Social Justice News, 3-25-07

Hey everybody,
It’s been quite a week. Things have been hopping everywhere. Maybe it’s just because its spring, and everything is going through a period of rebirth and renewal. My turnips are up, and my potatoes, onions, carrots, etc are in the ground. I’ve resigned myself to not getting any peas thanks to this weather, and that way if I do somehow get some I’ll be extra happy. My bird feeder has lately been besieged by all kinds of different birds. I’ve counted six different types in the past week. I can only identify two of them by name –the cardinals and the finches –but I can tell the difference between the varieties. Why oh why doesn’t Audobon still give out birding guides? (Okay, I could buy one, but I’m too cheap –and too broke –to do so!)

FEATURED ARTICLES
I knew it was dry…but not this dry. We’re in the middle of the driest period in all the time -117 years –that the TVA has been keeping records. Chalk another problem up to global warming.
http://www.enewscourier.com/local/local_story_080221455.html

Department of Peace Controversy: America would be a bunch of wusses, say the detractors. Hmm, maybe if we were a bunch of “wusses”, almost a million people wouldn’t be dead in Iraq? Maybe we need more “wusses” in this country!
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=9083208

No More Bees = No More People (or much of anything else). Bees are dying at an incredibly alarming rate –up to 70% of the East coast bee population has died over the winter! Bees are important why? They pollinate crops, which produce food for, well, everything. Some thing GMO plants are to blame.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,473166,00.html

Why Environmentalists Sometimes Conspire Against Their Own Interests: Or, the Idols of Environmentalism. A must read folks!
http://www.orionmagazine.org/pages/om/07-2om/White.html

GOOD NEWS
Gore In Congress: The NY Times on Gore’s trip to Congress this week. For a blow-by-blow account, check out the website of Grist Magazine.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/21/washington/21cnd-gore.html?_r=1&ref=us&oref=slogin2

CLIMATE CHANGE
Has the arctic tipped? Scientists are beginning to think so, as melting accelerates at a frightening rate. The latest projections show that the Circle could be ice-less in summers as soon as 2040! Maybe Bush will admit global warming is real when the White House (and his family’s ranch in Maine) get submerged by rising seas. Ya think?
http://www.countercurrents.org/cc-connor170207.htm

Plastic Daffodils and Climate Change: I couldn’t make this stuff up if I tried. How deep down the rabbit hole does the denial go? Hey people! Take the blue pill! The blue one!
http://transitionculhttp://www.commondreams.org/views07/0321-22.htmture.org/2007/03/20/a-host-of-plastic-daffodils/

Biofuels Causing Massive Deforestation: Chalk another problem up to the rush for biofuels. And these things are supposed to be green? Only in the sense of ‘greenbacks’, if you get my meaning.
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines07/0322-01.htm

Worse than the disease? Okay, the techno-fix crowd has come out with some really wacky ideas to fix global warming –mirrors in space, putting sulphur in the air, etc. read about some of them here.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20070318.wclimatee0318/BNStory/Science/home

Are you scared yet? James Lovelock says you ought to be. If he’s right, that cabin on Hudson Bay that I keep talking about in jest will soon be awfully crowded!
http://environment.guardian.co.uk/ethicalliving/story/0,,2034370,00.html

POLITICS

POLLUTION
China’s Rivers in Collapse: Oh hear ye, hear ye! Witness the result of worshipping the God of Economic Growth above all else.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/IC24Ad01.html

ENVIRONMENT

OTHER
Marketing to the World’s Poorest: All right, its official: no one in the business world has any ethics (or shame) anymore. This is revolting1
http://marketplace.publicradio.org/shows/2007/03/19/PM200703194.html

Why more no longer equals better: An excerpt from Bill Mckibben’s latest book, Deep Economy. This looks like a really good book, and I’d be delighted if the library would get it. If anyone else agrees, you can call to request that they get it. The more requests they get, the more likely they’ll buy it! This is a rather long excerpt, but the second link has a shorter article along the same lines if you don’t have time to read the full excerpt.
http://www.alternet.org/envirohealth/49593/
http://www.commondreams.org/views07/0321-22.htm

Website of the Week: Hillbilly Housewife. Fair Warning: This place is ran by a fundamentalist Christian and it shows (to put it mildly). But it is THE best place I’ve found for good, cheap recipes.
http://www.hillbillyhousewife.com/

UU Joke of the Week: Arguing with a Unitarian Universalist is like mud wrestling a pig. Pretty soon you realize the pig likes it.

Have a good weekend everybody!
-Rebecca