SUZANNE GOLDENBERG, - The Guardian (U.K.)
Stephan: This is an issue that can only be settled by consumer choice. None of us should be eating tuna fish anyway; all tuna species are endangered.
The international trade court has effectively outlawed the sale of dolphin-friendly canned tuna in American supermarkets, ruling such labels were unfair to Mexican fishermen.
The ruling, delivered on Wednesday, was the third from the World Trade Organisation against the use of a voluntary system of labels for dolphin protection and was immediately denounced by conservation groups.
‘It’s an absurd decision,’ said Mark Palmer, a marine mammal expert at the Earth Island Institute which devised the voluntary standard for canned tuna.
The label system was introduced 20 years ago to protect dolphins in the eastern tropical Pacific, the source for almost all of America’s tuna.
Campaigners say the labels have been successful in reducing the number of dolphins killed by tuna fishing fleets, and the system has strong support from the Obama administration and from congress.
But the WTO said in its ruling that the labels were not ‘even-handed’ when it came to Mexican fishermen.
‘We find that the US ‘dolphin-safe’ labelling provisions provide ‘less favourable treatment’ to Mexican tuna products than that accorded to tuna products of the United States and tuna products originating in other countries,’ it said.
A spokesman for the US trade representative, said the government stood by the labelling system. ‘The US remains […]
No Comments
LUCY SIEGLE, - The Observer (U.K.)
Stephan: Here is how climate change is playing out in the developing world. One can see the pain and suffering it is causing, and how truly vile the Republican attempt to block anything that would mitigate climate change actually is. This is real evil and, in my view, a form of war crime.
SIERRA PIURA, PERU — In the foothills of the Andes, in the Sierra Piura region of Peru, the problems faced by coffee farmers are clear. Up to 6,600 farmers produce here for the Central Piurana de Cafetaleros co-operative (Cepicafe), growing 4,000 tonnes a year of the finest Peruvian coffee on family plots scattered across the mountainside. Together, year in, year out, they bring in this special harvest, the arabica coffee cherries, which are painstakingly picked by hand, processed and dried in the sun.
However, thanks to ‘weather change’, a continual topic of conversation in the area, the harvest is unpredictable. Last year, there was too little rain in the region. This year there has been a deluge: in some areas an increase of 500% on the ‘norm’.
‘I still think coffee is worthwhile,’ says 47-year-old Gusto Regis. ‘It’s not yet as bad as 1983.’ That was when the El Niño weather system hit, and landslides and flooding drove his family away to find work labouring in an adjoining region. ‘Of course we had no land and no money so we needed to come back. I don’t know what we would do if we had to leave again.’
In the neighbouring village, Alejandro Reyes […]
No Comments
Stephan: Here is a fascinating new piece of research. I don't think this will prove to be the whole story but I do think we are slowly, at least those of us who actually have a fact based reality, discovering what all spiritual (as opposed to religious) paths have taught through the centuries: all life is interconnected and interdependent.
Is Earth really a sort of giant living organism as the Gaia hypothesis predicts? A new discovery made at the University of Maryland may provide a key to answering this question. This key of sulfur could allow scientists to unlock heretofore hidden interactions between ocean organisms, atmosphere, and land — interactions that might provide evidence supporting this famous theory.
The Gaia hypothesis — first articulated by James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis in the 1970s — holds that Earth’s physical and biological processes are inextricably connected to form a self-regulating, essentially sentient, system.
One of the early predictions of this hypothesis was that there should be a sulfur compound made by organisms in the oceans that was stable enough against oxidation in water to allow its transfer to the air. Either the sulfur compound itself, or its atmospheric oxidation product, would have to return sulfur from the sea to the land surfaces. The most likely candidate for this role was deemed to be dimethylsulfide.
Newly published work done at the University of Maryland by first author Harry Oduro, together with UMD geochemist James Farquhar and marine biologist Kathryn Van Alstyne of Western Washington University, provides a tool for tracing and measuring the movement of […]
No Comments
Stephan: This new technology is going to have a massive effect on our culture, and decentralize manufacturing, allowing communities to meet their own needs.
3D printing is a hot topic right now, especially with reports of this incredible technology entering the consumer marketplace. The prices are dropping as more companies attempt consumer-grade machines. Is it time to start looking forward to a time when we all have a Star Trek-like replicator at home to produce everything we want, when we want it?
AlterNetWhile the technology isn’t nearly as versatile or as user-friendly as the science fiction dream, the implications include the potential to provide the things we need in much greener, less-centralized, less resource-intensive way. But, as with any new technology, there are also potential negative effects to balance the scales. Over the long run, the human imagination will no doubt concoct new uses that appear grotesque to us now but may make sense as the technology becomes ubiquitous and famiiar.
In short: as with so many human inventions, the future of 3D printing includes the good, the bad and the grotesque.
The Good
3D printing actually refers to a range of different technologies for making a three-dimensional object from a digital file. First, the dimensions and details of the object must be drafted out in CAD (computer-aided design) software. The CAD file provides the directions by which […]
No Comments
Wednesday, May 16th, 2012
Stephan: Not much is being made of this, but it represents a cost of tens, if not hundreds of millions of dollars in additional publicly funded expenses because those individuals who have now lost their unemployment benefits will not get proper medical attention, so their small problems will become chronic or life threatening illnesses treated in last resort emergency rooms. It means an increase in hungry children, increased homelessness. Like so many of our toxic nasty-minded conservative social policy decisions we save pennies to ultimately spend hundreds if not thousands.
It is worth noting that in those 'socialist' states, say Scandinavia, where they make national wellness a priority they save billions in public costs because they deal with these problems at the cheap end.
More than 230,000 people stopped being eligible for unemployment insurance benefits over the weekend-not because they got jobs, but because the emergency extended benefits program providing their benefits was cut as part of the payroll tax deal earlier this year. The number of weeks of benefits available in states drop as unemployment drops, which hit California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Texas on Saturday.
While ‘as unemployment drops’ may make this sound like good news, consider that California, where 100,000 jobless people will no longer be getting unemployment insurance, has an unemployment rate of 11 percent. Nationally, more than 5 million people have been unemployed for six months or longer, and there are 3.4 job-seekers for every job opening.
That makes things especially hard for people like Jennifer Moss, a divorced mother of three who has been unemployed since October 2010:
Since losing her job, Moss said she’s applied for countless jobs and had maybe 10 job interviews, but nothing has worked out.
‘There are many sleepless nights where at 2 or 3 in the morning I might be on a website … applying for jobs,
No Comments
