Wednesday, September 13th, 2017
David Suzuki, - The Raw Story/Alternet
Stephan: Our culture is based on the Biblical concept that humans dominate the earth, and we have clung to this fantasy now for two millennia. Like so much in the Bible it represents the thinking of the Middle Eastern late Bronze Age and early Iron Age. Yet in the face of all evidence to the contrary it continues down to the present day. Why? I believe because Dominionist thinking meshes very well with greed and making profit the premiere cultural priority.
Climate change is going to teach us once and for all that we live in the earth not on the earth, and we live in a matrix of life dominated not by humans but earth's great meta-systems. Here is some evidence addressing this point.
Flooding in the Brickell neighborhood as Hurricane Irma passes Miami, Florida, U.S. September 10, 2017.
Credit: Reuters/Stephen Yang
When the Aztecs founded Tenochtitlán in 1325, they built it on a large island on Lake Texcoco. Its eventual 200,000-plus inhabitants relied on canals, levees, dikes, floating gardens, aqueducts and bridges for defense, transportation, flood control, drinking water and food. After the Spaniards conquered the city in 1521, they drained the lake and built Mexico City over it.
The now-sprawling metropolis, with 100 times the number of inhabitants as Tenochtitlán at its peak, is fascinating, with lively culture, complex history and diverse architecture. It’s also a mess. Water shortages, water contamination and wastewater issues add to the complications of crime, poverty and pollution. Drained and drying aquifers are causing the city to sink—almost 10 meters over the past century.
“Conquering” nature has long been the western way. Our hubris, and often our religious ideologies, have led us to believe we are above nature and have a right to subdue and control it. We let our technical abilities […]
2 Comments
Wednesday, September 13th, 2017
GINA KOLATA, - The New York Times
Stephan: In addition to the one good thing this report describes, we now have a new technology that allows us to alter flawed DNA, there are also so many bad things it tells us about the pharmaceutical industry.
To begin with this sector of our economy is predicated on profiting from human misery. It demonstrates to us in a way no words can dispel that the small group of men and women who control Big Pharma are lacking in the human empathy and Christian compassion in which they drape themselves. They have created an illness profit system that has only one priority: profit.
Finally, this article confirms what I have been saying about the Homo Superior Trend and the fact that its principal beneficiaries will not be general society, but a small group of the uber rich.
Emily Whitehead, who received an experimental precursor to the gene-therapy treatment Kymriah, which put her leukemia into remission. The treatment has a $475,000 price tag, raising questions about how patients and insurers will pay.
Credit T. J. Kirkpatrick/The New York Times
The first gene therapy treatment in the United States was approved recently by the Food and Drug Administration, heralding a new era in medicine that is coming faster than most realize — and that perhaps few can afford.
The treatment, Kymriah, made by Novartis, is spectacularly effective against a rare form of leukemia, bringing remissions when all conventional options have failed. It will cost $475,000.
With gene therapy, scientists seek to treat or prevent disease by modifying cellular DNA. Many such treatments are in the wings: There are 34 in the final stages of testing necessary for F.D.A. approval, and another 470 in initial clinical trials, according to the Alliance for Regenerative Medicine, an advocacy group.
Read the Full Article
No Comments
Wednesday, September 13th, 2017
Damian Carrington, Environment Editor - The Guardian (U.K.)
Stephan: The safety of American drinking water has become an enormous issue. Here is the latest.
And please note what this report tells us: "The US had the highest contamination rate, at 94%, with plastic fibres found in tap water sampled at sites including Congress buildings, the US Environmental Protection Agency’s headquarters, and Trump Tower in New York."
Get your water tested, and include plastic fiber.
The average number of fibres found in each 500ml sample ranged from 4.8 in the US to 1.9 in Europe.
Credit: Michael Heim/Alamy
Microplastic contamination has been found in tap water in countries around the world, leading to calls from scientists for urgent research on the implications for health.
Scores of tap water samples from more than a dozen nations were analysed by scientists for an investigation by Orb Media, who shared the findings with the Guardian. Overall, 83% of the samples were contaminated with plastic fibres.
New studies reveal that tiny plastic fibres are everywhere, not just in our oceans but on land too. Now we urgently need to find out how they enter our food, air and tap water and what the effects are on all of us
The US had the highest contamination rate, at 94%, with plastic fibres found in tap water sampled at sites […]
No Comments
Wednesday, September 13th, 2017
Kirsten Weir, - American Psychological Association
Stephan: There are so many consequences to climate change, most of which we don't acknowledge, or even recognize. We seem unable as a society to put aside our immediate greed in order to prepare for a crisis. So different from the Chinese.
People’s anxiety and distress about the implications of climate change are undermining mental health and well-being, according to a new federal report reviewing existing research on the topic. Issued by the U.S. Global Change Research Program, the report is the first time the federally mandated group has published an assessment solely focused on climate change and health.
The report is notable for another reason, too: It contains a chapter devoted to mental health and well-being, a significant step forward for an assessment of this type, says lead author Daniel Dodgen, PhD, a clinical psychologist at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response. “I think people realize that if you’re going to talk about health, you have to talk about mental health,” he says.
The report also found that:
- Exposure to climate- and weather-related natural disasters can result in mental health consequences such as anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. A significant proportion of people affected by those events develop chronic psychological dysfunction.
- Some people are at higher risk for mental health consequences […]
1 Comment
Tuesday, September 12th, 2017
Jane Gleeson-White, - The Guardian
Stephan: Ecological Civilization. This article is one of the most encouraging things I have read. First, the story of James Thorton and his law firm Client Earth. Thornton is an absolutely extraordinary and heroic man committed to wellbeing. Second, this is the legal structure for implementing the 8 Laws of Change and creating a wellbeing oriented social order. Third, the story of China, and their commitment to creating an Ecological Civilization. This is powerful good news, the Theorem of Wellbeing in action.
I predict this is also the leverage point by which China will become the dominant economy. This is an historic geopolitical transition point.
In his four decades of legal practice across three continents, James Thornton, chief executive of ClientEarth has never lost a case.
Credit: Martin Godwin/ the Guardian
James Thornton’s specialty is suing governments and corporations on behalf of his only client – the Earth – and he’s very good at it. In his four decades of legal practice across three continents, he’s never lost a case.
Acknowledging this in 2009 the New Statesman named him one of the ten people likely to change the world; ClientEarth, the public interest environmental law firm he started in London in 2007 now employs 106 people.
Thornton has been in Australia to talk about his work and his new book, Client Earth, which he co-wrote with his partner Martin Goodman. When I met them in Sydney, Thornton was keen to discuss his unlikely adventure in China, while Goodman, usually a reserved Englishman, enthused about the unexpected hope he found while writing Client Earth.
First invited to Beijing in 2014 to help […]
No Comments
