Politics & Government

Green Drinks + Cinema Verde Film Screening JUNE 5

Cinema Verde Merges with Green Drinks to Present Film at Gators 4 Cinema
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
May 23, 2013
CONTACT: Trish Riley, 352-327-3560, Trish@CinemaVerde.org
      

Cinema Verde Environmental Film Festival merges with Green Drinks to feature environmental films at Gators 4 Cinema in the Oaks Mall Plaza, slated to reopen its doors this month. The first Cinema [...]

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Recent Posts

2013 Farm Bill Approved By Senate Agriculture Committee

Pat Roberts

The Senate Agriculture Committee on Tuesday approved a massive five-year farm bill that would cut spending while also creating new subsidies for farmers.
The legislation approved 15-5 includes concessions to Southern rice and peanut farmers, thanks to a new top Republican on the committee, Mississippi Sen. Thad Cochran. The bill eliminates $5 billion in annual subsidies, [...]

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Dozens expected to protest genetically altered food in a March Against Monsanto | Gainesville.com

More than 100 people from the Gainesville area are expected to join thousands of others around the world on Saturday to protest a corporation at the forefront of genetically modified crops and the use of insecticides. The March Against Monsanto spans more than 40 countries, with protests planned for about 250 cities, including 15 in [...]

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Grassroots reject EDF on fracking

NEARLY 70 GROUPS: ENVIRONMENTAL DEFENSE FUND DOES NOT SPEAK FOR US ON FRACKING
“Greenwashing” Called Out: No Confusion Should Arise About Views of Local Communities As a Result of Shale Gas Industry’s Coopting of EDF
WASHINGTON, D.C.///May 22, 2013///A total of 68 leading grassroots organizations focused on citizen and environmental issues today released a joint letter to [...]

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PG&E fine is appropriate, paper says

The Sacramento Bee weighs in with an editorial:
If it wins final approval, the eye-popping $2.25 billion penalty that the California Public Utility Commission’s Safety and Enforcement Division has recommended against Pacific Gas and Electric Co. will be the largest ever imposed against a utility in the United States.
PG&E officials predictably complained that it is excessive. [...]

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West Virginia’s coal industry faces huge drop

wcoal

Coal production in Southern West Virginia and the rest of central Appalachia will continue to plummet over the next 30 years, according to a new report that examines multiple stresses that are pressuring the region’s mining industry.
The report, from the Morgantown-based environmental consulting firm Downstream Strategies, says current government estimates project production to drop by 53 percent [...]

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Alaska: where politics and climate change go hand-in-hand

alaska

From Palin to Parnell, Alaska’s politicans have struggled to reconcile policy with actuality.
There is no disputing the real-time effects of climate change. Alaska is warming faster than anywhere else in America, setting off a circumpolar scramble for oil and other resources given up by the melting ice and threatening the livelihood of those who still [...]

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Rise Up or Die | Perspectives, What Matters Today | BillMoyers.com

Mountaintop Mining

Corporations write our legislation. They control our systems of information. They manage the political theater of electoral politics and impose our educational curriculum. They have turned the judiciary into one of their wholly owned subsidiaries. They have decimated labor unions and other independent mass organizations, as well as having bought off the Democratic Party, which [...]

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Monsanto Found Guilty of Chemical Poisoning in Landmark Case | REALfarmacy.com | Healthy News and Information

monsanto-poison-sprayed-on-crops-041712

In 2007, France officially banned Lasso from use in the country in accordance with a European Union EU directive enacted in 2006 prohibiting the chemical from further use on crops in any member countries. But despite all the evidence proving that alachlor can disrupt hormonal balance, induce reproductive or developmental problems, and cause cancer, the [...]

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New York town bans fracking discussions

nyfrack

The small New York town of Sanford has enraged environmental groups by prohibiting all discussion of natural gas drilling at town board meetings and is now facing a lawsuit for violating free speech rights.
Those opposed to hydraulic fracturing or “fracking” have been unable to discuss their environmental concerns since the ban was implemented in September. [...]

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Why the Ethanol Boom Means More E. Coli Burgers

ethanol

Back in 2007, amid a boom in US corn-based ethanol, researchers at Kansas State University released a sobering study involving distillers grains—the mash that’s left over after corn has been fermented and distilled into ethanol. As various government programs ramped up ethanol production—and with it the price of corn—the livestock industry was increasingly turning to [...]

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EU agrees fishing overhaul to replenish stocks

fishprotest

European fisheries ministers on Wednesday agreed to end decades of overfishing and ban throwing unwanted fish back into the sea to restore stocks to healthy levels by 2020.
The agreement, which needs the approval of the European Parliament, could end haggling over annual fishing quotas and introduce long-term plans to grow fish stocks.
The deal, which took 36 hours of [...]

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Nuclear Protestors To Remain Jailed In Tennessee For Months

Sister Megan Rice And Two Others Await Fate In Nuclear Breakin Trial

A judge has ruled that a nun and two other protesters must remain in jail until they are sentenced in September for breaking into a nuclear weapons plant in Tennessee.
Sister Megan Rice and protesters Michael Walli and Greg Boertje-Obed  were convicted Wednesday of sabotaging the plant and damaging federal property last year at the Y-12 [...]

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Insurers Stray From the Conservative Line on Climate Change

damage

If there were one American industry that would be particularly worried about climate change it would have to be insurance, right?

From Hurricane Sandy’s devastating blow to the Northeast to the protracted drought that hit the Midwest Corn Belt, natural catastrophes across the United States pounded insurers last year, generating$35 billion in privately insured property losses, $11 billion more than [...]

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Supreme Court hands a big win to Monsanto on GMO seeds

gmoseeds

In a blow to opponents of GMOs and Monsanto, the Supreme Court today ruled unanimously that an Indiana soybean farmer violated the company’s patent by saving its trademark Roundup Ready seeds.
Every time a farmer buys seeds from Monsanto, she or he must sign a contract agreeing not to save seeds from the crop. Monsanto’s many [...]

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Backyard Chickens in the Gas Patch

Fish Creek Monitor remembers a favorite chicken and reflects on life near a fracking well:
Rest in Peace Maisy
March 11, 2008 – May 14, 2013
 

Our first baby chicks.  (March 2008)
The chick on the left is a Buff Orpington.  After researching various chicken breeds, we selected her because we read that they have docile temperaments and are [...]

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Monsanto’s thumb on academic publishing

Independent Science News reports on how Monsanto is influencing peer-reviewed scientific journals:
by Claire Robinson and Jonathan Latham, PhD
Richard Smith, former editor of the British Medical Journal, has jested that instead of scientific peer review, its rival The Lancet had a system of throwing a pile of papers down the stairs and publishing those that reached [...]

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Chiefs walk out of Keystone XL meeting

Indian Country reports:
ICTMN Staff

May 17, 2013

Elders and chiefs of at least 10 sovereign nations walked out of a meeting with U.S. State Department officials in Rapid City, South Dakota, on Thursday May 16 in which the government was attempting to engage in tribal consultation over the Keystone XL pipeline.
Deeming the meeting “invalid,” leaders of the [...]

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EPA mentions bees in insecticide approval

Common Dreams posts:
Ignoring Bee Crisis, EPA Greenlights New ‘Highly Toxic’ Pesticide
Green group: ‘The EPA continues to put industry interests first to exacerbate an already dire pollinator crisis.’
- Lauren McCauley, staff writer
Despite new findings that prove a heightened crisis in US bee populations and a recent ban in Europe on similar chemical applications, the Environmental Protection [...]

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Brazil’s shrinking rain forest (PHOTOS)

The country with the world’s largest rain forests is preparing to enact regulations that opponents say could speed up deforestation and increase greenhouse gas emissions.
Amazonian rain forest is burned to create pasture land for ranching in Brazil. For two years, Brazil has been debating how to update a 1965 law that was designed to control [...]

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