent additional excellent, in-depth reports of the incident also include "The Devil Went Down to Louisiana: Disaster in the Gulf" from Curve magazine, and "The Spill, The Scandal and the President" from Rolling Stone Magazine.

--Kimberly Hughes

Anna Lappé on healing our planet and the conversion to a climate-friendly food system

Anna Lappé, daughter of Frances Moore Lappé, author of the ground-breaking 1971 Diet for a Small Planet reveals more about the "power of food to heal our communities, our countries, and our planet" in her new book, Diet for a Hot Planet: The Climate Crisis at the End of Your Fork and What You Can Do about It .

Lappé points out that the unsustainable multinational industrial food industry (dependent on fossil fuels; toxic chemical pesticides and fertilizers) is responsible for as much as 1/3 of all greenhouse gases.

However, around the world, small farmers and their supporters are resurrecting traditional and creating new forms of sustainable agriculture that reverence our planet and life. This is a lifestyle that can cool and heal our planet.

In her book, Lappe spotlights people working for sustainability in Korea and China, as well as Mali and the U.S.

UN Report: Go VEGAN to stop Global Warming

From the June 2 Guardian: "UN urges global move to meat and dairy-free diet: Lesser consumption of animal products is necessary to save the world from the worst impacts of climate change, UN report says:"

A global shift towards a vegan diet is vital to save the world from hunger, fuel poverty and the worst impacts of climate change, a UN report said today.

As the global population surges towards a predicted 9.1 billion people by 2050, western tastes for diets rich in meat and dairy products are unsustainable, says the report from United Nations Environment Programme's (UNEP) international panel of sustainable resource management.

It says: "Impacts from agriculture are expected to increase substantially due to population growth increasing consumption of animal products. Unlike fossil fuels, it is difficult to look for alternatives: people have to eat. A substantial reduction of impacts would only be possible with a substantial worldwide diet change, away from animal products."

Professor Edgar Hertwich, the lead author of the report, said: "Animal products cause more damage than [producing] construction minerals such as sand or cement, plastics or metals. Biomass and crops for animals are as damaging as [burning] fossil fuels."

The recommendation follows advice last year that a vegetarian diet was better for the planet from Lord Nicholas Stern, former adviser to the Labour government on the economics of climate change. Dr Rajendra Pachauri, chair of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), has also urged people to observe one meat-free day a week to curb carbon emissions.

The panel of experts ranked products, resources, economic activities and transport according to their environmental impacts. Agriculture was on a par with fossil fuel consumption because both rise rapidly with increased economic growth, they said...

Agriculture, particularly meat and dairy products, accounts for 70% of global freshwater consumption, 38% of the total land use and 19% of the world's greenhouse gas emissions, says the report, which has been launched to coincide with UN World Environment day on Saturday.

Read the entire article (with links) here.

Kathy Freston wrote an even better article on this topic, "Vegetarianism is the New Prius," published three years ago at HuffPost.

And Kim Hughes' meditative post, "Fucha cuisine: Buddhist tradition offers lessons in nonviolent simplicity through food," takes this subject even deeper: exploring how conscious and reverential cultivation, preparation and enjoyment of food can be a practice of peace—thereby inherently contributing to a cooler, calmer world on subtle as well as physical levels.

CONSCIOUS EATING, KIND DIET: UN urges global move to meat and dairy-free diet; shift away from "Western" consumption pattern

Via The Guardian:

CONSCIOUS EATING, KIND DIET

UN urges global move to meat and dairy-free diet: Lesser consumption of animal products is necessary to save the world from the worst impacts of climate change, UN report says

guardian.co.uk
Wednesday 2 June 2010

A global shift towards a vegan diet is vital to save the world from hunger, fuel poverty and the worst impacts of climate change, a UN report said today.

As the global population surges towards a predicted 9.1 billion people by 2050, western tastes for diets rich in meat and dairy products are unsustainable, says the report from United Nations Environment Programme's (UNEP) international panel of sustainable resource management.

It says: "Impacts from agriculture are expected to increase substantially due to population growth increasing consumption of animal products. Unlike fossil fuels, it is difficult to look for alternatives: people have to eat. A substantial reduction of impacts would only be possible with a substantial worldwide diet change, away from animal products."

Professor Edgar Hertwich, the lead author of the report, said: "Animal products cause more damage than [producing] construction minerals such as sand or cement, plastics or metals. Biomass and crops for animals are as damaging as [burning] fossil fuels."

The recommendation follows advice last year that a vegetarian diet was better for the planet from Lord Nicholas Stern, former adviser to the Labour government on the economics of climate change. Dr Rajendra Pachauri, chair of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), has also urged people to observe one meat-free day a week to curb carbon emissions.

The panel of experts ranked products, resources, economic activities and transport according to their environmental impacts.

Agriculture was on a par with fossil fuel consumption because both rise rapidly with increased economic growth, they said. Ernst von Weizsaecker, an environmental scientist who co-chaired the panel, said: "Rising affluence is triggering a shift in diets towards meat and dairy products - livestock now consumes much of the world's crops and by inference a great deal of freshwater, fertilisers and pesticides."

Both energy and agriculture need to be "decoupled" from economic growth because environmental impacts rise roughly 80% with a doubling of income, the report found...

Agriculture, particularly meat and dairy products, accounts for 70% of global freshwater consumption, 38% of the total land use and 19% of the world's greenhouse gas emissions, says the report, which has been launched to coincide with UN World Environment day on Saturday...

Prof Hertwich, who is also the director of the industrial ecology programme at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, said that developing countries – where much of this population growth will take place – must not follow the western world's pattern of increasing consumption: "Developing countries should not follow our model. But it's up to us to develop the technologies in, say, renewable energy or irrigation methods."

Read the entire article here.

The First Annual Vegan Earth Day @Kyoto (Sunday, May 2nd 10-5): Interview with Chiko

• May all living things being able to live in a world of peace and harmony.
• 
  
• That we prevent our environmental problems from getting worse so that our children may be able to keep living on this earth.
• 
  
• May we live lives in health and with beauty.

These three ideas are the inspiration behind the logo for the first ever Kyoto Vegan Earth Day to be held in Kyoto during Golden Week this year on May 2, 2010. Organized by the same people that bring us the largest vegetarian festival in Japan year after year, the Kyoto Vegetarian Festival,(see post on 2009 Vegetarian Festival) the Vegan Earth Day will focus on the relationship our diets and Mother Earth:

As you know,the world already produces more than enough food, plant sourced for everyone. We would like suggest the way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the world's livestock, among the most serious contributors to global warming. We should care about climate change because if we don't, we can’t leave our children and their children sustainable earth.

Our vegetarian festival committee have hold vegetarian(vegan) festival since 2003 every October. a rare event bringing together vegan & vegetarian-, environment-, and peace-mind people from all over the country. An event for all ages, the festival gives you place to enjoy vegetarian food and listen to music while learning about vegetarianism, the environment, and more.

According to the Vegetarian Festival website 18% of greenhouse gases originating in the livestock industry. When one beef rice bowl requires over 2 tons of water to produce, versus 120 liters for a bowl of udon, the benefits to the earth of reducing meat consumption are quite obvious.

To find out more about how Vegan Earth Day was brought to life, Kyoto resident Jennifer Teeter interviewed Iwasa Akiko (a.k.a. Chiko), who has been organizing the Vegetarian Festival since 2003 (email correspondence translated from Japanese to English).

Can you tell us a little bit about the Vegetarian and Vegan scene in Kyoto?

9 years ago, when the first Vegetarian Festival was first held, people had only heard of the word vegetarian and many thought "vegetarian" simply meant vegetables. Also, many people thought it was strange for people to chose to lead a lifestyle where they didn't eat animals for religious purposes.

However, as the years have passed, judging by the people who come to the VegFest, questionnaires, the number of vegetarian restaurants and the media attention vegetarianism has garnered, we can see that the image of vegetarians has changed.

Perhaps Kyoto and Tokyo can be considered the easiest places for vegetarians to live in all of Japan. Kyoto is well-known for the vegetarian cooking of Buddhist monks called shojin ryori, and in addition, Kyoto attracts many foreigners, so the number of restaurants in Kyoto that are conscious of the diet of vegetarians has grown.

How did the Vegan Earth Day festival come to life?

The vegetarian festival started 9 years ago, but it was already an ALL VEGAN festival. Tokyo Earth Day, the largest open-air event in Japan, is quite famous, but many of us felt a little uncomfortable at the event. Despite the presence of many wonderful booths at Earth Day selling recycled plates and silverware, eco-bags, et cetera, we wondered why was there so much food with meat in it. There were only a few vegetarian shops on the premises and it felt as if there wasn't any vegetarian food at all but just long lines for restaurants selling animal products. It was a very strange atmosphere. While it is impossible for everyone to all of a sudden become vegan, couldn't we, on Earth Day at least, go without food made from animals?

So, now that people in Japan understand what it means to be vegetarian, we hope that the next step will be that people understand what VEGAN means. We have received requests that we have a Vegetarian Festival twice a year from the many people that come and stalls at the Vegetarian festival. It is from these requests that Vegan Earth Day was born.

Over the year, do you feel that the Vegetarian Festival has had an influence on the vegetarian scene in Kyoto?

I don't think we have influenced the vegetarian scene. It is more the hard work of vegetarian restaurants, the influence of celebs from overseas, and the health boom. These and other factors have played a part and and people in Japan are increasing their understanding about vegetarianism.

What changes have you seen over the years?

Now, there is more of a positive response when people say "I am a vegetarian." You hear more often people responding with "Wow, that's cool" and "Teach me some recipes." Also, we receive lots of messages telling us how people have become vegetarian after coming to the festival and learning about environmental problems and the devastating situation of animals for the first time. A great part of this open-air event is that while eating delicious food and learning, people can have a great time and reflect on their own eating habits and ways of thinking.

Do you have any advice for people that are thinking of becoming vegetarian or vegan?

It is not that difficult. First you have to give it a try. After two weeks, your body will feel great and you won't be able to stop.

The media presents a variety of ways to be vegetarian, from macrobiotic diets to the raw food diet. But, everyone is different so you need to find the way that works for you and enjoy your vegan life. Also, be confident in how wonderful it is to find vegan friends and together expand the circle of vegan friends for the future of the earth.

Finally, what is your favorite vegan food?

I guess I am a Japanese person after all, so my favorites are miso soup with tofu and brown rice, and I like eating lots of in-season fruit.

Chiko also explained the logo for Vegan Earth Day:

The logo has three green sprouts branching out from the center. They represent:

1. All living things being able to live in a world of peace and harmony

2. Preventing our environmental problems from getting worse so that our children may be able to keep living on this earth

3. Health and beauty (this is purposefully the smallest sprout:)

We created the logo to incorporate these ideas.

Thank you Chiko for your inspiring answers! From this interview, it is clear to see that this event promises to be thought-provoking, educational, and fun. Hope to see you there!

- Jen Teeter

The Earth Can't Afford Mo War Any More! World People's Conference on Climate Change & the Rights of Mother Earth • Carbon Footprint of War

On April 22, people from around the world will converge in Cochabamba, Bolivia on Earth Day to promote real solutions and a human rights approach to the climate crisis.

The World People's Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth will push the world's leading carbon emitters, who promote unjust and false solutions such as carbon offsets, stricter binding carbon reductions and reparations for industrial-driven environmental destruction, to change course in preparation for the next round of UN Climate talks which will take place this December in Cancun, Mexico.

A major piece of the climate crisis that is not often discussed is the impact or carbon footprint of the US military. Did you know that the US military burns 3.5 million gallons of fuel every day on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? United for Peace and Justice member, the Wisconsin Network for Peace and Justice , has put together a great little Earth Day flier connecting climate destruction and war.

Lets amplify the voices of the people in Bolivia and make the connection between war and climate crisis during this years Earth Day events. Please Download a UFPJ version of the flier here and distribute it at Earth Day events in your community!

For a good article on the Peoples Conference: http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/04/14-3
Download UFPJ "Carbon Footprint Of War" flyer

Long-time UFPJ member group Global Justice Ecology Project will be providing media support for the North America the Grassroots Global Justice Alliance-Indigenous Environmental Network delegation is attending with the aim of amplifying the perspectives of frontline communities resisting the impacts of climate change. Information will be posted on the Climate Connections blog: climatevoices.wordpress.com

"Earth Hour" call around the world for a binding pact to cut greenhouse gas emissions

Millions of people concerned about sustainability are observing "Earth Hour" around the world--turning off their lights at 8:30 p.m.--in a call for a binding pact to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

Vandana Shiva: GMO crops "suicidal" compared to native crops adapted to flood & drought--"Resilience is built through diversity"

GMO companies have pushed their way into India, persuading small farmers to purchase expensive GMO seeds on borrowed money. Many of these farmers have committed suicide after the promises of better cotton yields turned out to be false hype--poor or bad GMO crop yields resulted in insufficient income to pay back their debts.

In February, India's government imposed a moratorium on the use of a GMO eggplant because of safety concerns.

In a recent interview with Reuters, Indian environmentalist and GMO-free advocate Vandana Shiva, warned that the use of genetically modified crops is "suicidal" because they, unlike native and normal crops, cannot adapt to flooding and drought:

"The (GM) system is more about companies making money from farmers than food security..."

Plenty of drought- and flood-resistant traditional crop varieties already exist and simply need to be brought back to market, supporters of traditional farming say.

Shiva said India has hundreds of varieties of rice, and many that show resistance to flooding, drought and saltwater are now being carefully bred at Indian research institutes to increase yields and are then re-released to farmers.

In India's northeast Assam province, where fields have been flooded for weeks after intense rains, demand has surged for two rice varieties that can survive weeks under water and also produce well even in dry conditions.

Planting a broader variety of crop strains - rather than a couple of GM varieties - should help protect the world food supply and insure it against emerging climate threats, including an expanding range of crop pests.

While a pest might decimate some varieties of crops, it is unlikely it could destroy a wide range of varieties, she said.

"Resilience is built through diversity," Shiva said.

Keeping small farmers on their land is also key, she said, because small farmers are more productive per acre than big-scale growers, according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation's figures.

"The majority of people in the world are still farming on small farms," she said. "If we're addressing food security we'd better enhance the security of small farms."