Published on Apr 10, 2012
The story of a mom whose son healed from all allergies and asthma after consuming raw milk, and real food from farms. It depicts people all over the country who formed food co-ops and private clubs to get these foods, and how they were raided by state and local governments.
MPAA Rating: TV-G © 2011 Kristin Marie Productions, LLC .
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Uploaded on Jul 12, 2011
Farmageddon is about the unseen war on American Family Farmers. A documentary about the escalating fight for food rights in America.
Americans’ right to access fresh, healthy foods of their choice is under attack. Farmageddon tells the story of small, family farms that were providing safe, healthy foods to their communities and were forced to stop, sometimes through violent ac-tion, by agents of misguided government bureaucracies, and seeks to figure out why.
For more information: http://farmageddonmovie.com
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FARMAGEDDON The True Cost of Cheap Meat
by Philip Lymbery with Isabel Oakeshott
Bloomsbury Publishing, 2014
Posted on March 10, 2016
Farmageddon, an important expose of the disastrous failings of the global food system, never quite gets to the bottom of why the agricultural system is like it is.
reviewed by Martin Empson
It is impossible to read Farmageddon: The True Cost of Cheap Meat without coming to the conclusion that the world’s food and agriculture system is screwed. This is a system that produces enormous quantities of food, yet sees up to a third of that wasted. It’s a highly technological system requiring enormous quantities of oil, pesticides and chemicals to produce vast quantities of food; yet it’s a system that fails to feed the hungry.
Opening the book at random gives the reader plenty of ammunition to argue for a different, more rational, way to produce food. Take fishing for instance. Lymbery points out that a fifth of all fish caught is used as food for other fish in fish-farming. Some of this fish also is used as feed for pigs and other animals. Our food system spends vast quantities of energy and time producing food sources to fuel other food sources.
This is most apparent with beef. Lymbery points out that if “all the cereals alone currently fed to factory-farmed animals offered directly to people instead of being converted into meat, it could feed a mind-boggling number – as many as 3 billion folk.” This represents a tremendous waste of resources, but this isn’t simply an incredibly inefficient way of producing food. What this food system also produces is environmental disaster, ill-health in humans and frequently stressful and unhealthy animals.
So Lymbery documents the way that mass factory farming of beef, pigs and chickens in particular helps create the conditions for outbreaks of avian or swine-flu. The way over-use of antibiotics is helping to encourage drug resilience in both animals and people. The fossil fuels that drive the tractors, keep the lights on in the massive chicken farms and produce the pesticides contribute enormously towards climate change and vast quantities of manure threaten eco-systems (particularly in seas and oceans) around the globe.
The author emphasizes one thing above all else. Factory farming does not feed the world. In fact, because it sucks up other foods sources to feed animals, it actually undermines the ability to do this. In doing so it encourages (or needs) even more ridiculous solutions, such as the transportation of billions of bees vast distances to pollinate crops because the farms which use monocultural farming and high levels of pesticides have decimated local bee populations.
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CLIMATE & CAPITALISM is an ecosocialist journal, reflecting the viewpoint of environmental Marxism. It has three goals:
Opinions expressed in individual articles are not necessarily shared by Climate & Capitalism or Monthly Review or any of the editors.
In February 2012, we announced an alliance with the world’s foremost independent socialist journal, Monthly Review. We remain editorially independent— MR has no responsibility for our content, and vice versa — but we are sharing technical resources and exploring ways to increase both technical and political collaboration.
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New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and a coalition of attorneys general, supported by former Vice President Al Gore, vowed on March 29, 2016, to hold fossil fuel companies accountable if their words and deeds on climate change had crossed into illegality. Credit: David Sassoon/InsideClimate News
Coalition of top state law enforcement officials vows to hold fossil fuel companies accountable for their conduct on climate change.
Mar 30, 2016
A new coalition of state attorneys general gave vocal notice to fossil fuel companies on Tuesday that obfuscating the realities of climate change has put ExxonMobil and its peers under the searchlight of a broadening multistate investigation.
Announcing an alliance of top state law enforcement officers to press for urgent climate action on multiple legal fronts, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman was joined by six of his counterparts, their ranks bolstered by aides from nine additional states and the District of Columbia. The group met in New York to plan strategies and share information.
…(read more).
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By Matt McGrath Environment correspondent 31 March 2016
Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Presidents Obama and Xi at the Paris climate negotiations in December 2015
The US and China have issued a joint statement confirming that both countries will sign the Paris Climate Agreement next month.
Both say they will take all the “domestic steps” necessary to join the agreement as soon as possible.
They are encouraging other countries to sign the document at UN headquarters in April.
At least 55 countries representing 55% of emissions have to sign to bring it into force.
This is the third joint statement in the past two years from the world’s two biggest emitters on the question of climate change.
Back in November 2014 the two leaders outlined their plans to limit carbon emissions, a move that inspired other nations to follow suit.
At the Paris talks late last year, the presence and support of President Xi Jinping and President Barack Obama were critical factors in securing a comprehensive, longer term deal that agreed to keep global temperatures well below 2 degrees C.
But while more than 190 countries agreed to the document in the French capital, the formal process of signing and entering into force begins next month at UN headquarters in New York.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has invited world leaders to the ceremony and says he expects about 120 countries to turn up and sign on 22 April.
The hope is that with the big two, representing almost 40% of global emissions, now committed to the agreement, it will be much easier to get other nations to sign as well.
If the 55% or 55-country target is exceeded, then the agreement will become operational this year.
“The joint statement that the United States and China will sign and join the Paris Agreement as early as possible this year sends an extremely powerful signal,” said David Waskow from environmental campaigners World Resources Institute.
“This joint statement cements the role that climate plays in the US-China relationship. It shows the confidence that both countries have in each other’s ability to deliver on their climate commitments.”
President Obama’s domestic plans to curb carbon emissions ran into serious difficulties earlier this year when the Supreme Court issued a stay on the Clean Power Plan, designed to cut emissions by 32% by 2030 and significantly boost renewable energy.
…(read more).
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Credit: Darren McCollester/Getty Images
Hidden beneath Boston lies a vast network of aging iron and steel pipes that leak natural gas from thousands of points under the city. A small number of these leaks emit large volumes of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, while others pose an immediate explosion hazard, according to a recent peer-reviewed study published in the journal Environmental Pollution.
Study of 100 randomly selected pipeline leaks revealed the existence of ‘superemitters’ and potential explosion hazards.
By Phil McKenna Mar 31, 2016
The study looked at 100 randomly selected leaks from leak-prone cast iron pipes, the oldest of which had been in service since 1893. Fifteen out of 100 leaks measured in 2012 and 2014 were found to be Grade 1—leaks presenting an immediate explosion hazard—and were reported right away to the local utility company for repair. Of all 100 leaks measured, seven, known as “superemitters,” accounted for 50 percent of the emissions.
“We’re at a point, in the Northeast in particular, where we haven’t been able to revitalize infrastructure as quickly as perhaps we should,” said lead author Margaret Hendrick, a Ph.D. candidate in Boston University’s Earth & Environment department. “This is a problem that is not specific to natural gas pipes. We see this in our roads, our bridges, even our electric grid.”
Nationwide, 15 percent of remaining, aging leak-prone natural gas mains have been replaced since 2010, according to the study. Local utilities across the country, however, still rely on nearly 30,000 miles of cast and wrought iron mains to distribute natural gas to consumers. On average, 110 gas distribution pipeline incidents occur each year. The majority of the aging pipes are located in older cities in the Northeast, Hendrick said.
A 2012 study led by Hendrick’s advisor, Boston University professor Nathan Phillips, found 3,356 gas leaks under Boston, some of which had been leaking for decades. Subsequent studies have shown a consistent pattern, identifying similar numbers of leaks in Washington, D.C., and Manhattan.
Measuring the rate at which the methane is spewing from individual leaks, however, is difficult. Hendrick and colleagues used plastic buckets, large Tupperware containers and the plastic cover from a sandbox to create custom-built chambers. The devices, which they weighed down with gravel-filled tubes of burlap, were used to capture and record the volume of gas emanating from manhole covers, sidewalk gaps, and pavement fissures.
…(read more).
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