OCA’s Resource Center on Environment and Climate

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March with Vandana Shiva and OCA at the People’s Climate March in NYC

On Sunday, Sept. 21, 2014 the Organic Consumers Association will join the People’s Climate Marchin New York City–expected to be the largest climate march in history.

We’re marching with a message of warning. And a message of hope.

Join Vandana Shiva and march with OCA under the Cook Organic Not the Planet banner on Sept. 21 in New York City. RSVP to receive details and updates about the march. The first 200 people to RSVP will receive a free “Cook Organic Not the Planet” T-Shirt!

RSVP and learn more here

On Saturday Sept. 20, the Organic Consumers Association is hosting a track of workshops at the NYC Climate Convergence on topics related to the role organic farming—and organic consumers—can play in reversing climate change.

…(read more).

Global Climate Change
Environment Ethics
Environment Justice

Watch: Democracy Now! Live Broadcast at the People’s Climate March in NYC, Sunday 10:30am-1:30pm ET

democracynow

Published on Sep 18, 2014

Tune in this Sunday, September 21 for the special Democracy Now! live broadcast from the People’s Climate March in New York City, part of a global mobilization in advance of the U.N. special session on climate change convening on Tuesday. Livestream from 10:30am to 1:30pm ET: http://democracynow.org

Global Climate Change
Environment Ethics
Environment Justice

Fighting an Ebola outbreak of unprecedented proportions

UNICEF

Published on Sep 18, 2014

Subscribe to UNICEF here: http://bit.ly/1ltTE3m.

We need your support to continue our fight against Ebola in Liberia and in other affected countries. To learn more about how you can help, visit: http://uni.cf/ebola.

“I’ve been in wars. I’ve been in earthquakes. I’ve been in conflicts all around the world, and I’ve never been in a situation like what we’re facing today in Liberia,” says UNICEF Representative in Liberia Sheldon Yett on the country’s fight against Ebola. “Every day we learn of more families, more communities that have been affected by this disease. There’s not a pocket of this country, not a corner of this country, that remains unaffected.”

To help stop the spread of Ebola, UNICEF has been bringing in hundreds of tonnes of basic medical supplies, such as chlorine to ensure that health centres are disinfected. We’ve also been providing supplies to households, instructions on how to use them and guidance on how to care for patients safely. We’ve been working to ensure basic services for children – like school and immunizations – can continue.

Global Climate Change
Environment Ethics
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Health

UN warns over Ebola as Sierra Leone lockdown begins

euronews (in English)

Published on Sep 18, 2014

Sierra Leone has begun a three-day nationwide lockdown as it confronts a worsening Ebola outbreak.

Practically the entire 6 million population has been ordered to stay home while medical teams go door-to-door to screen for the virus.

The UN has declared the latest outbreak as a threat to international peace and security.

Across west Africa, the death toll has reached 2,630. A further 5,357 people are sick.

Ahead of the shutdown, people were busy stocking up on essential supplies.

Global Climate Change
Environment Ethics
Environment Justice

BBC News – Time is right for global focus on forest land rights

18 September 2014 Last updated at 20:21 ET
By Mark Kinver Environment reporter, BBC News
Without recognised land rights, indigenous peoples’ way of life could be threatened, warn campaigners
Related Stories

• Rainforest people can monitor carbon
• ‘Little progress’ on forest protection plan
• Seeing REDD over forest peoples

Recognising the land rights of local people could provide cost-effective protection for many of the world’s tropical forests, a report says.

But existing initiatives to tackle deforestation were poorly suited to deal with the issue, it added.

However, there was an “unprecedented opportunity” to act as more nations were willing to acknowledge indigenous peoples’ right to own and control land.

The report will be presented at the World Conference on Indigenous Peoples.

The document, produced by the Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI) and the Indigenous Peoples’ International Centre for Policy Research and Education, warned that growing pressure for land and resources was threatening the long-term future of communities that depended on tropical forests for their livelihoods.

“As customary owners and stewards of large areas of the world’s forests and drylands, threats to the rights of these communities place undue risk on the ecosystems that must be preserved to mitigate climate change and provide global environmental benefits,” it warned.

But it said that the plight of some of the world’s poorest and most marginalised communities was being more widely recognised, presenting an “unprecedented opportunity” to act.

Helping hand

“There are countries, such as Indonesia, where the government has suddenly said there is a need to respect local land rights,” explained RRI co-ordinator Andy White.

Intact tropical forests also provide globally important ecosystem services, such as carbon storage

“However, there is no mechanism to provide support, nor the technical assistance necessary. The issue of land rights has always been the poor stepchild to all of the other global initiatives.”

…(read more).

Global Climate Change
Environment Ethics
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BBC News – Ebola ‘threat to world security’- UN Security Council

18 September 2014 Last updated at 19:15 ET

Health workers have been struggling to contain the outbreak in West Africa
Ebola outbreak

• Five ways to tackle outbreak
• Virus in video
• ‘Biological warfare’
• How bad can Ebola get?

The UN Security Council has declared the outbreak of the Ebola virus in West Africa a “threat to international peace and security”.

The Council unanimously adopted a resolution calling on states to provide more resources to combat the outbreak.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon warned an emergency meeting of the council that the number of Ebola infections was doubling every three weeks.

More than 2,600 people have now died in the worst Ebola outbreak on record.

Mr Ban said the “gravity and scale of the situation now require a level of international action unprecedented for a health emergency”.

He announced the establishment of an “emergency UN mission” working with the World Heath Organization (WHO) to combat the crisis, saying he would convene a “high-level meeting” next week.

…(read more).

Global Climate Change
Environment Ethics
Environment Justice

Corporate Personhood Is the Ebola Virus of Climate Chaos

Harvey Wasserman | September 18, 2014 8:32 am |

Unrestrained corporate power is the Ebola virus of our global ecological crisis. Rooting it out will demand a whole new level of resistance.

The worldwide march for the climate this weekend is focussed on moving us to a Solartopian energy supply, a green-powered Earth.

The core engine of our economy must at last be made directly accountable to humankind and our Mother Earth. Until that happens, we are an endangered species.

But those who march must also focus on the real core problem: the nature of the modern corporation.

As currently structured, the corporation’s sole mandate is to make profit. Its insatiable need for more and more money, and its immunity from the consequences of its actions, are unsustainable in any sense.

Its fossil fuels heat our planet. Its atomic reactors threaten us all.

Meanwhile, solar, wind and other Solartopian technologies plunge in price while surging in efficiency. It’s now abundantly clear they can power our civilization cleaner, cheaper, more reliably and with more job creation than old King CONG (Coal, Oil, Nukes and Gas).

In a free and open marketplace, they would have won long ago.

But it’s the inherent nature of corporations to HATE the marketplace.

They always demand monopoly. They push complex, capital-intensive, centralized technologies that only they can control.

They fight off any social or ecological responsibilities. And they do not tolerate competition.

Not on the internet, where they want to kill net neutrality and monopolize the flow of ideas and information.

Nor from green energy technologies that threaten their profits and control.

Windmills have been around for centuries. The photovoltaic cell was born six decades ago. A 1952 federal report predicted 13 million solar-heated U.S. homes by 1975.

By all rights, we should already have a green-powered planet.

Today’s climate crisis was avoidable.

But in the fossil/nuke world it currently rules, King CONG is above the law. It’s been cheaper for the fossil/nuke corporations to wreck the Earth—and our health—than to protect them.

So now we must take the next step.

….(read more).

Global Climate Change
Environment Ethics
Environment Justice

Watch Obama’s Top Science Advisor Repeatedly Shut Down Climate Deniers At House Climate Hearing | ThinkProgress

Wednesday had to have been a frustrating day for White House Science Advisor Dr. John P. Holdren.

Holdren, a lauded theoretical physicist, appeared before the Republican-led House Committee on Science, Space and Technology on Wednesday to testify about the Obama administration’s plan to fight climate change. But, as is true for all House Science committee hearings on climate change, much of the questioning focused not the content of the plan itself, but whether global warming is even real.

Additional lines of questioning included whether carbon dioxide actually harms human health, and whether the climate plan would lower global temperatures on its own — two questions with complicated answers that have been very thoroughly explained since the plan was introduced. One Congressmen accused Holdren of breaking the law by sending work e-mails from his personal account in 2013, while another said climate scientists shouldn’t be trusted because of their dependence on the existence of climate change to make a living.

Fortunately, Holdren is a confident speaker who was able to succinctly explain the science to his climate denying questioners despite constant interruption. Here are a few of the best times he did just that.

Rep. Stockman’s Questions On “Global Wobbling”

After expressing his distaste for Obama’s Climate Action Plan, Rep. Steve Stockman (R-TX) spoke about a recent trip to Maryland, where he apparently asked a NASA scientist what ended the last Ice Age. The scientist, Stockman said, credited “global wobbling,” or slight changes in the earth’s tilt and orbit that happen over tens of thousands of years.

What Stockman then wanted to know is, why isn’t “global wobbling” included in climate modelings?

“How can you take an element which you give to the credit for the collapse of global freezing and into global warming but leave it out of your models?” Stockman asked. “I’m a little puzzled because we still don’t have metrics of how to determine global wobbling.”

…(read more).

Global Climate Change
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Environment Justice

John Holdren to Rep. Stockman: “Global Wobbling” Is Not A Global Warming Thing

ThinkProgress Video

Published on Sep 18, 2014

Global Climate Change
Environment Ethics
Environment Justice

Plant Some Pawpaw and Lift A Goat: Surprising Ways to Combat Climate Change in Kenya

World Bank

Published on Jul 16, 2014

http://www.worldbank.org – The rains are coming later and don’t last as long. For an increasing number of Kenyans, the solution to Climate Change has been sustainable farming and herding techniques that reduce carbon output, save them money and make their farms and herds more prosperous. The goats seem okay with it too.

Global Climate Change
Environment Ethics
Environment Justice
Food-Matters