Super-Sized Apocalypse vs. American Excess

Super-Size Your Apocalypse with Bacon & Cheese
Why Excessive Lifestyles will Lead to Even Greater Devastation

BZ. Bywydd (GNN)

We have finally reached a crisis of "climate change" in America which most of the world has already suffered— environmental devastation on a scale which lays bare our vulnerable existence on an unforgiving ocean planet.

At the same time researchers are identifying the worst of all global warming gases: cow farts. Not just flatulence, but the outgassing of all the digesting and rotting manure from pigs, cows and chickens— the animals which feed our "fast food" cravings in mass quantities. Methane turns out to be 20 times more powerful as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.

Methane is a nightmare problem because it’s also being released in nature as global warming accelerates, from the melting of arctic tundra and frozen methane solids in lakes and oceans to termites and ants moving northward. Science also believes that methane gas is a leading cause of mass extinctions in the history of life on Earth.

How much are Americans willing to sacrifice before we admit that we are selling a lifestyle which is damaging the planet, and ultimately ourselves? We have lost the magical heart of Mardi Gras and millions of homes in our global gamble. Will we continue to lurch ahead beyond the speed limit, gas guzzling and super-sizing ourselves? What do we "gamble away" next, playing along with corporate cardsharks— Miami, New York City, Honolulu?

Is it more insane to continue this dangerously distracted course, or to demand every citizen make radical changes in their lifestyle? Sure, ending the beef, pork and petrol industries will be difficult, but more than watching entire portions of the country go under water? And can anyone explain why the automotive industry continues to churn out monstrously wasteful, tank-like vehicles? Do the gas-guzzlers have no shame?

Here are a few brief proposals from a "primitive" idealist in the middle of the Pacific:

Popularize coconuts as a nutritious and healing food which can be grown throughout the sun belt and all along the southern coasts. This will generate a new orchard industry and provide the extra benefit of durable fiber and healing oil. Imagine sitting under your neighborhood coconut palms, sipping sweet coconut milk...

Similarly, popularize and plant the miracle tree "Ulu" which produces breadfruit. Studies show that breadfruit actually promotes muscle growth, a natural "performance enhancer" which tastes great. One can either eat it as a starch, like potatoes, or let it ripen to soft-sweet, using it like bread dough or pancake batter. It grows prolifically, again all along the sunbelt and southern coasts.

Thousands of nurseries could employ tens of thousands of people to produce these plants, as well as other miracle plants like sweet potato vines, which give both greens and sweet tubers, and all the buttery varieties of avocado. The many gourmet variations of coconut and breadfruit can become a cultural fixation like beer or cheese are today.

Everyone is hereby called to find a good bicycle today, learn how to ride it safely, manifest a job within biking distance, attach a big basket, and put your muscles to good use. Bicycles are perhaps the most efficient and miraculous machines every invented by human beings, running simply on oatmeal and awareness.

On the apocalyptic tip, there’s a new Burger King spot on prime-time promoting their double-patty bacon-mushroom burger with a comic motto: "I’m full of sits, you’re full of sits, we’re all full of sits." A pseudo-"fitness" guru recruits healthy, active adults to sit down and wrap their hands around a fat burger. It’s a cynical, reverse-psychology appeal which corporations know is the pop-fulcrum for young adults in America.

If the corporate agencies can push us toward self-destruction and over-indulgence on a constant basis, isn’t it time to demand equal attention for solutions to our current climate crisis? Or will we remain mesmerized like sheep in the headlights of catastrophe, allowing our industrial machinery to spin further out of control?

B.Z. Bywydd (GNN) is a Post-Modern Anthropologist and author living on a remote island in the Pacific. Look for his new books coming this fall: "Plant Planet: Planetary Healing with the Plant Kingdom" and "Micro World: Healing Yourself in an Ocean of Microbes."
Contact: metamagic@gmail.com Web: http://metamagic.org

“For They That Sow the Wind Shall Reap the Whirlwind”

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Mon Aug 29, 2005

As Hurricane Katrina dismantles Mississippi’s Gulf Coast, it’s worth recalling the central role that Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour played in derailing the Kyoto Protocol and kiboshing President Bush’s iron-clad campaign promise to regulate CO2.

In March of 2001, just two days after EPA Administrator Christie Todd Whitman’s strong statement affirming Bush’s CO2 promise former RNC Chief Barbour responded with an urgent memo to the White House.

Barbour, who had served as RNC Chair and Bush campaign strategist, was now representing the president’s major donors from the fossil fuel industry who had enlisted him to map a Bush energy policy that would be friendly to their interests. His credentials ensured the new administration’s attention.

The document, titled “Bush-Cheney Energy Policy & CO2,” was addressed to Vice President Cheney, whose energy task force was then gearing up, and to several high-ranking officials with strong connections to energy and automotive concerns keenly interested in the carbon dioxide issue, including Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham, Interior Secretary Gale Norton, Commerce Secretary Don Evans, White House chief of staff Andy Card and legislative liaison Nick Calio. Barbour pointedly omitted the names of Whitman and Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill, both of whom were on record supporting CO2 caps. Barbour’s memo chided these administration insiders for trying to address global warming which Barbour dismissed as a radical fringe issue.

“A moment of truth is arriving,” Barbour wrote, “in the form of a decision whether this Administration’s policy will be to regulate and/or tax CO2 as a pollutant. The question is whether environmental policy still prevails over energy policy with Bush-Cheney, as it did with Clinton-Gore.” He derided the idea of regulating CO2 as “eco-extremism,” and chided them for allowing environmental concerns to “trump good energy policy, which the country has lacked for eight years.”

The memo had impact. “It was terse and highly effective, written for people without much time by a person who controls the purse strings for the Republican Party,” said John Walke, a high-ranking air quality official in the Clinton administration.

On March 13, Bush reversed his previous position, announcing he would not back a CO2 restriction using the language and rationale provided by Barbour. Echoing Barbour’s memo, Bush said he opposed mandatory CO2 caps, due to “the incomplete state of scientific knowledge” about global climate change.

Well, the science is clear. This month, a study published in the journal Nature by a renowned MIT climatologist linked the increasing prevalence of destructive hurricanes to human-induced global warming.

Now we are all learning what it’s like to reap the whirlwind of fossil fuel dependence which Barbour and his cronies have encouraged. Our destructive addiction has given us a catastrophic war in the Middle East and—now—Katrina is giving our nation a glimpse of the climate chaos we are bequeathing our children.

In 1998, Republican icon Pat Robertson warned that hurricanes were likely to hit communities that offended God. Perhaps it was Barbour’s memo that caused Katrina, at the last moment, to spare New Orleans and save its worst flailings for the Mississippi coast.

http://www.StopGlobalWarming.org

Global Perspective on Climate Change in L.A.

Despite terrorist attempts to disrupt the G8 Summit in July, British Prime
Minister Tony Blair and attending world leaders were determined to continue
the goals they set out to achieve. What do the industrialized nations
perceive as being the solutions to the global threat posed by climate change
and how do they propose to achieve sustainable development in the poorest
countries?

Will governments around the world take the lead in developing
renewable energy sources, low-carbon technologies, and expanded use of
markets? Prime Minister Blair’s science advisor at the G8 Summit Sir David
King will provide a timely global perspective and Mary Nichols, director of
UCLA’s Institute of the Environment, will speak from a California
perspective.

Friday, September 16, 2005
12:00 noon
Beverly Hills Hotel
9641 Sunset Blvd, Beverly Hills, CA 90210

To RSVP call Town Hall Los Angeles at (213) 628-8141. Mention the special
rate for Global Green e-activists: $38 (discounted from regular non-member
rate of
$55).

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

REPORT: GREATEST CAUSE OF GLOBAL WARMING METHANE FROM ANIMAL AGRICULTURE

NEW YORK, NY, August 29, 2005 —/WORLD-WIRE/— According to a report issued today by environmental group EarthSave International the most significant source of climate change over the next half-century is likely animal agriculture.

Because carbon dioxide makes up the majority of greenhouse gas emissions, environmentalists have focused on its main sources: cars and power plants. The report points out that other gases, produced in smaller amounts but far more powerful at trapping heat, actually cause the majority of the earth’s warming. Moreover, because the cars and power plants that emit carbon dioxide also emit climate-cooling aerosols, they are responsible for little to no net warming today.

The report’s data analysis, based on the work of leading climate scientists, shows that methane sources - not carbon dioxide sources - are the biggest cause of global warming today, and will continue to be for the next 50 years. The number one human-related source of methane worldwide is livestock, the report says. "This reveals an untapped opportunity to make serious and rapid progress in reducing dangerous global warming trends," said Noam Mohr, author of the report.

The report strongly stresses that this is not the work of global warming skeptics, citing leading pro-environment climate scientists quoted by Al Gore and the Sierra Club, and a peer review by the Union of Concerned Scientists.

The report provides global warming skeptics no excuse to let up on sources of carbon dioxide, as it remains in the atmosphere for centuries. Nevertheless, according to the data, methane will remain the primary offender in our lifetime, with animal agriculture its biggest source.

Also in the report:

Methane is 21 times more powerful a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. While carbon dioxide levels have risen by 31%, methane levels have more than doubled.

Animal agriculture produces more than 100 million tons of methane a year, about 85% from livestock digestion and 15% from manure "lagoons" used to store untreated feces.

Methane cycles out of the atmosphere in just 8 years, so reducing meat consumption quickly translates to cooling of the earth. In comparison, carbon dioxide can stay in the atmosphere for centuries.

Less consumption of animal products also means less water consumption, water pollution, air pollution, and even carbon dioxide emissions.

The report calls on environmental organizations to make vegetarian advocacy a major part of their global warming campaigns.

"Anyone who cares about global warming can start making a difference at every meal, simply by leaving meat off their plates," said Mohr. "It turns out that what’s good for your health is also good for the planet."

EarthSave International is a non-profit organization dedicated to improving the environment and all life on Earth.

For an online copy of the report "A New Global Warming Strategy,"
visit http://www.earthsave.org/globalwarm...

2 Million Years of Climate Change in Our Lifetime
As the world has been battered and bruised this week, how we can prevent global warming?

By Michael Broomhead

This week has seen our serene earth battered and bruised brutally by Mother Nature.

Today, central Europe remains on high alert after floods devastated the continent’s towns and cities, killing 42 people. In Alpine Switzerland, hundreds have been evacuated while fears are high in the capital Bern of more floods. Romania saw seven elderly people killed on Wednesday, in what has been one of the worst places affected. In Germany, Austria and Switzerland, eleven people are feared dead with authorities struggling to reinstate basic needs.

In Florida, six people are dead and 1.4 million residents are without power after Hurricane Katrina inflicted devastation to the Sunshine Capital. Katrina is the sixth deadly hurricane to hit Florida in a year. The storm is now on course to hit the Gulf of Mexico, gathering strength as its 100mph winds destroy power to those affected.

In Tokyo earlier this week, a powerful typhoon battered the capital, killing one person and wounding two others. There were sustained fears of floods after Typhoon Mawar brought heavy rain and gales of 67mph.

Is this chain of events the work of global warming?

First of all, what is global warming? For more than ten years, people have been using fossil fuels for their energy requirements. Oil, coal and gas has been burnt, releasing carbon dioxide into our atmosphere. This action has made carbon dioxide concentrations in our atmosphere the highest in 150,000 years with the heat being trapped, keeping our Earth unusually warm. The 1990’s was the warmest decade with 1998 seeing the warmest weather. The increasing heat has led to the depressing sights of our polar ice caps melting followed recently by numerous occasions of floods as mentioned above.

So what if our gas emissions are not brought under control? According to Greenpeace, the pressure group campaigning for a cleaner and healthier environment, the answer is anything but bleak and dark.

“If our greenhouse gas emissions are not brought under control, the speed of climate change over the next hundred years will be faster than anything known since before the dawn of civilization. There is a very real possibility that climate feedback mechanisms will result in a sudden and irreversible climate shift. No one knows how much global warming it would take to trigger such a ‘doomsday scenario’”.

It’s a worrying fact to know that we are the cause of this potential catastrophe, but what can we do to prevent more countries being savaged by the elements? The answer is endless. We can turn off our PC’s, TV’s, DVD’s and hi-fi’s rather than leaving them on standby. We can switch off our lights and replace our high-voltage bulb’s with LED lighting systems. We can insulate our houses, making us warm without damaging our world and we can also buy a combined fridge/freezer. Think of it this way. We are part of a sixty billion piece jigsaw and by doing one of those things above we will eventually complete our task and make a difference.

The government also plays a colossal role in our environments welfare. In the UK, more wind farms have been introduced to provide cleaner energy sources but more needs to be done between corporations which pollute the sky. In the US, George W. Bush does not see climate change as a problem but earlier this year, the US, China, India, South Korea, Japan and Australia announced a surprise pact to cut greenhouse gasses. The UK’s Chief Scientist, Professor Sir David King has said, ‘Global warming is more of a threat to us than terrorism.’ If those words prove to be true, then global warming should be much higher on the governments agenda than it currently is.

So, as we can see, global warming is indeed a sincere worry and only we can prevent it from harming future generations.

“Climate change is a reality. Today, our world is hotter than it has been in two thousand years. By the end of the century, if current trends continue, the global temperature will likely climb higher than at any time in the past two million years” - Greenpeace.