New, Highly Toxic Pesticide Is Greenhouse Gas 4,780 Times More Potent Than CO2

From: Center for Biological Diversity
Published July 13, 2009 10:27 ऍम

San Francisco- Public health and environmental advocates Friday asked the U।S। Environmental Protection Agency to deny a request from Dow AgroSciences for a permit allowing it to release large amounts of sulfuryl fluoride onto farm fields in four states। The chemical is a toxic pesticide whose global warming effects are thousands of times stronger than carbon dioxide

"The hazards of using sulfuryl fluoride in agriculture have not been evaluated. It is also 4,780 times as potent a greenhouse gas as carbon dioxide," said Dr. Brian Hill, a staff scientist at the Pesticide Action Network. "Either one of those facts makes permitting these tests a major mistake."

Dow AgroSciences proposes using sulfuryl fluoride to sterilize soil in farm fields. The permit would allow the release of 32,435 pounds of sulfuryl fluoride on 65 acres of test plots in Florida, Georgia, Texas, and California. Releasing just 10 percent of that amount into the air would be equivalent to releasing 15.5 million pounds of carbon dioxide. "A car that gets 30 miles per gallon would have to be driven 23 million miles — the distance of a trip circling the world over 930 times — to cause that much global warming," said Hill.

"Dow would like to sell this toxic chemical to farmers across the country — and will apply to do so if this test goes well," said Craig Segall of the Sierra Club. "We don’t need more global warming pollution, so we’re asking EPA to nip this problem in the bud."

"Other offices within EPA are currently working diligently to control climate change, which the EPA recognizes as the most pressing environmental challenge of our times," said Justin Augustine of the Center for Biological Diversity. "It makes no sense for EPA’s Office of Pesticide Programs to work at cross purposes with the rest of the agency by allowing the use of such a harmful substance."

Not only is sulfuryl fluoride a potent greenhouse gas, its high toxicity likewise poses significant human health and ecological risks. Thus far, EPA has not carefully reviewed the health risks for those exposed to the chemical or considered the impacts of the releases on endangered species and other wildlife. The groups’ letter asks EPA to take a hard look at these questions, including by consulting with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

The letter was signed by Alaska Community Action on Toxics, the Center for Environmental Health, the Center for Biological Diversity, Defenders of Wildlife, the Pesticide Action Network, and the Sierra Club.

Contact Info: Brian R Hill, Ph.D.
Staff Scientist
Pesticide Action Network North America
49 Powell Street # 500
San Francisco, CA 94102
(510)289-4329

Craig Segall
Environmental Law Fellow
Sierra Club Environmental Law Program
85 Second St., 2nd Floor
San Francisco, CA 94105
(415) 977-5610

Justin Augustine
Staff Attorney
Center for Biological Diversity
351 California Street, Suite 600
San Francisco, CA 94104
(415) 436-9682 x 302
(415) 436-9683
jaugustine@biologicaldiversity.org

Website : Center for Biological दिवेर्सिटी

Will YOU Be the One to Take a Stand?

In order for our relationships to work we must nurture them, there must be growth, change and mutual respect. We seem to see our relationships only as far as human interaction. Some of us include our pets. But our relationships go beyond this. We also have a relationship with our environment. And our environment requires the same things as our personal relationships, in order to remain healthy and safe for all us.

As we all know, our world is going through much turmoil. We can't afford to sit back and watch as we twiddle our thumbs and hope things get better on there own, or that some hero comes to fix it all for us. We may have seen it as our 'option' to take a stand before, but those days are long gone. We don't have the time to waste any longer. It's time to take a stand and roll up our sleeves up. There is work to be done. We have the power to change our country and it is our duty.

Congress is about to vote on the American Clean Energy and Security Act. This is the BIGGEST Global warming bill congress will ever vote on. SO EVERYONE, PLEASE,DO YOUR PART! Take a stand. It will take less than 3 minutes of your day to make a difference in your lives, your children's lives and everyone around you.

Will you please join me in signing this petition to urge congress to make a change and tell them there are better ways? To tell them to get rid of the old and bring in the new? Because doing what hasn't worked again and again is not going to give us different results. Didn't someone say that doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results is the sheer definition of insanity? Well, we are not an insane nation. And we want a CHANGE!!

Please watch this very short video by Amy Smart and then sign the petition at

http://tinyurl.com/l4vwxe



Here again, is the link to sign the petition: http://tinyurl.com/l4vwxe

Now there is only one more thing I ask of you. If you can, will you please post this link and info to your facebook, Twitter, Friendfeed, Blogs, etc? Wherever you deem it possible would be great! We have to make a difference and we need to see change. But we won't get that without everyone standing. The way to do that is to pass this around. (If you don't want to blog about it, you can simply copy and paste this entry in my blog to your own blog. I don't mind, as long as it gets out.)

CONGRATULATIONS my friend, for taking stand!

DO YOU SEE THE DIFFERENCE!

Image via Wikipedia

Image via Wikipedia

Why Do We Need Health Care Reform? Here Is Your Answer

Health insurance companies make me queasy to my stomach. Their sneakiness. They way they try to bypass the laws and find ways not to help people under such distress. We won't pay this, we won't do that. We won't help you here, we won't help you there.

Look at these men in this video. Even the government is disgusted with them. They will not budge in their ways no matter who they hurt or how much wrong they are doing.

Something MUST BE DONE!

What? Govt. Passing Acts to Protect Us From Smoking?

Image via Wikipedia

Today president Obama signed 'The Family Smoking Prevention and Tabacco Control Act. Now the FDA's regulation of tobacco is now a reality!

It's important to not only ask for what we need from our government, but also to thank them for their hard work and dedication to our people and our causes. We may not always be in accordance with their actions, or in some cases even with their lack of actions, but when credit is due it must be given.

Will you please take a moment of your time today to thank the President and Members of Congress who made this historic public health victory possible?

The thank you letter has already been written out for you and there is nothing left to do other than click on the link below and add your name in thanks.


http://www.heartprescription.org/


If you are interested in reading the letter that has been prewritten for you, please read below:

Here is a copy of you what you will be sending:


Dear Legislator:

Thank you for voting YEA on final passage of the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act! As your constituent and an American Heart Association You're the Cure advocate, I'm delighted you joined many of your colleagues to ultimately pass this life-saving legislation.

By finally enabling the Food and Drug Administration to regulate tobacco products and marketing, this bill will help tackle the increased risk of heart disease and stroke that millions of Americans face as a result of tobacco addiction.

Over 400,000 Americans lose their lives every year because of diseases caused by tobacco use. Of these, 150,000 die from cardiovascular diseases alone. Tobacco regulation is long overdue, and I applaud Congress for passing this bill.

This legislation is a Prescription for a Healthy Heart that will save countless lives. It will prohibit the marketing of tobacco to children, ban candy-flavored cigarettes, and impose restrictions on advertising aimed at kids. It will require the tobacco industry to disclose the dangerous cocktails of chemicals they add to cigarettes to make them more addictive, and give the FDA the authority to regulate these manufacturing practices.

This is a historic moment in our country, and I thank you for voting in support of America's health.


Sincerely,

Adriana Contreras
(Your Name Here)

What? Fresh Veggies at the White House?

Technorati Tags: Gardens,Gardening,Home,White House,Obama

I am sooo excited about this!  The White House is going to have a veggie garden on their South lawn!  What an excellent example for everyone!  It is quite sad when we see how little awareness the country as a whole has regarding environmental issues.  How miserable it is to hear people say things such as, "Nah...its all bluff!  There is NOTHING wrong with our environment." 

The truth is we have many issues to cover and going green is the best way for us to make an impact as individuals.  We expect others to come up with the solutions, implement them and make the changes we need four ourselves, our families and our future grandchildren and great grandchildren.  We don't get our hands dirty and do anything ourselves.  Well its time everyone took as stand, and this is precisely what the White house has decided to do.  And one way they are doing it is starting their own vegetable garden. 

As I was twittering today, (I LOVE Twitter!)  Someone twittered this link.  I was so excited about it I had to post it to my blog.  Hope you all are as happy about it as well.  Here is the post. (I'll also post the link)

 

White House Vegetable Garden Coming This Summer

Posted by: Peter Smith, March 7, 2009 at 9:00 am

Roger Doiron lives on less than half an acre in Scarborough, a suburb of Portland, Maine, that’s known less for its farms than its big-box stores. Last year, his front-yard kitchen garden was not just a source of inspiration and an estimated $2,400 in vegetables for his family; it was also a symbol of self-sufficiency and a greener suburbia. Doiron has also been petitioning the new president to put a Victory Garden on the White House. “If we were to have a first family to take this on and lead by example, we would see a ripple effect across the country and across the world,” he told the Washington Post.

Now, the Obama Administration appears to be heeding calls from Doiron and other gardening activists. This summer, they’re planning to plant a vegetable garden on the White House’s South Lawn , one adviser told CBS’s Political Hotsheet.

The effort has also led to questions about the broader implications of a Presidential kitchen garden. Warren Belasco, a food historian and author of Appetite for Change, said the action would be more of a symbolic boost for affluent activists rather than the people in need of healthy and inexpensive food, who were unlikely to have the time or space to benefit from the model garden on the White House lawn.

“Considering how far the community and organic gardening movement has come in the forty years since People’s Park put it on the map, do we still need symbolic stunts? I don’t think so,” he wrote. “Dig your own potatoes, people!”

Belasco and others have pointed to the efforts to reshape the USDA, such as its “People’s Garden,” a community garden project on the National Mall, especially given the agency’s resistance to such projects in the past. Now, if only Obama were to do something really radical in Washington D.C., it would be to reinstate the Center Market, the public market demolished to make way for the National Archives building, or to resume cattle grazing on the Ellipse.

Zira Island is Zero Energy

Sort of a Masdar with mountains, Zira Island is a zero energy resort and entertainment city designed by Bjarke Ingels Group, on an island in the Caspian Sea off Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan. It is designed to mimic "the seven peaks of Azerbaijan."


The architect writes:

The Seven Peaks fo Azerbaijan is a master plan for a Zero Energy resort and entertainment city on Zira Island situated in the Caspian Sea. Located within the crescent shaped bay of Azerbaijan's capital Baku, Zira Island is designed to be a sustainable model for urban development and an iconographic skyline recognizable from the city's coastline. As a young post-soviet democracy, Azerbaijan is rediscovering its national identity, the Seven Peaks of Azerbijan propose an architectural landscape derived from its natural landscape. The mountains are conceived not only as metaphors, but engineered as entire eco-systems, a model for future sustainable urban development.

Preston at Jetson Green tells us:

Zira Island is intended to be entirely independent of external resources – to provide “high-end living with low end resource usage.” Here’s how they plan to do so:

* Heating/cooling by heat pumps connected to Caspian Sea
* Photovoltaics strategically placed on facades and rooftops
* Solar thermal panels integrated into architecture
* Energy efficient architecture
* An offshore wind farm for island power
* Waste and storm water collection, treatment, and reuse in landscaping


MY PERSONAL NOTE:
Unbelievable don't you think? Great concept! Very cold but great concept.

Ancient Soil Replenishment Technique Helps In Battle Against Global Warming

ScienceDaily (Dec. 20, 2008) — Former inhabitants of the Amazon Basin enriched their fields with charred organic materials-biochar-and transformed one of the earth's most infertile soils into one of the most productive. These early conservationists disappeared 500 years ago, but centuries later, their soil is still rich in organic matter and nutrients.

Now, scientists, environmental groups and policymakers forging the next world climate agreement see biochar not only as an important tool for replenishing soils, but as a powerful tool for combating global warming.

Christoph Steiner, a University of Georgia research scientist in the Faculty of Engineering, was a major contributor to the biochar proposal that was submitted by the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification last week at the United Nations Climate Change Conference meeting in Poland. The new climate change agreement will replace the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012.

"The potential of biochar lies in its ability to sequester-capture and store-huge amounts of carbon while also displacing fossil fuel energy, effectively doubling its carbon impact," said Steiner, a soil scientist whose research in the Amazon Basin originally focused on the use of biochar as a soil amendment. At UGA's Biorefinery and Carbon Cycling Program, he now investigates the global potential of biochar to sequester carbon. He also serves as a consultant to the UNCCD, a sister program to the climate change convention.

Steiner explained that almost any kind of organic material-peanut shells, pine chips and even poultry litter-can be burned in air-tight conditions, a process called pyrolysis. The byproducts are biochar, a highly porous charcoal that helps soil retain nutrients and water, and gases and heat that can be used as energy.

But because the carbon in biochar so effectively resists degradation, it also can sequester carbon in soils for hundreds to thousands of years, effectively making it a permanent "sink"-a natural system that soaks up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Soils containing biochar made by ancient Amazon people still contain up to 70 times more carbon than surrounding soils and have a higher nutrient content. Steiner said scientists estimate biochar from agriculture and forestry residues can potentially sequester billions of tons of carbon in the world's soils.

Biochar also avoids the disadvantages of other bioenergy technologies that deplete soil organic matter, said Steiner.

"Removing crop residues for bioenergy production reduces the organic matter accumulating on agricultural fields and thus the soil organic carbon pool, which depends on constant input of decomposing plant material. In contrast, pyrolysis with biochar carbon sequestration produces renewable energy, sequesters CO₂ and cycles nutrients back into agricultural fields."

This unique system ideally utilizes waste biomass, and thus does not compete with food production," said Steiner. Currently most waste biomass decomposes or is burned in the field. Both processes release carbon dioxide stored in the plant biomass-for no other use than getting rid of it. Biochar can capture up to 50 percent of the carbon stored in biomass and establishes a significant carbon sink, as long as renewable resources are used and biochar is used as a soil amendment.

To address our world's climate change dilemma, said Steiner, "We need a carbon sink in addition to greater energy efficiency and renewable energy. Acceptance of the UNCCD proposal in Poland is a first step to make carbon trading based on biochar a reality.

"This has not only consequences for mitigating climate change, but also for agricultural sustainability, and could provide a strong incentive to reduce deforestation, especially in the tropics."