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| The Double Food-Environmental Pyramid |
Another Earth Day is upon us, coming this Sunday... I try to use this day to reflect on the state of our environment and what I can do as world citizen to help. In the Northeast we have enjoyed a mild winter and a dry Spring. It is lovely weather to spend outside with friends and family, but it’s wrong.... It is terrible wrong.
No snow over the winter means no melt in the Spring, and without April showers our plants and trees are in trouble. If the Summer is hot and dry too everything may wilt and die... global warming is here, it’s effects are upon us... what can you do?
Encourage your government representatives to support policies that will reduce green house gases. The world had looked to the US to be a leader in global warming protocols and we have greatly disappointed the world community. China, the great polluter, has taken more initiative than us in trying to reduce it’s pollution.
On a personal level you can make sure to recycle and compost your waste, drive a fuel efficient car, eat less meat, and buy organic.
We have been seeing in the news more insight into how non-organic farming operates. How animals are pent up and barely able to move, festering in their own excrement. “The EPA says that agriculture is responsible for 70% of the pollution to the country's rivers and streams caused by chemicals, erosion, and animal waste runoff. Organic farming may be one of the last ways to keep both ecosystems and rural communities healthy and alive.”
“On small, diverse farms, manure is used to naturally fertilize soil. Industrial farms produce so much manure, on the other hand, that it is a human health risk. The overspill of manure can contaminate wells with E. coli and other pathogens. In one region of North Carolina, for example, hog farms produce 10 million metric tons of waste annually.”
It turns out that arsenic has routinely been fed to poultry (and sometimes hogs) because it reduces infections and makes flesh an appetizing shade of pink.
80% of antibiotics used in this country are feed to farm animals which is contributing to the development of antibiotic resistant strains of bacteria which cause up to 90,000 deaths a year in the US.
Take 15 minutes to go to this global warming petition site and sign the petitions listed:
It is the least you can do for yourself, your children's future, and the future of the planet.
Article Sources:
http://www.fda.gov/drugs/resourcesforyou/consumers/ucm143568.htm
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