The Future of Food clip – The Revolving Door

LilyFilmsInc

Published on Mar 28, 2013

The Future of Food (2004) Directed by Deborah Koons Garcia

THE FUTURE OF FOOD offers an in-depth investigation into the disturbing truth behind the unlabeled, patented, genetically engineered foods that have quietly filled grocery store shelves for the past decade.

Purchase a copy of the entire film or screening rights to the film at: http://www.thefutureoffood.com

Environmental Justice http://courses.dce.harvard.edu/~envre145
Environment Ethics http://courses.dce.harvard.edu/~envre120
Food-Matters http://Food-Matters.TV

The Future of Food trailer

LilyFilmsInc

Published on Apr 23, 2013

THE FUTURE OF FOOD offers an in-depth investigation into the disturbing truth behind the unlabeled, patented, genetically engineered foods that have quietly filled grocery store shelves for the past decade.

Produced and Directed by Deborah Koons Garcia

Environmental Justice http://courses.dce.harvard.edu/~envre145
Environment Ethics http://courses.dce.harvard.edu/~envre120
Food-Matters http://Food-Matters.TV

McGovern: Unconstitutionality of NSA Phone Call Collection is Indisputable

TheRealNews

Published on Dec 17, 2013

Former CIA analyst Ray McGovern says that the recent federal district judge’s ruling on the NSA’s bulk phone collection applies constitutional protections, but will not lead to amnesty for Edward Snowden

Environmental Justice http://courses.dce.harvard.edu/~envre145
Environment Ethics http://courses.dce.harvard.edu/~envre120

Climate Change: Vital Signs of the Planet

http://climate.nasa.gov/

Climate Change: Vital Signs of the Planet

Global Climate Change http://courses.dce.harvard.edu/~envre130
Environmental Justice http://courses.dce.harvard.edu/~envre145
Environment Ethics http://courses.dce.harvard.edu/~envre120

Kumi Naidoo – How climate change destroys human rights

http://www.aljazeera.com/humanrights/2013/12/how-climate-change-destroys-human-rights-20131217174532837148.html
How climate change destroys human rights
Environmental destruction caused by people is poised to become the “most massive human rights violation ever”.

Kumi Naidoo
Last updated: 17 Dec 2013 20:20

In a 2012 interview, Oregon State University philosophy professor emerita Kathleen Dean Moore said, “Climate change is damaging food supplies, spreading disease and creating refugees, and it is poised to become the most massive human rights violation the world has ever seen.”

Increasingly, the two issues – climate change and human rights – are being recognized as inextricably connected. Two major studies published this year reinforce that link, providing sobering evidence that a hotter, increasingly unstable climate is fueling more conflict and human rights violations, and that it is happening sooner rather than later.

The first study was published in the journal Science by researchers at Princeton University and the University of California, Berkeley. Researchers found that a hotter, more unstable climate exacerbates three specific types of violence: personal violence (such as murder, rape and domestic violence), intergroup violence/political instability and institutional breakdowns (including the collapse of governing institutions and whole civilizations).

Lead author Prof. Solomon Hsiang said the study includes “meta-analysis” of 60 previous studies from disciplines like history, economics, geography, criminology and political science. The research strongly indicates that tropical regions of the world, in particular, will be “very intensely hit”.

If tropical populations remain on their current trajectories, Hsiang said certain types of intergroup violence could exceed a 50 percent amplification in association with climate change.

Hsiang is cautious about drawing a direct link between climate change data and specific human rights abuses, but said, “There’s certainly the potential for situations where the climate leads to political changes that could adversely affect people’s rights,” adding, [climate change] destabilises and tests the amount of stress social institutions can endure.”

….(read more).

Global Climate Change http://courses.dce.harvard.edu/~envre130
Environmental Justice http://courses.dce.harvard.edu/~envre145
Environment Ethics http://courses.dce.harvard.edu/~envre120

How to Occupy the Noosphere: Ian MacKenzie at TEDxVictoria 2013

TEDxTalks

Published on Dec 17, 2013

Ian MacKenzie
An ardent filmmaker and media activist, Ian MacKenzie is dedicated to capturing and sharing glimpses of emerging human paradigms. MacKenzie’s most recent film, Occupy Love, explores the growing realization that the dominant systems of power are failing to provide us with health, happiness, or meaning. Ian feels the resulting crisis from the 2008 stock market crash has become a catalyst for a profound awakening.

Twitter: @IanMack
Website: http://www.ianmack.com

Environmental Justice http://courses.dce.harvard.edu/~envre145
Environment Ethics http://courses.dce.harvard.edu/~envre120

NSA Surveillance Is about Power, Not “Safety”

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/12/17-1
Published on Tuesday, December 17, 2013 by Common Dreams

An open letter to the people of Brazil

by Edward Snowden

The following letter was published today in the Brazilian newspaper A Folha in Portuguese and this original text was provided via the Facebook page of Glenn Greenwald’s husband David Miranda:

Six months ago, I stepped out from the shadows of the United States Government’s National Security Agency to stand in front of a journalist’s camera. I shared with the world evidence proving some governments are building a world-wide surveillance system to secretly track how we live, who we talk to, and what we say. I went in front of that camera with open eyes, knowing that the decision would cost me family and my home, and would risk my life. I was motivated by a belief that the citizens of the world deserve to understand the system in which they live.”The

public needs to know the kinds of things a government does in its name, or the ‘consent of the governed’ is meaningless. . . The consent of the governed is not consent if it is not informed.” – Edward Snowden (Portrait by Robert Shetterly / 2013 / Americans Who Tell The Truth Project)

My greatest fear was that no one would listen to my warning. Never have I been so glad to have been so wrong. The reaction in certain countries has been particularly inspiring to me, and Brazil is certainly one of those.

At the NSA, I witnessed with growing alarm the surveillance of whole populations without any suspicion of wrongdoing, and it threatens to become the greatest human rights challenge of our time. The NSA and other spying agencies tell us that for our own “safety”—for Dilma’s “safety,” for Petrobras’ “safety”—they have revoked our right to privacy and broken into our lives. And they did it without asking the public in any country, even their own.

Today, if you carry a cell phone in Sao Paolo, the NSA can and does keep track of your location: they do this 5 billion times a day to people around the world. When someone in Florianopolis visits a website, the NSA keeps a record of when it happened and what you did there. If a mother in Porto Alegre calls her son to wish him luck on his university exam, NSA can keep that call log for five years or more. They even keep track of who is having an affair or looking at pornography, in case they need to damage their target’s reputation.

American Senators tell us that Brazil should not worry, because this is not “surveillance,” it’s “data collection.” They say it is done to keep you safe. They’re wrong. There is a huge difference between legal programs, legitimate spying, legitimate law enforcement — where individuals are targeted based on a reasonable, individualized suspicion — and these programs of dragnet mass surveillance that put entire populations under an all-seeing eye and save copies forever. These programs were never about terrorism: they’re about economic spying, social control, and diplomatic manipulation. They’re about power.

Many Brazilian senators agree, and have asked for my assistance with their investigations of suspected crimes against Brazilian citizens. I have expressed my willingness to assist wherever appropriate and lawful, but unfortunately the United States government has worked very hard to limit my ability to do so — going so far as to force down the Presidential Plane of Evo Morales to prevent me from traveling to Latin America! Until a country grants permanent political asylum, the US government will continue to interfere with my ability to speak.

“These programs were never about terrorism: they’re about economic spying, social control, and diplomatic manipulation. They’re about power.”

Six months ago, I revealed that the NSA wanted to listen to the whole world. Now, the whole world is listening back, and speaking out, too. And the NSA doesn’t like what it’s hearing. The culture of indiscriminate worldwide surveillance, exposed to public debates and real investigations on every continent, is collapsing. Only three weeks ago, Brazil led the United Nations Human Rights Committee to recognize for the first time in history that privacy does not stop where the digital network starts, and that the mass surveillance of innocents is a violation of human rights.

…(read more).

Environmental Justice http://courses.dce.harvard.edu/~envre145
Environment Ethics http://courses.dce.harvard.edu/~envre120

Bill McKibben – Obama and Climate Change: The Real Story

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/obama-and-climate-change-the-real-story-20131217

The president has said the right things about climate change – and has taken some positive steps. But we’re drilling for more oil and digging up more carbon than ever

Illustration by Victor Juhasz

By Bill McKibben
December 17, 2013 9:00 AM ET

Two years ago, on a gorgeous November day, 12,000 activists surrounded the White House to protest the proposed Keystone XL pipeline. Signs we carried featured quotes from Barack Obama in 2008: “Time to end the tyranny of oil”; “In my administration, the rise of the oceans will begin to slow.”

Global Warming’s Terrifying New Math

Our hope was that we could inspire him to keep those promises. Even then, there were plenty of cynics who said Obama and his insiders were too closely tied to the fossil-fuel industry to take climate change seriously. But in the two years since, it’s looked more and more like they were right – that in our hope for action we were willing ourselves to overlook the black-and-white proof of how he really feels.

If you want to understand how people will remember the Obama climate legacy, a few facts tell the tale: By the time Obama leaves office, the U.S. will pass Saudi Arabia as the planet’s biggest oil producer and Russia as the world’s biggest producer of oil and gas combined. In the same years, even as we’ve begun to burn less coal at home, our coal exports have climbed to record highs. We are, despite slight declines in our domestic emissions, a global-warming machine: At the moment when physics tell us we should be jamming on the carbon brakes, America is revving the engine.

Greenland Melting: Climate Change’s Disasterous Effects

You could argue that private industry, not the White House, has driven that boom, and in part you’d be right. But that’s not what Obama himself would say. Here’s Obama speaking in Cushing, Oklahoma, last year, in a speech that historians will quote many generations hence. It is to energy what Mitt Romney’s secretly taped talk about the 47 percent was to inequality. Except that Obama was out in public, boasting for all the world to hear:

“Over the last three years, I’ve directed my administration to open up millions of acres for gas and oil exploration across 23 different states. We’re opening up more than 75 percent of our potential oil resources offshore. We’ve quad­rupled the number of operating rigs to a record high. We’ve added enough new oil and gas pipeline to encircle the Earth, and then some. . . . In fact, the problem . . . is that we’re actually producing so much oil and gas . . . that we don’t have enough pipeline capacity to transport all of it where it needs to go.”

….(read more).

Global Climate Change http://courses.dce.harvard.edu/~envre130
Environmental Justice http://courses.dce.harvard.edu/~envre145
Environment Ethics http://courses.dce.harvard.edu/~envre120

Study: Chemicals Linked to Cancer, Birth Defects in Water Near Fracking Hotspots | Common Dreams

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/12/17-2
Published on Tuesday, December 17, 2013 by Common Dreams

Report author: ‘More than 700 chemicals are used in the fracking process, and many of them disturb hormone function’

– Sarah Lazare, staff writer

Pipes pump water mixed with sand into a well, for Anadarko Petroleum Corporation, at a well near Franktown, Colorado on April 12, 2011. (Photo: RJ Sangosti, The Denver Post)The controversial oil and gas extraction process known as “fracking” employs dangerous chemicals linked to cancer, birth defects, and infertility that then contaminate ground and surface water and may expose populations near sites to direct health risks.

So finds a study released Monday in The Endocrine Society’s journal Endocrinology, in which U.S. scientists analyzed surface and ground water samples from Garfield County, Colorado—a fracking hotspot that is home to over 10,000 natural gas wells—focusing on “sites with drilling spills or accidents,” according to an announcement of the findings.

…(read more).

Environmental Justice http://courses.dce.harvard.edu/~envre145
Environment Ethics http://courses.dce.harvard.edu/~envre120