Imagine BP’s Deepwater Horizon Gulf oil disaster happening every single year, with little or no public outcry, no media coverage, and all but silence from government and the companies involved. Welcome to Nigeria.

Over the last 50 years, foreign oil companies have spilled over 1.5 million tons of oil here, but there have been no legal convictions against them, and no compensation for spill victims. The Niger Delta is now one of the most polluted places in the world. Snip from Guardian article by John Vidal:

On 1 May this year a ruptured ExxonMobil pipeline in the state of Akwa Ibom spilled more than a million gallons into the delta over seven days before the leak was stopped. Local people demonstrated against the company but say they were attacked by security guards. Community leaders are now demanding $1bn in compensation for the illness and loss of livelihood they suffered. Few expect they will succeed. In the meantime, thick balls of tar are being washed up along the coast.

Within days of the Ibeno spill, thousands of barrels of oil were spilled when the nearby Shell Trans Niger pipeline was attacked by rebels. A few days after that, a large oil slick was found floating on Lake Adibawa in Bayelsa state and another in Ogoniland. “We are faced with incessant oil spills from rusty pipes, some of which are 40 years old,” said Bonny Otavie, a Bayelsa MP. This point was backed by Williams Mkpa, a community leader in Ibeno: “Oil companies do not value our life; they want us to all die. In the past two years, we have experienced 10 oil spills and fishermen can no longer sustain their families. It is not tolerable.”

With 606 oilfields, the Niger delta supplies 40% of all the crude the United States imports and is the world capital of oil pollution. Life expectancy in its rural communities, half of which have no access to clean water, has fallen to little more than 40 years over the past two generations. Locals blame the oil that pollutes their land and can scarcely believe the contrast with the steps taken by BP and the US government to try to stop the Gulf oil leak and to protect the Louisiana shoreline from pollution.

This past Sunday, the prettiest of the year so far, why would 300 people forsake biking, gardening, or napping for a lecture in the dark Bell Museum Auditorium? To hear Joel Salatin, the “libertarian, Christian, capitalist, environmentalist” grass-farming evangelist of Omnivore’s Dilemma, and the movies FRESH and FOOD, INC. fame.

If you’ve gotten this far, you might be familiar with the ideals of the movement: the industrial commodity system is dangerously wreaking havoc on the quality of our food, health, water, air, and land. Salatin addressed the protective myths and proposed solutions:

1) Sustainable heritage local artisan foods are NOT elitist. Everyone can eat well.
2) Sustainable methods CAN feed the world.
3) The history of where and how we went wrong AND how to change things, quickly and easily, before it’s too late.

Salatin was smart, funny, and irreverently mixed personal experiences with research to present his case. Drawing on examples of his own sustainable system as well as those in Japan and Europe, he showed how using integrated methods employing rotational grazing and “multi-speciation” (lots of animals) symbiotically could allow a lot of food to be produced on small parcels of land. He addressed the issue of price by showing that once we figure out how to aggregate product and become more efficient, prices will become comparable.

Blaming “the food police,” the extremely aggressive regulatory agencies whose policies hamper small farmers and producers, he argued that it is government policies (backed by corporate power and influence) that have cramped innovation and entrepreneurial enterprises.
“If some regulator demanded that the founders of Facebook have desks a certain height and computers wired a particular way and fined them if they didn’t have enough employee bathrooms, the business never would have taken off. Its founders may not even have tried,” Salatin claimed. “Regulations control the marketplace, they aren’t making our food any safer. Who says real or raw milk from a farmer you know is NOT safer than Twinkies or Mountain Dew?” Claiming that the chicken he slaughtered in his kitchen has a lower bacteria count than the one in an industrial slaughterhouse he says, “You cannot legislate integrity.”

Drawing on lessons from the Dust Bowl, Salatin identified the period when he thinks we took the “wrong fork in the road.” Just when Albert Howard, the father scientific composting, had identified natural methods for enriching soil, chemists were capturing ammonium nitrate (used to make bombs, fertilizers, and pesticides). In the face of an overwhelming land crisis, farmers (with government backing supported by corporate “know-how”) chose the “quicker fix.”

Salatin believes it’s one we are paying for in the long run. “If we are serious about having real choices, we need to address the obstacles that prohibit clean, local food. We need to deal with the government regulations, licensing, and insurance programs that make it impossible for small farmers and producers to get their goods to the consumer. We’ve got to dispense with farm subsidies and expose the hidden costs in food. Right now, you can’t buy pickles from your neighbor or milk from the farmer down the street. It’s illegal, yet humankind has been eating this way for centuries. It’s really about choice.”

Joel Salatin’s lectures at the Bell were in conjunction with a week of events around the release of the movie FRESH: New Thinking About What We’re Eating.

If you don’t have television access, you can watch Food, Inc. online (Food, Inc. will be streaming in its entirety from April 22 to April 29, 2010)

About Food, Inc.

American agriculture has in many respects been the envy of the world. U.S. agri-business consistently produces more food on less land and at cheaper cost than the farmers of any other nation. What could possibly be wrong with that? According to the growing ranks of organic farmers, “slow food” activists and concerned consumers cited in the new documentary Food, Inc., the answer is “plenty.” As recounted in this sweeping, shockingly informative documentary, sick animals, environmental degradation, tainted and unhealthy food and obesity, diabetes and other health issues are only the more obvious problems with a highly mechanized and centralized system that touts efficiency — and the low costs and high profits that result from it — as the supreme value in food production.

Less obvious, according to Food, Inc., is the entrenchment of a powerful group of food producers, that sets the conditions under which today’s farmers and food workers operate, in order to maximize profits. The industry also maintains a revolving door of employment for government regulators and legislators to protect its power to set those conditions. Then there is “the veil,” a strange disconnect — propagated in good part by millions of dollars poured into marketing and lobbying by the industry — between the average American and the food he or she eats. As one chicken industry representative puts it, “In a way we’re not producing chickens; we’re producing food.”

Robert Kenner’s Food, Inc. has its American broadcast premiere as a special broadcast on Wednesday, April 21, 2010 at 9 p.m. on PBS as part of the 23rd season of POV (Point of View), American television’s longest-running independent documentary series. POV is the recipient of a Special Emmy for Excellence in Television Documentary Filmmaking.

Every year at the Solemn Vigil of Easter, the Church welcomes new members into the Body of Christ through the Sacrament of Baptism. This Sacrament initiates persons into the community of faith and unites them with Christ’s ministry. Descending into water, which can both destroy and sustain life, catechumens share in Christ’s death; rising from water, they share in His Resurrection to new life. Made new in Christ, baptized persons are called to be Resurrection people, co-creators of life.

Many of our choices bring death to ourselves, to our fellow human persons, and to the rest of creation. On the Fifth Sunday of Easter, we hear God proclaim, “Behold, I make all things new” (Rev. 21:5).

Practicing Eco-Penance during Lent: Prayer, Fasting, and Almsgiving

Francis understood that creation is a self-expression of God’s fruitful and self-giving love. As the Trinity is a loving Communion of Persons, so we are called to relate to God and all creatures in loving communion. Whereas sin tears at relationships, penance brings us to a new familial relatedness. As Francis expressed in his exhortation to the brothers and sisters in penance:

Oh, how happy and blessed are these men and women when they do these things and persevere in doing them, because “the spirit of the Lord will rest upon them” (cf. Is 11:2) and he will make “his home and dwelling among them” (cf. Jn 14:23), and they are the sons of the heavenly Father (cf. Mt 5:45), whose works they do, and they are the spouses, brothers, and mothers of our Lord Jesus Christ (cf. Mt 12:50).

In addition to reflections on the readings for each Sunday of Lent, our weekly resource includes ways of practicing “eco-penance”:

PRAYER – We raise our voices as the consciousness of creation in contrition, thanksgiving, and praise.

FASTING – Our abstinence from various earthly goods provides space to consider whether our individual and social relationships with these goods are just and loving or in need of conversion.

ALMSGIVING – We find inspiration and encouragement in the witness of those who strive to live out merciful right relationship with God’s creation.

We hope that these penitential practices will prepare us to respond to the gift of our salvation which we commemorate at Easter with renewed commitment to acting on our care for creation.

As you make use of these resources personally or in small groups, please send us feedback and stories on how they have helped you become more attentive to bringing forth a new and renewed creation!

May this season deepen our joy in reconciliation with God and with all of creation!

Southwestern University has signed an agreement with the City of Georgetown that will enable it to meet all its electric needs for the next 18 years from wind power.

The agreement makes Southwestern the first university in Texas to have all of its electricity supplied by wind power and one of fewer than 20 universities in the country to have a totally “green” source of power, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

“In recent weeks, much attention has been focused on how the world can reduce greenhouse gas emissions. By taking the bold step to obtaining all of their electricity from wind power, Southwestern University becomes a leader in showing the nation how it can be done,” said Paul Rowland, executive director of the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education.

Wind-generated power will be provided by the City of Georgetown through an agreement with AEP Energy Partners, a subsidiary of American Electric Power, one of the largest electric utilities in the United States. The electricity will come from the Southwest Mesa and South Trent Wind Farms in West Texas. These two wind farms have a total of 151 wind turbines, each of which can generate between 0.7 to 2.3 megawatts of electricity. Power is conveyed through transmission lines to customers such as the City of Georgetown.

Officials from Southwestern and the city signed the contract Jan. 12. The initial contract is for five years and is renewable through 2028. Southwestern President Jake B. Schrum said the agreement will help Southwestern toward its long-term goal of being carbon neutral, which it promised to work toward last February when he signed the American College and University Presidents’ Climate Commitment. This document formally commits campuses to eliminate their greenhouse gas emissions over time and educate students about climate neutrality.

“This is an historic moment for Southwestern,” Schrum said. “We hope Southwestern will be an inspiration to other universities to advance sustainability.” He noted that Southwestern students were the ones who initiated the conversation with city officials, and after that, both the city and the university worked to bring the idea to reality.

Jim Briggs, Georgetown’s assistant city manager for utility operations, said Southwestern is one of the city’s largest customers, with energy needs that are equivalent to the demand from 450 homes. The agreement establishes a fixed energy cost for Southwestern that is competitive with the city’s standard electric rates.

Briggs noted that the agreement also helps the city move toward the goal of meeting 30 percent of the city’s energy needs from renewable sources by 2030. “This is the kind of renewable energy partnership we want to expand in the future. This is only a beginning,” Briggs said.

Richard Anderson, vice president for fiscal affairs at Southwestern, noted that having its utility price locked in for the next 18 years will help the university considerably in its strategic planning.

“We’re proud of this partnership with the City of Georgetown,” Anderson said. “With this wind energy agreement, we are making a strong statement reflecting Southwestern’s commitment to conservation and sustainability, and our concern for the environment for the long term.”

Southwestern has undertaken a variety of other sustainability initiatives in the past year, including the following:

· It has completed two “green” buildings. The Wilhelmina Cullen Admission Center received Gold LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification from the U.S. Green Building Council and Southwestern will be applying for LEED certification for the new Prothro Center for Lifelong Learning, which will open in March.

* Small compost bins have been placed near all the residence halls and a large compost bin that will handle waste from the cafeteria has been installed north of the greenhouse.
* The student dining area went “trayless” in the fall of 2009.
* Southwestern students, faculty and staff members have planted an organic community garden behind the Studio Arts Building.
* Southwestern students organized their third environmental summit for area high school students in 2009.

For more on Southwestern’s sustainability efforts, visit www.southwestern.edu/sustainability.

by Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger

Last month, the Pew Research Center released its latest poll of public attitudes on global warming. On its face, the news was not good: Belief that global warming is occurring had declined from 71 percent in April of 2008 to 56 percent in October — an astonishing drop in just 18 months. The belief that global warming is human-caused declined from 47 percent to 36 percent.

While some pollsters questioned these numbers, the Pew statistics are consistent with the findings by Gallup in March that public concern about global warming had declined, that the number of Americans who believed that news about global warming was exaggerated had increased, and that the number of Americans who believed that the effects of global warming had already begun had declined.

The reasons offered for these declines are as varied as opinion about climate change itself. Skeptics say the gig is up: Americans have finally figured out that global warming is a hoax. Climate activists blame skeptics for sowing doubts about climate science. Pew’s Andrew Kohut, who conducted the survey, says it’s (mostly) the economy, stupid. And some folks have concluded that Americans, with our high levels of disbelief in evolution, are just too stupid or too anti-science to sort it all out.

The truth is both simpler and more complicated. It is simpler in the sense that most Americans just aren’t paying a whole lot of attention. Between being asked about things like whether they would provide CPR to save the life of a pet (most pet owners say yes ) or whether they would allow their child to be given the swine flu vaccine (a third of parents say no), pollsters occasionally get around to asking Americans what they think about global warming. When they do, Americans find a variety of ways to tell us that they don’t think about it very much at all.

Three years after it seemed that “An Inconvenient Truth” had changed everything, it turns out that it didn’t. The current Pew survey is the latest in a series of studies suggesting that Al Gore probably had a good deal more effect upon elite opinion than public opinion.

Public opinion about global warming, it turns out, has been remarkably stable for the better part of two decades, despite the recent decline in expressed public confidence in climate science. Roughly two-thirds of Americans have consistently told pollsters that global warming is occurring. By about the same majority, most Americans agree that global warming is at least in part human-caused, with this majority roughly equally divided between those believing that warming is entirely caused by humans and those who believe it to be a combination of human and natural causes. And about the same two-thirds majority has consistently supported government action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions since 1989.

This would be good news for action to address climate change if most Americans felt very strongly about the subject. Unfortunately, they don’t. Looking back over 20 years, only about 35 to 40 percent of the U.S. public worry about global warming “a great deal,” and only about one-third consider it a “serious personal threat.” Moreover, when asked in open-ended formats to name the most serious problems facing the country, virtually no Americans volunteer global warming. Even other environmental problems, such as air and water pollution, are often rated higher priorities by U.S. voters than global warming, which is less visible and is experienced less personally than many other problems.

What is arguably most remarkable about U.S. public opinion on global warming has been both its stability and its inelasticity in response to new developments, greater scientific understanding of the problem, and greater attention from both the media and politicians. Public opinion about global warming has remained largely unchanged through periods of intensive media attention and periods of neglect, good economic times and bad, the relatively activist Clinton years and the skeptical Bush years. And majorities of Americans have, at least in principle, consistently supported government action to do something about global warming even if they were not entirely sold that the science was settled, suggesting that public understanding and acceptance of climate science may not be a precondition for supporting action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The more complicated questions have to do with why. Why have Americans been so consistently supportive of action to address climate change yet so weakly committed? Why has two decades of education and advocacy about climate change had so little discernible impact on public opinion? And why, at the height of media coverage and publicity about global warming in the years after the release of Gore’s movie, did confidence in climate science actually appear to decline?

Political psychology can help us answer these questions. First, climate change seems tailor-made to be a low priority for most people. The threat is distant in both time and space. It is difficult to visualize. And it is difficult to identify a clearly defined enemy. Coal executives may deny that global warming exists, but at the end of the day they’re just in it for a buck, not hiding in caves in Pakistan plotting new and exotic ways to kill us.

Second, the dominant climate change solutions run up against established ideologies and identities. Consider the psychological concept of “system justification.” System justification theory builds upon earlier work on ego justification and group justification to suggest that many people have a psychological need to maintain a positive view of the existing social order, whatever it may be. This need manifests itself, not surprisingly, in the strong tendency to perceive existing social relations as fair, legitimate, and desirable, even in contexts in which those relations substantively disadvantage the person involved.

Many observers have suggested that Gore’s leading role in the global warming debate has had much to do with the rising partisan polarization around the issue. And while this almost certainly has played a part, it is worth considering that there may be other significant psychological dynamics at play as well.

Dr. John Jost, a leading political psychologist at New York University, recently demonstrated that much of the partisan divide on global warming can be explained by system justification theory. Calls for economic sacrifice, major changes to our lifestyles, and the immorality of continuing “business as usual” — such as going on about the business of our daily lives in the face of looming ecological catastrophe — are almost tailor-made to trigger system justification among a substantial number of Americans.

Combine these two psychological phenomena — a low sense of imminent threat (what psychologists call low-threat salience) and system justification — and what you get is public opinion that is highly resistant to education or persuasion. Most Americans aren’t alarmed enough to pay much attention, and efforts to raise the volume simply trigger system-justifying responses. The lesson of recent years would appear to be that apocalyptic threats — when their impacts are relatively far off in the future, difficult to imagine or visualize, and emanate from everyday activities, not an external and hostile source — are not easily acknowledged and are unlikely to become priority concerns for most people. In fact, the louder and more alarmed climate advocates become in these efforts, the more they polarize the issue, driving away a conservative or moderate for every liberal they recruit to the cause.

These same efforts to increase salience through offering increasingly dire prognosis about the fate of the planet (and humanity) have also probably undermined public confidence in climate science. Rather than galvanizing public demand for difficult and far-reaching action, apocalyptic visions of global warming disaster have led many Americans to question the science. Having been told that climate science demands that we fundamentally change our way of life, many Americans have, not surprisingly, concluded that the problem is not with their lifestyles but with what they’ve been told about the science. And in this they are not entirely wrong, insofar as some prominent climate advocates, in their zeal to promote action, have made representations about the state of climate science that go well beyond any established scientific consensus on the subject, hyping the most dire scenarios and most extreme recent studies, which are often at odds with the consensus of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

These factors predate but appear to have been exacerbated by recession. Pew’s pollster Kohut points to evidence indicating that the recession has led many Americans to prioritize economic over environmental concerns and that this in turn has probably translated into greater skepticism about the scientific basis for environmental action. But notably, both the Pew and Gallup data show that the trend of rising skepticism about climate science and declining concern about global warming significantly predate the financial crisis. Pew found that from July 2006 to April 2008, prior to the recession, belief that global warming was occurring declined from 79 percent to 71 percent and belief that global warming was a very or somewhat serious problem declined from 79 percent to 73 percent. Gallup found that the percentage of Americans who believed that news of global warming was exaggerated rose from 30 percent in March of 2006 to 35 percent in March of 2008. So while these trends have accelerated over the last 18 months, they were clearly present in prior years.

Perhaps we should give the American public a little more credit. They may not know climate science very well, but they are not going to be muscled into accepting apocalyptic visions about our planetary future — or embracing calls to radically transform “our way of life” — just because environmentalists or climate scientists tell them they must. They typically give less credit to expert opinion than do educated elites, and those of us who tend to pay more attention to these questions would do well to remember that expert opinion and indeed, expert consensus, has tended to have a less sterling track record than most of us might like to admit.

At the same time, significant majorities of Americans are still prepared to support reasonable efforts to reduce carbon emissions even if they have their doubts about the science. They may be disinclined to tell pollsters that the science is settled, just as they are not inclined to tell them that evolution is more than a theory. But that doesn’t stop them from supporting the teaching of evolution in their schools. And it will not stop them from supporting policies to reduce carbon emissions — so long as the costs are reasonable and the benefits, both economic and environmental, are well-defined.

Destroying the earth is not a human right.

There I said it.

Today is Blog Action Day and the topic is climate change. I thought about writing well reasoned pleas as to why we all need to be aware and care for the earth. I thought about addressing the Christians who even in their gnostic rejection the earth can find reason to care for people. But I’m tired and I’m fed up with self-centered excuses. So I’m just going to say that we need to get over ourselves. Our profit, our laziness, our pleasure are not sufficient reasons to do whatever the hell we want with the earth. Listening to Fox News and Christian radio give the minority opinion that climate change is a fable shouldn’t change anything. We either act like responsible mature human beings or we act like spoiled brats. We either clean up after ourselves, take care of what we have been given, and choose to respect the poor in our global community or we might just as well tattoo “It’s All About Me” on our foreheads (cuz that seems like a fairly appropriate mark of the beast imho).

Sure, we’ll struggle. Sure, we’ll stumble. Of course it’s going to be hard. That’s life. We just deal, pick ourselves up and move along. Our inability to be perfect should never become our excuse to be self-centered jerks.

I really don’t care if that is harsh. I don’t care if that is unpopular. That’s not the point. The point is to love God by stewarding his creation. And to love all people – including those that live next to refineries or smelting plants or whose islands are sinking or whose fishing economies have been destroyed. It’s not about what is easy or profitable. It’s about what is just and loving.

So let’s cut the crap and call it like it is – we can act out of selfishness or out of love. But we have to choose and we have to own our choice.

SYDNEY (Reuters) – Rather than throwing that bag or hosepipe into the recycle bin, how about turning it into a belt or a shower curtain, joining a growing band of upcyclers?

Upcycling refers to reusing an object in a new way without degrading the material it is made from, as opposed to recycling which generally involves breaking down the original material and making it into something else, using more energy.

Supporters of the environmentally friendly practice of upcycling say people in developing countries have effectively been upcycling for years, using old packaging and clothing in new ways, although more out of need than for the environment.

But upcycling is now taking off in other countries, reflecting an increased interest in eco-friendly products, particularly ones that are priced at an affordable level and proving profitable for the manufacturers.

“If upcycling is going to become mainstream, then the corporate world needs to see that it can be profitable,” said Albe Zakes, spokesman of U.S. company TerraCycle which specializes in finding new uses for discarded packaging.

A growing number of companies are focusing on upcycling although the trend is still in its infancy with industry-wide figures yet to be produced.

Upcycling is used on a range of products including jewelry, furniture and fashion items, such as making bracelets from old flip flops, lamps from blenders, and turning skateboards into furniture such as chairs and bookcases.

British company Elvis & Kresse Organization (E&KO) uses industrial waste to make new luxury products, turning fire hoses into bags, belts, wallets and cufflinks.

E&KO co-founder James Henrit said they avoid what they call “virgin materials,” instead opting for scrap sail cloth or furniture textiles in their lines.

“We are very much a social enterprise, and we’re hoping to change the landscape of the luxury accessories industry by leading by example,” Henrit told Reuters Television on the sidelines of the London Design Festival.

A design store in Vienna in Austria called Gabarage lets customers rifle through trash like used plastic covers, old computer chips, and discarded X-rays and pick what they like to create their own individual bag.

All the single pieces of waste chosen are put together by the creative team of “garbage upcycling design.”

“Upcycling stands in contrast to recycling,” said spokesman Daniel Strobel. “We upvalue products innovatively, instead of just reusing them.”

Money isn’t everything – or is it? To most corporations, making a profit is goal number one – but some of those companies take it way too far, sacrificing the health of the planet and its inhabitants for a bigger bank balance. Far too many corporations turn a blind eye to the consequences of their destructive, exploitative practices. The worst of them are committing atrocities that go beyond the realm of objectionable into criminal, dumping toxic chemicals without regard to public health and employing child labor.

What makes these seven companies extra evil is the fact that they’ve committed crimes that are BOTH environmentally and socially irresponsible.

These companies hurt people and they hurt the earth and need to be called to account for their actions. So if your curious why Nestle, Pfizer, Wal-Mart, ExxonMobile, Chevron, Dow chemical, and Monsanto are on the list, I suggest checking out the article.

Better World Shopper – an app that helps consumers vote with their dollars for the sorts of companies they want to support. From the app description – “Many companies claim to be “good corporate citizens,” but how many actually make the grade? With Better World shopper, you’ll have that answer. We’ve accumulated 20 years worth of data on over 1,000 companies. Food manufacturers, vehicles, clothing, airlines, banks – you name it, we’ve probably researched them. From that research we’ve graded every company (A through F) on: Human Rights, The Environment, Animal Protection, Community Involvement, and social Justice.” Find it at itunes here

3rdWhale/GenGreen – 3rdWhale has just launched a new paid version of their iPhone app that helps you easily find green businesses local to you along with giving useful sustainable living tips. It’s been both beautifully revamped in its interface and is now a true trailblazer. It’s now as simple as clicking on this application and driving (or better yet, biking) to your destination. From the App description – “Find green and sustainable businesses quickly and easily with the find Green app. It helps you make everyday choices to reduce your environmental impact and make a difference. The LBS-enables service finds everything from yoga centers to bicycle shops to organic restaurants near you. It is powered by the GenGreenLife.com database of 56,000+ green businesses and the 3rdWhale sustainability mobility platform.” Direct link to get the 3rdWhale iPhone app on iTunes: here.